FERNANDO : An Idol, All-Star and Already a Legend, Dodger Pitcher Has Touched Many Lives

He said his name was Luis Rene Hernandez, that he was 11 years old, and that the L.A. Dodger shirt he wore with Fernando Valenzuela’s name and number on the back was something he also wore to school, and around the house, and especially when he went out to play ball.

“Look,” he said, to the young guys who had come with him to the park to see Valenzuela pitch and to the older guy who had spotted him outside Dodger Stadium, mimicking the pitching motion of marvelous Fernando. “Look, man.”

Little Luis went into his wind-up, leaning back slightly so that he could jut out what little bit of belly he had. He reached the peak of his imaginary delivery, no ball in his hand, no glove on it, either, but he was putting everything he had into this pitch and, as he followed through, his eyeballs rolled like marbles.

“Pretty good,” the older guy said.

“ Pretty good! Perfect, man!”

“Are you really left-handed?” the guy asked.

“Only when I pitch, man,” Luis said.

In 1981, the year Fernando Anguamea Valenzuela became a baseball phenomenon and a figure of heroic, almost mythic proportion in the Latin-American community, his manager, Tom Lasorda, had gone out for a run one day in a park near his home, a jiggling Dodger jogger, when: “Two young Mexican kids came by and they recognized me, so they pulled up alongside and started running with me.”

“You guys like baseball?” the Dodger manager asked.

“‘Mr. Lasorda, my father is going out to buy a radio tonight,” one boy said.

“He is?” Lasorda asked.

“Yeah, so we can listen to Fernando pitch.”

Henrique Santos, 63, said he has been living in Los Angeles for more than two-thirds of his life. As a young man in northern Mexico he had not known much about baseball, never played it, never watched it, and even after coming to the United States with his mother and father and 13 brothers and sisters, it took him many years before he developed any feeling for baseball at all.

“There was no team in this city, you know, and even when the Dodgers come here, I have no interest. If I hear of, you know, a player from Mexico, I might ask how he is doing. But I do not know about the teams. I cannot even name the teams.”

This was the way Santos felt before Valenzuela came along. He first heard the name a little more than four years ago, when a friend sitting on his porch said: “Fernando did it again.” Fernando who, Santos had asked. “Fernando Valenzuela!” the friend said. “Fernando did what again?” Santos asked. The friend clapped his hands to his temples, then went inside the house to get a newspaper. “I look at the paper, and the paper say: ‘Fernando Does It Again!’ ” Santos remembered.

From that day forward, Santos followed the adventures of Valenzuela. “He pitch, I read the paper the next day. Pretty soon, he pitch and I find a radio to listen to the game. One day I say, ‘Enough of this! I want to see Fernando!’ So, my friend take me in his car to the stadium, and we sit ‘way far away from where Fernando pitches the balls. This is the first game I ever see, and I don’t see it so good. But it is still a very good day.”

“And did Fernando do it again?” a man asked Santos, who now attempts to go to Dodger Stadium whenever Valenzuela is pitching.

“My friend,” Santos said, “Fernando always does it again.”

To Alma Pedroza, Fernando Valenzuela is such a hero, she made up a song about him. “Fernando! You Are the One!” it is called. Pedroza, who sang the national anthem at Dodger Stadium’s dedication ceremonies, is a prima donna with the Mexico City Opera Company. She will mail a free copy of her song to anyone who sends in a self-addressed envelope, care of: 523 Fairfax, Los Angeles 90036.

Fernando, you are estupendo. Sonora’s favorite son. Un hombre muy macho y listo. Fernando, you are the one. You always play ball with much gusto. You work very hard for your game. You always pitch great for the Dodgers. That’s why you deserve all your fame. Oh! Fernando, you are estupendo. Sonora’s favorite son. Un hombre muy macho y listo. Fernando, you are the one!

“I first met Fernando in San Antonio,” Orel Hershiser said, dressing a few doors down from Valenzuela in the L.A. clubhouse. “We were both pitching for the Dodgers’ Double-A team--just a couple of young guys, hoping to make it to the top. He couldn’t speak any English then, at least as far as I knew, but he was always fun to be around, always smiling and kind of happy-go-lucky. This was before he became such a big success. He was just learning to throw the screwball then.”

“Could you tell at all that he would be as good as he turned out to be?” a man asked.

“Oh, you figured he was going to be good,” Hershiser said. “But there was no way to know he was going to be that good, and that quickly. He was up winning in the majors before the season was over. He didn’t even bother with Triple-A like the rest of us poor guys did.”

“Well, you haven’t done too badly yourself,” the man told Hershiser, who this season has a one-hitter, a two-hitter and a three-hitter.

“Yeah, but I’ll tell you why it’s such a pleasure to be on the same staff as Fernando,” Hershiser said. “He doesn’t just win. He goes out there and puts guys in slumps. Most of the time, he doesn’t just get them out, he gets them in knots. I just go out there and pitch to them while they’re still trying to recover from facing Fernando.”

