RIP Fernando Valenzuela

I was right in the middle of Fernando-mania. I talked to him a few times -- he could speak English a little bit but he preferred interviews to be in Spanish and he had Jaime Jarrin to interpret. He was pretty sharp despite his background.
In addition to being Rookie of the Year in 1981, Fernando also won the Cy Young Award. At his press conference for that, I asked him if he knew who Cy Young was. He said he did not know who he was, but if Major League Baseball named an important award after him, he must have been a really great pitcher.
I will never forget the All-Star Game in Cleveland when he got me with his favorite trick. He loved to come up behind you and tap you on your opposite shoulder, so you would turn the wrong way. The Cleveland visiting locker room was pretty cramped. There was a media scrum with a dozen or so guys surrounding Dusty Baker. I was in the back and was leaning in, trying to hear when I get a tap on my left shoulder. I turned, saw no one, then turned the other way and Fernando was there with a big grin.

I knew this World Series would trigger a ton of memories for me, but I wasn't counting on adding Fernando Valenzuela memories to the mix. RIP to the man we sometimes called the Mexican Screwball.

 

My first favorite Dodger.

 

As a kid growing up in NJ in the 1980s, I knew who Fernando was, but he kind of existed in the ether. Since we didn't have cable in our house until Clinton's second term, I'd only see him if he'd pitch when the Mets and Phils faced the Dodgers on the east coast. By the time he made his later stops in Baltimore and Philadelphia, he wasn't the same pitcher, but he was still a legend. Wish I could have seen him the way you did, Chris. Guess I'll spend some time on MLB Film Room and YouTube today.

 

The visual of Fernando looking skyward at the top of his windup is an indelible memory.

 

Hearing Vin Scully’s voice pronounce his name on NBC’s Game of the Week is a sound from my childhood. Great pitcher. RIP

 

Starting tonight in the cornfield, Fernando and The Bird.

 

I was obsessed with the Dodgers in grade school, with the hometown Pirates losing 100 games in 1985 and being in the midst of a cocaine scandal. We didn't get cable until 1987, so you followed along with the box score in the paper and whatever baseball scores were announced on the morning news on the radio before school. When you were lucky, you got the Dodgers as a Monday Night Baseball game on ABC or NBC Game of the Week. If memory serves, Valenzuela managed to win 21 games on a lousy 89-loss team in 1986. I think he went something like 21-12.

 

I’ve read snippets over the years and watched the 30 for 30, so I had a little bit of an appreciation for what he meant to the Mexican community, especially after bulldozing Chavez Ravine for the stadium. But something about your sentence crystallized for me the way history rhymed for the Dodgers decades after bringing Jackie Robinson aboard and winning the hearts of another minority group that had long gotten the shit end of American life.

 

As much as I loved the Game of the Week with Scully/Garagiola or Costas/Kubek, I could argue that Monday Night Baseball was better, especially in the summer when you were off on break. Many a Saturday afternoon, I was dragged to something -- wedding, little league game, shopping for whatever -- and you caught an inning if you were lucky.