Fernando Valenzuela literally roped me into his life.
It was in the spring of 1989, my first full year covering the Dodgers for The Times, and I was still in awe of this legend that I had not yet met.
Valenzuela sensed this, and one day I was carefully navigating around his locker when I felt a rope fasten around my foot. He had corralled me with his trademark toy lasso.
He didn’t say anything, he just smiled and tugged me a few feet before I hopped out of the rope and he silently walked to the field.
We didn’t speak that day, but we didn’t need to speak, he had made his message clear.
I was welcomed here.
It was with the same sense of innocent playfulness and inclusiveness that he embraced all of Los Angeles, forging a connection between a city and its baseball team that remains unmatched in professional sports.
Fernando Valenzuela roped us all in, leaving a legacy far greater than a manic screwball and a majestic mania.
Valenzuela, who died Tuesday at age 63, didn’t just change the face of a baseball team, he altered the geography of a city.
Valenzuela put “Los Angeles” in front of “Dodgers.”
He welcomed the many folks that had long felt alienated by the Dodgers’ land-grabbing arrival in 1958. He built a bridge between Chavez Ravine and the wary communities sprawling out around it. He joined east with west. He spread blue into neighborhoods that previously looked at his team and only saw red.
He made the Dodgers inclusive. He made them lovable. He made them ours.
Today his influence can be seen from the moment one enters Dodger Stadium during a game, any game. The place looks like him. The place feels like him. The place is him. With a large Latino population in the stands, the place teems with a sense of breathtaking diversity and wondrous community wrought by him.
His influence is so strong, it is literally stitched across fans’ backs. Valenzuela broke no lifetime pitching records, his career is more Ken Holtzman than Sandy Koufax, yet throughout the Southland the majority of souvenir Dodger jerseys still bear his name.
In fact, he hadn’t thrown a pitch in 27 years, yet this summer at Dodger Stadium his jersey was still seen in the stands more often as the one bearing the name of Shohei Ohtani.
And just listen to the cheers. The ovation given Valenzuela during every in-game introduction or video board sighting is traditionally louder for him than any other former or current Dodgers. He has not thrown a pitch in 27 years yet it’s like he just tossed a complete game yesterday.
He’s the most popular Los Angeles Dodger, ever.
He’s the most impactful Los Angeles Dodger, ever.
All this, from the most humble beginnings of any Los Angeles Dodger, ever.
“That’s what’s so beautiful about Fernando,” former pitching coach Ron Perranoski once said. “Things like him just don’t happen.”
Flashback to Fernandomania, and what was that like? Imagine this summer with Ohtani, only double the amazement and triple the excitement.
You know the story. Doesn’t every Dodger fan know the story? Valenzuela came from the tiny Mexican village named Etchohuaquila, parents were farmers, one of 12 children, slept in a bed with five brothers, quit school in the sixth grade, taught himself to throw off one of the town’s only pitching mounds, the stuff of legend that is still beyond belief.
In 1978 a Dodger scout named Mike Brito was sent to the Mexican town of Silao to see a flashy young shortstop. When he arrived there were no vacant hotel rooms, but instead of leaving, he slept on four chairs at a bus station.
The next day he attended the game involving the shortstop and, while doing so, he noticed a 17-year-old pitcher with a weird delivery and a dozen strikeouts. He gave the anonymous kid’s name to his bosses and, a year later, the Dodgers signed Valenzuela.
And to think, his story gets even better.
As a 20-year-old rookie in 1981, he won his first eight starts with an ERA of 0.50, seven complete games, five shutouts, a record-setting debut that even left the great Vin Scully awestruck.
After watching him swat an RBI single during his fifth win, Scully famously intoned, “I swear Fernando, you are too much in any language.”
After Valenzuela’s seventh victory he was asked if he could win every game he pitched.
“That would be very difficult,” he said through Jaime Jarrin, the Dodgers legendary broadcaster and Valenzuela’s interpreter. “But not impossible.”
The incredible start led to incredible Dodger Stadium crowds and finished in a World Series championship. Valenzuela became the first player to win Cy Young and rookie of the year awards. He was already the most celebrated Dodger before his 21st birthday, and he rode this wave of adulation for 11 years, capped by a 1990 no-hitter after which Scully urged Dodger fans, “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!”
Several months later, Valenzuela’s world came crashing down. He was released by the Dodgers in the spring of 1991. By then his arm had been used so frequently it lost its magic. He threw 107 complete games in those 11 years. Compare that to Clayton Kershaw, who has thrown just 25 complete games in 17 seasons.
Valenzuela was deeply bitter about it all, and he spent the next several years nursing that grudge. He bounced around between five other teams before retiring after the 1997 season, after which he initially refused to return to the Dodgers in any capacity.
He finally joined their broadcast team in 2003, marking the beginning of the last phase of his Dodger career, two decades spent hanging out at the stadium with all the other media types in his usual understated manner.
He remained so unaffected by fame, he would eat his pregame dinner in the press box dining room in full view of anybody who wanted to sit down and chat. After games he would then wait in the dining room for traffic to clear, always available and approachable.
He didn’t say much. He didn’t reveal much. He never talked about how much it hurt him that the Dodgers waited until 16 years after his career ended to retire his No. 34, even though former clubhouse manager Mitch Poole had long since refused to give it to anybody else. He never talked about how it was so disappointing that he received only 6.2% of the votes when he was first eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003, the writers never fully understanding his impact.
He was clearly thrilled when the Dodgers finally retired his number in a grand weekend ceremony last summer — “It’s an amazing feeling, I never thought it would happen,” he said.
But it was also around this time when he began to show signs of illness. His weight loss became dramatic, and folks were wondering about his condition, but he never said anything about it publicly. In keeping with his humble nature he suffered in relative silence.
The first official sign that something was wrong occurred when he left the broadcast team in the final week of this season. But he did so for undisclosed reasons. Even then, gravely ill, he never wanted the story to be about him.
Fernando Valenzuela is gone, but the story can still be about him, should still be about him. He should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for his contributions to the game, and if the people who make those decisions don’t understand that, they’re all screwballs.
No matter what happens in Cooperstown, Fernando Valenzuela will never leave Chavez Ravine. He’ll always live in the worn jerseys, the hopeful faces, the hearts of millions of Angelenos who represent his greatest legacy.
Fernando Valenzuela is gone, but Fernandomania is forever.
