Celebrating Fernandomania: An honor long overdue by Hank Indictor

A longstanding Los Angeles Dodgers tradition has finally been broken with the announcement that they will retire the No. 34 that legendary pitcher Fernando Valenzuela wore throughout the 1980s. He will be the first Dodger to be so honored that is not in the Hall of Fame since longtime player/coach Jim Gilliam’s No. 19 was retired after his tragic death during the 1978 season.

If there is anyone worthy of the breaking of this tradition it is Valenzuela because his legacy with the Dodgers goes beyond his accomplishments on the field, as he became a symbol of unifying pride in the city of Los Angeles at a time when the city dealt strife among the Mexican American communities. His memorable pitching motion, looking skyward as he was winding up, and lethal screwball helped to make him an instant sensation during what was arguably the most storybook rookie season in baseball history!

To this day, he is still looked at as arguably the most popular player to ever wear Dodger blue, which is a big reason why so many Dodgers fans have been begging the team to retire his number, which the Dodgers never reissued after his departure.

The retired number ceremony is only part of what will be a whole weekend where the team will celebrate him and his accomplishments as they will also put him in the Stadium’s Ring of Honor and tickets for the August 11-13 series against the Colorado Rockies will no doubt be difficult to come by if you're a Dodgers fan.

To truly understand why many in SoCal hold Fernando Valenzuela in such high regard, we need to break down his 1981 season. Valenzuela, a 20-year-old rookie, received an unexpected Opening Day start due to a warm-up injury to scheduled starter Jerry Reuss. He had made his major league debut the previous September but at that point, he had yet to start. Making matters critical, this game would be an early statement against the defending NL West champion Houston Astros, who were coming off a tough loss in the previous year's NLCS, having beaten the Dodgers in a tiebreaker.

Most managers wouldn't dream of the idea of throwing a youngster into this situation, but Tommy Lasorda would be rewarded and then some with his hunch. Not only would the Dodgers win the game by a score of 2-0, but Valenzuela would pitch a complete game shutout, allowing only five hits, striking out five, and walking only two in the process, not bad for a pitcher who found out he was starting after Lasorda woke him up from a nap!

From there on out, this would kickstart a craze known as "Fernandomania," as fans would do anything they could just to get a glimpse of this young sensation. Dodger Stadium would consistently draw sellouts on days he pitched, while road attendance also saw a spike of at least 5,000. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Los Angeles has a high population of Mexican Americans. For them, Valenzuela would become an instant hero and a symbol of the American Dream.

Having grown up in poverty in rural Sonora, Mexico, Valenzuela’s rapid rise to stardom helped to unify a city that had long had a poor relationship with its Mexican American community, after all the process of building Dodger Stadium was extremely ugly in that it involved evicting many of them from their homes in Chavez Ravine. Therefore, a case can be made for Fernando Valenzuela to be the most important player in Dodgers history since either the move to L.A. or the retirement of Sandy Koufax.

But besides his feel-good story, Valenzuela drew big crowds wherever he pitched not only because he became a fascinating pitcher to watch with his iconic windup, where he would look up in the sky before unleashing his iconic screwball, a pitch that he would not only learn through one of his teammates but eventually master in no less than three different variations, and he was often a pitcher the Dodgers could count on if they needed a win.

By the middle of May 1981, Valenzuela's numbers were a staggering 8-0 with a 0.50 ERA, with five of those starts being shutouts (his reputation for pitching deep into games earned him the nickname "El Toro"), helping the Dodgers clinch a playoff spot (thanks to Bowie Kuhn's screwy playoff format) before the strike interrupted the season and wiped out most of June and all of July.

When the season resumed, Valenzuela would be named a starter for the National League All-Stars. By the season’s conclusion, he would lead the league in strikeouts (180), shutouts (8), complete games (11) and innings pitched (192), becoming the first pitcher in Major League History to win a Cy Young and Rookie of the Year in the same season.

The capper for this phenomenal rookie season would be three additional postseason wins, with each win being critical in keeping the Dodgers' championship hopes alive. The two performances in particular that cemented his reputation were the Pennant Clincher (Game 5 of the NLCS) and Game 3 of the World Series where he pitched a complete game without his best stuff, shifting the momentum to the Dodgers' favor.

Although he didn’t have seasons that were as dominant as his rookie year, Valenzuela would continue to be a workhorse as he went at least 250 innings a year from 1982-87 while averaging 211 strikeouts a year in that same timeframe. His rookie season was also one of six All-Star appearances in a career that also saw him win a Gold Glove and lead the league in wins for the 1986 season (which may have been his best non-strike year as he went 21-11 with a 3.14 ERA, 242 strikeouts with 20 complete games, and this was also the year where he tied Carl Hubbell’s 1984 All-Star Game record by striking out five consecutive American League batters).

Beyond the numbers, he was a true ace in the sense that often those deep starts would be needed to keep the Dodgers in games, especially if their lineups were unable to bring runs home.

Oh yeah, and I didn’t even mention the guy could rake, too! Not only did he win two Silver Slugger awards, but he had a career batting average of around .200 with 10 home runs. If Tommy Lasorda were managing Valenzuela today, he probably would let him bat even with the DH rule in effect. He occasionally used him as a pinch hitter!

In other words, in his prime, Valenzuela was the type of pitcher that you don’t see much of anymore given how the game has changed.

Unfortunately, after the 1986 season, all those innings pitched appeared to take a toll on him. He not only regressed in 1987, but he missed much of the World Series-winning 1988 season due to a series of shoulder problems. But before he left the Dodgers, he would have one last hurrah when he no-hit the St. Louis Cardinals on June 29th, 1990. Afterward, he bounced around a little as he briefly pitched for the Angels, Orioles, Phillies, Padres and Cardinals before hanging up his spikes in 1997.

When he left the Dodgers, his popularity was such that the team decided never again to issue the No. 34 (Just like the Yankees did with Paul O’Neill before eventually retiring No. 21) and eventually he returned to the Dodgers as a Spanish Language broadcaster. To this day, Valenzuela is still very much loved by the Dodgers and their fanbase as a symbol of not just the bridging of diversity, but the winning tradition.

Ironically, it was tradition that prevented the Dodgers from doing the right thing until now because one of their oldest unwritten policies was to not retire a number until said player gets inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Valenzuela was on the ballot for a few years after his retirement but he did not receive sufficient enough votes to have his name kept on the ballots.

On the surface, this makes sense, because he only had 173 career wins and a 3.54 ERA. But I believe a case could be made that he should be inducted because, as I mentioned, he was selected to six All-Star games and he was a true ace for a starting rotation while he was in his prime and during that frame. He was always in the discussion for the best starting pitcher in baseball, and he also had the second most strikeouts in the entire decade of the 1980s (only Nolan Ryan had more!).

But beyond his accomplishments on the field, he was a uniting symbol for a city that needed one. And with the energy he brought for every start, he helped to make his team more popular in his adopted city. Therefore, whether or not he ever again gets consideration for a Hall of Fame induction, I think the Dodgers did the right thing by breaking tradition and retiring his number not only because arguably one of the most popular players the franchise has ever had but you also have a case that he was their most important pitcher since Sandy Koufax (and that’s even with the likes of Tommy John and Don Sutton pitching in between them).

Congratulations, Fernando!