Cardinals Baffled by Fernando; Translation: He Wins Again

Fernando Valenzuela is slowly gaining command of the English Language. In fact, I think he passed Tom Lasorda, Yogi Berra and Charo this year.

But when Fernando is at work, out on the mound, opposing hitters often have trouble understanding him. Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, you almost expected the Cardinals’ twin rabbits, Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, to step out of the batter’s box and shout out to Valenzuela:

“Pitch English, dammit!”

The Cardinals simply couldn’t translate Fernando’s pitches. The top five Cardinals in the batting order managed a combined two hits off Valenzuela, one of them a bunt.

Coleman and McGee steal bases for a living. But eight times Wednesday night, Fernando threw out Coleman and McGee trying to steal first base.

He struck out McGee, the National League’s top hitter, three times. Coleman, in four trips, got solid wood on the ball only once, zinging into a double play.

Elmer Fudd is kinder to rabbits than Fernando was.

After the game, Coleman and McGee looked about as happy as two rabbits who hadn’t quite made it across the highway.

McGee, however, did summon the energy to offer about as good a description of Fernando’s style as anyone has in a while.

“He wins, man, he wins,” McGee said.

But how, man, how?

Nobody has ever praised Fernando’s fastball or cringed at his curve. He has a nice screwball, sure, but so do a few thousand college kids. All he is is the ace of the greatest pitching staff in baseball.

Of course, he paid his dues. He came out of the Sonora, Mexico, desert five years ago, and it took him about two weeks to establish himself as a steel-nerved, mature veteran rookie.

He simply gets people out. Nobody could explain it then, really, and nobody can explain it now. Fernando keeps you off balance, the hitters will tell you.

That’s it?

They will also shrug a lot and stare at their postgame beers.

You could argue that “ace of the staff” business. Orel Hershiser has had a pretty nice season for the Dodgers. But who did Tom Lasorda give the ball to in the biggest game of the year, the opening game of the playoffs?

“Fernando’s helped make me manager of the year three times,” Lasorda explained after the game. “He’s a winner. He’s a tough, tough pitcher when games are big . . . Hershiser hasn’t been here before. I wanted him to see the first game.”

Hershiser was probably so impressed by what he saw Wednesday that he’ll try to pitch left-handed tonight and throw screwballs.

Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia described Fernando’s outing as “Virtually flawless.”

Enos Cabell, who played first base, liked Fernando’s game.

“We had a meeting before the game to talk about how to pitch their guys, where to throw, what to throw, all that,” Cabell said. “Fernando went out there and threw ‘em exactly like we talked about. Exactly! I couldn’t believe it.

“He threw more fastballs than usual to McGee and Coleman, and breaking balls to Clark and Cedeno, exactly like we talked about.”

So what else is new? As Cabell says, “He gets up for the big games. Not many pitchers can match Fernando pitch for pitch.”

And no player in the game can match Fernando for trilingual cliche pitching--in Spanish, English, and Spanish through an English interpreter.

“I felt pretty good, I felt strong,” Fernando said in English, a language he understand fluently and speaks fairly well. “This was an important game.”

“That’s part of the game,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter (his custom when working a large press conference), when asked if he minded being yanked in the seventh inning. “They were hitting me very well.”

“I didn’t want to leave (the game),” he said in a Spanish-language radio interview, “but I realized later it was the right time to take me out.”

Was Fernando tired? Maybe, but he was throwing his fastball consistently in the 85-to-89 m.p.h. range, and he threw a 90 m.p.h. zinger to McGee, maybe the first 90 m.p.h. pitch Fernando has thrown all season.

Tired? Not as tired as the rabbits.

Lasorda was asked why he took Fernando out in the seventh inning with one run in and two runners on.

“We figured he had made about 110 pitches (107, actually) and he was getting a little tired. Usually you don’t take Fernando out. He’s a closer. Usually if he’s leading in the seventh, you pack the bats.

“But he’s pitched a lot of baseball this year, 270 innings, and it’s beginning to take its toll.”

Yeah, on the Cardinals.