MANIA NO MAS : Returning From His Worst Season, Fernando Faces Tough Questions

A lasso hangs on a peg next to Fernando Valenzuela’s locker in the Dodger clubhouse, just in case he is struck by whimsy and needs to act on it immediately.

Valenzuela is always always up to something. You may find yourself roped and tied 10 feet from his locker. Or he may be playing soccer with a rolled up pair of your socks.

Veteran Valenzuela watchers, however, noticed a distinct change in him last season, in demeanor as well as his pitching. Much of the time, Valenzuela remained strangely subdued in the clubhouse. The lasso was ignored. Absent, too, was the form that had made him one of baseball’s best and highest-paid pitchers, as well as something of an ‘80s folk hero.

There was hardly anything for Valenzuela to enjoy in 1987, just one year removed from his first 20-win season and a second-place finish in Cy Young Award voting.

Last season clearly was his worst in seven years. He had a 14-14 record, with career highs in earned-run average, 3.98; hits allowed, 254, and home runs allowed, 25. More indicative, perhaps, of Valenzuela’s troubles were 124 walks, a single-season record for any Dodger pitcher.

Because of the publicity and mystique that have always surrounded Valenzuela, his fall was especially hard.

Although no one could lasso Valenzuela on the subject, the word from some opposing hitters was, simply, that Valenzuela had lost it.

Seven seasons’ worth of work supposedly had wrung out his left arm. In many of Valenzuela’s starts, his screwball was flat and his fastball was slow, and even the layers of his once-unshakeable confidence had peeled like a sunburn.

Valenzuela’s reaction basically was no reaction at all. He would tell reporters, “My arm feels fine,” and occasionally roll his eyes skyward as he does during his windup. His silence even extended to the trainer’s room, where he would only grudgingly admit discomfort.

After a while, Dodger trainer Bill Buhler said he developed a different type of communication with Valenzuela.

“When he’s good, you know his mood,” Buhler said. “He clowns around a bit and has a good time in here. When he wasn’t feeling well, he was real quiet, didn’t say anything.”

The silence apparently has ended. The lasso has been snaking around the clubhouse again. The cryptic smile is back, too. And when Dodger trainers ask Valenzuela how he feels, he laughs and says, “With my hands.”

Valenzuela also has confessed that he did have minor shoulder problems last season. He said he had stiffness in his left shoulder in spring training only. But pitching coach Ron Perranoski said he believed it affected Valenzuela until the middle of last season.

One reason Valenzuela is willing to talk about it now is that he apparently has overcome the stiffness by starting a weights program and getting almost daily treatment from the trainers.

The program to which Valenzuela now subscribes is no different from that of any other Dodger pitcher. Before, however, Valenzuela was exempt from any regimen. After all, before last season, you couldn’t argue with his success.

It is a simple program. Valenzuela lifts light weights on days when he does not pitch and regularly gets massages and ultra-sound treatments on his shoulder.

Now 27 and about to start his eighth major league season, Valenzuela finally has realized that fundamental changes in his approach are needed if he hopes for a return to previous form.

It is not as if Valenzuela is past his prime. Always the prodigy, Valenzuela seemingly has thrown more pitches than players considerably older. Valenzuela has started 234 games and averaged 257 innings a season. Assuming that he has averaged 120 pitches a start--a conservative estimate--Valenzuela has thrown more than 28,000 pitches so far as a major leaguer.

When Valenzuela was told of the calculations, he furrowed his brow and nodded.

“I’ve been lucky, really,” he said. “I mostly just have the normal tired at the end of a game. It’s not the innings so much. It’s the number of pitches. That takes things out of you.

“You never know what’s coming, what might happen to you. Injuries and other problems can happen. I don’t worry about it. I feel fine. I pitch every five days.”

He does that even if he doesn’t feel fine. In seven seasons, Valenzuela has not missed a start. Not once. Although Valenzuela says otherwise, there have been times when he hasn’t felt well, yet pitched anyway, many times quite well.