Hershiser was laughing. “I mean, I’m just thankful the guy is on my side,” he said.

“And has he changed any since San Antonio?” the man asked.

“Not a bit,” Hershiser said. “He’s still Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.”

“He’s got this lasso,” Lasorda said. “Have you seen it? This little baby lasso. Like the cowboys use, only smaller. And he can make that little sucker do anything he wants. You walk by and you never know when Fernando the cowboy’s gonna rope you.

“I mean, he goes around twirling it everywhere, in the clubhouse, in the dugout, and when you don’t expect it, boom, he’s got you. Like a calf in a rodeo. You get about five feet past him, and he throws it and slips it right around your foot--hogties you. He’s lassoed everybody on the team. He lassoed Mike Scioscia’s nose once. The guy just lives to rope you.”

“I was new here and I was, you know, nervous about meeting Fernando, because he was such a big star,” said David Wright, the assistant equipment manager. “It didn’t take me long to find out that if you just let him lasso you once a day, he’s your friend for life.”

“Has Fernando changed any since you first knew him?” a man asked Jay Johnstone, the Dodger outfielder.

“Yeah, he’s thinner,” Johnstone said.

“Besides that.”

“Has he changed any?” Johnstone asked. “Let me think. No, as a matter of fact, I think the most amazing thing about Fernando is that he doesn’t change. He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t mess up, he doesn’t get hurt. . . . I think I heard the other day that in all the time he’s been here, Fernando hasn’t missed a start. Is that right, Tom? Has Fernando ever missed a start?”

“Not one damn one,” Lasorda replied.

“That’s incredible,” Johnstone said.

“And I’ve seen him on days where I just know he wasn’t feeling too hot,” Lasorda said.

“That’s right,” Johnstone said. “One day I saw him by himself, and he didn’t look so good. He was wincing and he had a sort of in-pain look. I went up and asked him how he was feeling and he said, ‘Oh, fine.’ ”

“That’s all you ever get out of him,” Lasorda said. “I’ve seen him with blisters on his fingers. I’ve seen him with shoulder problems. I’ve seen him with a bad foot. You ask him how he feels and he says, ‘I’m fine.’ Then he goes out and beats somebody.

“About three starts ago he had some sort of stomach flu, and I know he felt rotten. I asked him how he was, and he said, ‘I’m fine.’ I said, ‘Come on, Fernando. Be honest. You don’t have to pitch if you don’t feel good. How are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m fine.’ And he went out and pitched and beat somebody.

“Let me tell you something: The guy goes to the post. He’s like Drysdale or Gibson or Spahn. You can’t get him out of there. Some other guys get hangnails and they miss half a season. Fernando could be dying and he’ll go nine innings. He doesn’t even like it if you only let him go eight. I mean, you don’t want a guy to kill himself. If he’s sick or hurting, he could say so. Nobody would every think he was goldbrickin’. But all he says is, ‘I’m fine.’ ”

He says it in English these days. Not always and not to everybody. But Fernando Valenzuela’s command of the English language is remarkably good. He is comfortable enough with it to handle post-game interviews alone, rather than speaking in Spanish and using Jaime Jarrin, the broadcaster, as interpreter. He is becoming more and more articulate, and there is less trace of an accent than one might expect.

“The only trouble I have is when someone tries to talk too fast,” Valenzuela said. “I have some trouble understanding.”

In his first full season with the Dodgers, 1981, when he won 13 games and led the National League in shutouts (8), complete games (11), innings pitched (192) and strikeouts (180), Valenzuela became the first man to earn both the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards in the same season. On the way to those honors, the Dodgers became a traveling carnival, with a new attraction that everyone seemingly wanted to see. “Fernandomania” was rampant. Press conferences were arranged in every city, to meet some of the demand, and what would have been a strain for anybody became quite an ordeal for a Spanish-speaking rookie of 20.

“That was not an easy year. I was not familiar with New York or the other cities and I was not too familiar with the language, so yes, it was all a little confusing,” Valenzuela said. “It would have been more relaxed if I could have just pitched and not talked so much. But it was not so bad. It did not affect my pitching. It was a good year for me and we won the championship. That was what was most important.

“Now when I go on the road I am just another player.”

In the beginning, having a manager (Lasorda), a coach (Manny Mota) and teammates who spoke Spanish made Valenzuela feel far more at ease than he might otherwise have felt. So did living and working in a city with a Spanish heritage. How many teams have regular Spanish-speaking radio coverage, have a Jarrin around to serve as unofficial translator? Had Valenzuela been discovered and signed by a Minnesota, a Pittsburgh, even a Chicago, would he have felt so at home and relaxed? Detroit’s 1984 champions used key players such as Willie Hernandez, Aurelio Lopez, Juan Berenguer and Barbaro Garbey, without benefit of a Spanish-speaking coach.

