The word “Fernandomania” first appeared in the Los Angeles Times as the headline of a Scott Ostler column on April 27, 1981. “The morning after Fernando Valenzuela’s most recent shutout,” Ostler began, “sports announcer Jaime Jarrin arrived at the studios of radio station KTNQ and saw the phone switchboard lit up like a Mexican Christmas tree. ‘I’ve been doing Dodger games for [23] years and I’ve never seen this kind of reaction to a ballplayer,’ said Jarrin.”
Fernandomania was a multicultural phenomenon. Time and Newsweek began planning cover stories on Valenzuela by May. That month, 59 percent of TV viewers in Los Angeles watched a broadcast of a Valenzuela start in Montreal. KABC radio deejays Ken & Bob campaigned to rename the San Fernando Valley “The San Fernando Valenzuela,” wrote Howard Rosenberg in the Times.
At the heart of all this—it can too easily be forgotten—was an athlete. Valenzuela was impossibly youthful, charismatic with a winking innocence, and tubbier than life. For a heady period in the 1980s, he mesmerized a sport, drew attention to his culture, and charmed an entire city. He was absolutely a phenomenon. But he was a phenomenon rooted in an all-around athletic ability that, despite the unlikely package it came in, doesn’t get enough credit.
Those who saw him game after game remember. They remember, among other things, his batting prowess—upon arrival, the greatest hitting Dodger pitcher since Don Drysdale. They remember him being one of the most agile, astute fielders ever on the mound, with brilliant reflexes and the precise knowledge of what to do in a rundown. “If Valenzuela had been 100 years old and in the majors for 90 of them, he couldn’t have looked more in control,” wrote Mark Heisler of the Times in describing Valenzuela’s reaction to a hard comebacker on Opening Day 1981.
When a 20-year-old pitcher from a small, Mexican farm pitched a shutout to Houston on Opening Day in 1981, the city and the media fell in love with the youthful and jovial powerhouse. Fernandomania was born.
Above all, of course, was his pitching, propelled by his remarkable ability to learn the screwball from Dodger teammate Bobby Castillo. “Pitchers have taken years to learn it,” Heisler wrote, “and others couldn’t learn it at all.” Valenzuela picked it up in a week.
This preternatural talent set the stage for Fernandomania to take off. Because what Los Angeles and the baseball world fundamentally responded to was this amazing man’s ability to put zeroes on the scoreboard. Fanning the flames were his mythic backstory (growing up beyond poor with 11 older siblings on a Navojoa, Mexico farm), the constant skepticism about his November 1, 1960, birthdate, and the fascination with his pudgy build and habit of looking up at the sky while in his pitching motion. But the kindling was his ability.
The prelude came in 1980, when the Dodgers called up Valenzuela before his 20th birthday for the September stretch run in the wake of his scoreless inning streak of 35 innings in AA ball. Valenzuela pitched 172/3 more innings without allowing an earned run. “Teen-Age Beer-Drinker Is Now Dodger Stopper,” headlined the Times. That positioned Valenzuela to join the Dodger starting rotation in 1981—he was to battle Rick Sutcliffe for the No. 5 spot. But, as if choreographed by fate, with Burt Hooton already dealing with an ingrown toenail, Bob Welch a right elbow bone spur, and Dave Goltz a groin pull, scheduled starter Jerry Reuss strained a calf muscle the afternoon before Opening Day. It would be up to the boy who spoke no English, the boy who had thrown batting practice hours before, to start the Dodger season.
When Valenzuela then shut out Houston 2–0 before 50,511 in attendance at Dodger Stadium, Fernandomania was launched.
The scoreless inning streaks of Don Drysdale and Orel Hershiser have received due attention, but one wonders if they actually compare to what Valenzuela accomplished given his level of experience: pitching nine innings in each of his first eight starts, he allowed four earned runs, chalking up five shutouts and an 8–0 record. In the first 892/3 innings of his major league career, Valenzuela allowed 51 hits, walked 22, and struck out 84. His ERA was 0.40.
A 4–0 loss to the Phillies ended the increasingly legitimate dreams of an undefeated season for Valenzuela, at which point he settled into simply having a very good season, one that would win him the National League Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards. Valenzuela then passed several postseason tests. He held Houston to two runs over 17 innings in the first round of the playoffs, recovered from an NLCS Game 2 loss to pitch 82/3 innings of one-run ball in the clinching Game 5, and in his final start of the year, survived when he had nothing, hanging on to defeat the Yankees 4–3 in a 147-pitch complete game in which he allowed 16 base runners.
It was Valenzuela’s propensity for complete games that might have sidetracked what could have been his path to the Hall of Fame. In his first seven full seasons, Valenzuela averaged 14 complete games and 255 innings. That’s a tortuous workload for someone throwing a pitch like the screwball, which comes with a horror movie–like reverse twist of the arm. For a player of Valenzuela’s age, it put him on the fast track for arm trouble.
Nevertheless, the highlights continued. He began the 1985 season by allowing one earned run in his first five starts and 42 innings and having a 2–3 record to show for it. Later that year, he had a memorable showdown with Dwight Gooden and pitched 11 shutout innings. In the 1986 All-Star game, Valenzuela struck out five consecutive American Leaguers. In 1990, reduced to a back-end member of the Dodger rotation, Valenzuela made history by joining former teammate Dave Stewart of Oakland to become the first combo of pitchers to throw no-hitters in two different games on the same day, prompting Vin Scully to utter another of his most memorable lines: “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”
Fernandomania came to a bitter end in Los Angeles when Valenzuela was released before the end of spring training in 1991. But what figured to be an unpleasant end denouement to his career instead was transformed into a fitting epilogue. Valenzuela would periodically find the magic again—a 3.00 ERA (143 ERA+) in 32 games with Baltimore in 1993, and a 3.62 ERA (111 ERA+) in 33 games with San Diego in 1996. Valenzuela wrapped up his career with 2,074 strikeouts and a 3.54 ERA (104 ERA+) in 2,930 innings, along with a .200 career batting average and 10 home runs. Well into his 40s, well after one wouldn’t have thought it possible, Valenzuela added to his mystique. After he made peace with the Dodgers and quietly assumed a role as a Spanish-language game commentator for them, Valenzuela returned to his roots, mesmerizing hitters in the Mexican League. And it made sense. Wherever Fernando Valenzuela has gone, the crowds have always been transfixed.
Pure Joy Amid a Hopeless Cause
You can’t find a moment fitting the above description that surpasses Pedro Astacio’s July 3, 1992 major league debut. Called up to pitch the second game of a doubleheader—one of four twin-bills (thanks to the riots that ripped through the city two months earlier) the Dodgers had to play in a six-day stretch during their desultory 99-loss season—Astacio had struck out 10 batters while shutting out the Phillies for 82/3 innings when he faced Mariano Duncan. As Duncan’s fly ball to right field headed for and settled into Mitch Webster’s glove, Astacio jumped up and down like his team was winning the World Series.
Was it in bad taste for him to celebrate? Hardly. Astacio reminded us that we can never become too jaded. There’s never a day in baseball when there can’t be magic.