“When I warm up before a game, sometimes I can tell when I feel good or not,” Valenzuela said. “The ball doesn’t go where I want it or it’s hard to get loose. But then I throw all right in the game. But (other times), it’s different. I feel good (warming up) and pitch bad.”

Last spring, however, Valenzuela felt stiffness before, during and after most of his starts. It was a different feeling from other springs, when he started slowly, he said.

“Yeah, last year in spring, I was tight in my shoulder,” Valenzuela said. “It was tougher to get loose than before.”

Perranoski said the tightness continued into the season.

“In the beginning, it affected him as far as getting loose between starts,” Perranoski said. “We sat down and I kind of explained to him about going in to see the trainer between starts. Just as a normal, routine thing.

“At the start, (Valenzuela’s left shoulder) was tighter than the devil. As his starts went on, it got looser and looser. Then, eventually, I could see it was easier for him to warm up.

“It’s his pride that makes him not say anything (about soreness). He won’t let on what bothers him.”

Silent denial was Valenzuela’s way of dealing with his inconsistency last season. There were many games in which Valenzuela did not have his best stuff, yet pressed on because perhaps what he had was good enough.

But some of Valenzuela’s starts were so bad that observers wondered how he survived them.

More than a few times, he didn’t last past the sixth inning. And sometimes when he did, the number of pitches he threw looked like the figures on a well-used truck’s odometer.

Three starts typified Valenzuela’s inconsistent season, in which walks and strikeouts were amassed in almost equal numbers and pitches ranged from wild to wicked:

--June 1, against the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium: In a nationally televised game, Valenzuela gave up 5 runs and 10 hits in 5 innings and bolted from the clubhouse before the end of the game, a rarity for him. Although he did have five strikeouts, he didn’t fool the Mets, some of whom commented on changes in Valenzuela.

Two weeks earlier, in a game against the Mets at Shea Stadium, three Mets had homered off Valenzuela.

“Fernando’s not really popping his fastball like last year,” Met first baseman Keith Hernandez said. “I think he might have lost it, after throwing all those screwballs.”

--July 21 against St. Louis at Dodger Stadium: One start after recording his first shutout in more than a year, Valenzuela slipped back into wildness. He managed to complete six innings this time, but allowed six runs, mostly because of seven walks.

“I think he’s pitching differently,” St. Louis pitcher Bob Forsch said. “He’s nibbling for the corner more than in the past. Maybe his fastball’s not working.”

That start was sandwiched between Valenzuela’s shutout on July 16 and a no-decision in which he lasted only 5 innings on July 26.

Even after his shutout, opponents weren’t exactly praising Valenzuela.

“I don’t think Fernando pitched good enough to shut us out,” Gene Michael, then the Chicago Cub manager, said.

--Aug. 25 against the Mets at Shea Stadium: This was as close as Valenzuela came all season to previous form. He dominated all night. After throwing 160 pitches, Valenzuela had a 3-1 complete-game win over the Mets, perhaps partial redemption for their derogatory quotes earlier in the season.

Valenzuela struck out a season-high 13, but also matched his career-high 8 walks. He also had two wild pitches. But he pitched out of three self-inflicted bases-loaded jams with fewer than two outs. “Normal guys get in jams and start trying too hard,” catcher Mike Scioscia said. “But Fernando just got better.”

Valenzuela ended the season by winning two of his last three starts, pulling his record to a respectable 14-14 for a team that finished 16 games under .500.

Almost no one in baseball considers Valenzuela a mediocre pitcher, record or no, least of all Valenzuela.

But looking back on his worst season, Valenzuela refuses to blame the Dodger defense, which committed the most errors in the National League, or the Dodger offense, last in the National League in run production.

So, how to explain?

“I don’t think it was the trouble getting my muscle loose,” he said. “That was over early. My control was the big problem. I need to keep the ball on the corners, because my fastball is not good for throwing the ball over the middle of the plate.