“I still feel more confident speaking Spanish,” Valenzuela said.

He and Lasorda speak English sometimes, Spanish sometimes, but if they are on the mound together and Lasorda has an important point to make, he always speaks to the pitcher in Spanish. One day, though, Valenzuela was struggling in the third inning of a game and had given up three runs. Lasorda was not angry or in a panic, but he wanted to be emphatic in offering the pitcher encouragement. So, in Spanish, he said: “Fernando, if you start right now and get tough and don’t give these guys any more runs, I promise you, we’ll come back and win this game for you, 8-3, at least.”

Valenzuela looked at Lasorda and, in English, said:

“Are you sure?”

The other team did not get another run.

Nothing much has changed for Fernando on the mound, that is for sure. His weight has gone down and back up, true, and his salary has gone up to $1.2 million a year, with a new contract still in the works. He also has lost a few games--25 of them in the last season-and-a-half--when the Dodgers could not come up with enough runs. But the eyeballs still search for the heavens, and the screwballs still veer away from right-handed hitters, and the hometown crowds still come out en masse to see him pitch, as they did last Thursday afternoon, when Valenzuela won his 14th game of the season and seventh straight.

He may not be the big roadshow attraction he used to be--there is more Dwight Goodenmania these days than Fernandomania, to which Valenzuela says: “Gooden is very good and he deserves to see the crowds”--but his pitching remains superb. Never mind Valenzuela’s 12-17 record of a year ago; his earned-run average was 3.03 and he struck out 240 batters for a team that finished in fourth place. The current Valenzuela is every bit as good as the old Valenzuela, and four years smarter to boot.

“I know the hitters better,” he said. “And I am throwing the ball very well. But the hitters know me better, too, so I have to watch out.”

Valenzuela said he remembers that rookie season well. “It doesn’t seem so long ago--I don’t feel like an old pitcher yet.” At 24, he is young enough to still be pitching for the Dodgers at the turn of the century. When Fernando is Phil Niekro’s age, after all, the year will be 2007. “I don’t know how long I want to play,” he said. “I can’t see myself pitching when I am too old. But I can’t see myself not playing baseball, either. Maybe I will still be out there when I can hardly lift my arm.”

Valenzuela this season is among the league leaders again in shutouts, innings pitched, ERA, strikeouts and victories, and leads the NL in complete games. His record would be even better than 14-8 had the Dodgers given him some support in April. Still, even while losing three of five games, he went 41 innings without giving up an earned run, breaking a major league record set in 1912, and was named the NL’s pitcher of the month. “I lost some tough games but that is baseball,” he said Thursday. “Same as like what happened today. I give up four runs, but the Dodgers score five, so I win. That is baseball.”

That is the sport he adores. “I love baseball. Ever since I was a child, I have loved baseball. Something different happens in every game. It is the only sport I would want to play,” Valenzuela said. His sons, Fernando Jr., 3, and Ricardo, 1 1/2, who live with Fernando and Linda Burgos Valenzuela in a smartly appointed downtown L.A. condo, can “do whatever they want when they are older, but if they want to play baseball, I will play with them.”

Fernando himself was one of 12 children. He quit school in the sixth grade. Because of this, he is active in a “Stay in School” program and spends much of his time visiting L.A.-area schools. These are days of great excitement for the kids, which is why the students of the 28th Street School were so unhappy last week when their hero had to cancel, the day before his scheduled appearance. “They were disappointed,” a school spokesperson said. “But they understand he’s got a lot to do. They still want to see him.”

Lasorda: “Let me tell you something, Fernando Valenzuela has been great for the Dodgers, sure, but he’s been more than that. He’s great for his country--both of his countries. No matter how hard life seems, youngsters can look up at him and say: ‘He made it. So can I.’ ”

Having been invited to the All-Star Game for the fifth time in five seasons, Fernando Valenzuela decided to go, even though he probably should have stayed home. He had a sore throat and would have to pitch with only two days’ rest.

Dick Williams, the National League manager, put Valenzuela into the game for one inning, the seventh. Fernando walked Jim Rice. Then he threw a wild pitch. Gary Ward hit a hot line drive that was speared by the first baseman. Don Mattingly lifted a fly ball that was flagged down at the warning track in center. Rice took third.

Valenzuela bore down on the hitter, Paul Molitor. The Minneapolis crowd was alive, pulling for the American League and for the local boy at the plate, Paul from St. Paul.

Reaching back for something extra, eyeballs rolling, Valenzuela threw a third strike past Molitor, whereupon Linda Valenzuela, seated high behind home plate, near the press box, leaped to her feet and applauded.

After the game, Valenzuela packed some ice onto his left shoulder and spoke softly because of his throat. He didn’t look so hot, so a man asked him how he was.

“I’m fine,” Valenzuela said.

He had done it again. Fernando always does it again.