LOS ANGELES – Friday night, the Dodgers made it official, finally. Fernando Valenzuela’s No. 34 should have gone onto the railing of retired numbers down Dodger Stadium’s left field line long ago.
Unofficially, that number has been in mothballs for years.
The corporate policy, with the sole exception of the late Jim Gilliam following his untimely death prior to the 1978 World Series, was that a player had to be a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the Dodgers to retire his number, and that policy held up under four different owners. But from the time Valenzuela left the Dodgers in 1991 to this day, no one on this team has worn that number. Clubhouse guy after clubhouse guy kept it out of circulation.
See, clubhouse guys know things.
They seemed to understand that Fernando’s impact, on the franchise and in the community, far exceeded the numbers that Hall of Fame voters ponder when filling out their ballots.
Valenzuela was on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot two years, getting 6.2 percent of the vote in 2003 and 3.8 percent the following year, which was below the 5 percent cutoff that would have kept him on the ballot.
On the surface his 173-153 lifetime record and 3.54 career ERA in 17 seasons didn’t adequately impress the voters, though those numbers almost certainly were affected by overuse early in his career – an average of nearly 266 innings a year over a six-season span before shoulder problems sent him to what was then known as the disabled list during the Dodgers’ magical season of 1988.
But what he did on the field was only part of the story, albeit a major part.
The phenomenon that became known as Fernandomania started with that 8-0 start with five shutouts at the beginning of the 1981 season, by a pudgy rookie from a little Mexican town (Etchohuaquila), throwing an exotic pitch (the screwball) with a delivery that included looking to the heavens before every pitch.
There was the 149-pitch victory in Game 3 of the 1981 World Series against the Yankees, not the most brilliant of his performances but for sure the gutsiest. There was the 21-10 record in 1986 with 20 complete games – an unfathomable figure today – and the All-Star Game in Houston that year when he tied fellow screwballer Carl Hubbell’s All-Star record with five straight strikeouts. And there was the no-hitter he threw against St. Louis in June of 1990, which featured Vin Scully’s memorable call: “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”
All memorable, each in its own way.
But Fernando’s true stamp on the Dodgers franchise can be seen to this day, because the makeup of the crowd at Dodger Stadium on a nightly basis reflects the rich diversity of this city and this region. A Latino community that had held a collective grudge, dating back to the building of a stadium in Chavez Ravine and the Mexican-American families that had been displaced from their own residential community to make room for it, fell in love with the Dodgers because of a star who was one of their own.
“His effect, his legacy, his impact is going to last forever,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Friday afternoon.
“… With what Fernandomania, Fernando Valenzuela, did for the Dodgers organization, the fan base, that certainly moved the needle and has been sustainable. Whether it warrants the Hall of Fame, that’s not my decision. Obviously, I don’t get a vote. But you can’t debate that his impact on the organization and Major League Baseball entirely hasn’t been just as impactful alongside his statistics (as that of) anyone that’s in the Hall of Fame.”
And now-retired Spanish broadcaster Jaime Jarrin put it this way in a 2019 interview: “When i started with the Dodgers in 1959 at the Coliseum, the Latinos coming to the ballgames were about 8 percent. Now at Dodger Stadium they tell me its around 46 percent Latinos. And if you walk around the ballpark, you will hear as much Spanish as English.
“And also, in the early years, the Latinos used to come to the bleachers and the top deck. Now you find Latinos in every level of the ballpark, including the most expensive seats. It’s really gratifying.”
That trend began to accelerate in 1981. It was no accident.
But while the clubhouse guys honored that legacy all these years by not handing out 34, the honors that come with it were long overdue. True to their history, the Dodgers turned this into “Fernandomania Weekend,” because after all, why limit it to one night?
Friday started with Valenzuela being honored by the Los Angeles City Council in the afternoon. In the evening, there was a pregame ceremony that included Sen. Alex Padilla, Jarrín, current Spanish broadcaster (and Valenzuela’s booth-mate) Pepe Yñiguez, club president Stan Kasten, Sandy Koufax – the only one of the honored guests who didn’t speak, likely by his own choice – and Valenzuela’s longtime catcher, Mike Scioscia.
Before the ceremony, Valenzuela met the media in the Dodgers’ press conference room, and he was as self-effacing as ever.
“Stan Kasten told me (at the Dodgers’ off-season Fan Fest), ‘We’re going to retire your number’,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Really?’ It kinda took me by surprise. I never expected that. … I say, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen because first of all, you have to be in Cooperstown.’
“I laugh because, you know, that number was there, and nobody used it,” he added. “I don’t know if that was a decision (from management). You know, it’s not a high number. It’s not 76, 77, 78, it’s a low number. And I said, ‘Well, something is cooking. Something’s happening.”
Friday night, it finally happened. And it’s about time.