“So, if I don’t have the location, I have to throw a lot of pitches. Last year, many times I had five or six walks and about three or four of them weren’t close (to the plate). That’s no good.”

He won’t, however, venture a reason for the disappearence of his his effective screwball. But he did say that on nights when his screwball didn’t have its best movement, he was forced to rely strictly on his fastball, which last season was clocked in the low 80s.

“I’ve never had a good fastball,” Valenzuela said. “When you don’t have good control of your pitches, it looks like you don’t have nothing. Some games, you don’t have the stuff you’d like to have.”

Asked how his hard times had effected him, Valenzuela smiled and said: “I’m human, right?”

Other Dodger pitchers noticed a change.

“He didn’t really say anything, but he never does,” reliever Brian Holton said. “He’d pitch if his arm was falling off. But I did see that his shoulder was bothering him. And it did affect his mood a little, yeah. You can see a difference in him now. Maybe he learned that even Superman couldn’t do what he did without taking precautions.”

Added Ken Howell: “He had a lot of moxie to go out there every time if he wasn’t feeling well. A lot of guys won’t do that. Just because he does that, you’ve still got to consider him one of the great pitchers.”

Even so, the days of Fernandomania are clearly over. Three days into spring training, Valenzuela approached a reporter and asked: “What happened with me? Nobody comes to me anymore?”

To another, he said: “You want to talk to me? No? OK, no interviews today.” Then, he walked off in mock disgust.

Valenzuela has been replaced by Pedro Guerrero and Kirk Gibson as the Dodgers’ prime attention grabbers. Now that Valenzuela has worked hard to learn English, using study tapes and watching soap operas, he no longer is besieged by interviewers.

That is all right with a more mature Valenzuela, who seems comfortable and secure with his place on the team. “Yes, I am happy,” he said. “But I can still pitch better. The attention doesn’t matter. Now, we’ve got some new guys and I understand people wanting to talk to them. That’s the way it is.”

As if to underscore his maturation, he has the beginnings of a bandit mustache that sort of offsets the lingering baby fat in his face. An eye doctor has prescribed glasses for Valenzuela for driving but, so far, he has no plans to wear glasses or contacts during games. Valenzuela also has changed his approach to the business end of baseball. He will be a free agent at the end of this season--he is baseball’s highest-paid pitcher at $2.05 million--but he is putting it out of his mind until that day comes.

“I won’t let it bother me like before,” Valenzuela said, referring to previous contract problems with the Dodgers. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I know there will be a lot of talking about it later.”

So, Valenzuela has a different look and a more businesslike approach to the game. But, will we ever again see the Valenzuela of ‘81, or even ‘86?

“Each year, it gets tougher to get in shape,” he said. “But I’m feeling better than last year and I think I can win 20 games again and get my ERA down. But the big thing is to help the team win.”

To that end, Perranoski said nothing has changed with Valenzuela.

“I’ve said it before,” Perranoski said, pausing for effect. “If I had a game to win, I’d want him on the mound.”

Dodger Notes

Dodger players who did not make the trip to Puerto Rico had to endure a 10-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals Wednesday in Haines City, Fla. Shawn Hillegas, competing for a spot in the starting pitching rotation, suffered a major setback against the Royals. He faced seven batters in the seventh inning, allowing five runs and six hits. He walked one and retired only one hitter before being replaced by Ron Davis. . . . Hillegas was not helped by first baseman Mike Marshall, who commited a fielding error early in the inning.

Other pitching efforts: Orel Hershiser gave up two runs in five innings, allowing four walks. They were the first earned runs Hershiser has allowed in 16 spring innings. “This was the best I’ve felt this spring,” Hershiser said. “I wanted to prove to myself how strong I was. I have been pacing myself, but today I let loose. After five innings, I felt I could have gone nine.” . . . Jay Howell, making his first appearance since suffering a sprained back on Sunday, pitched one scoreless inning. He gave up one hit and walked one. Howell told assistant trainer Charlie Strasser that he had no back pain. Davis allowed two runs in 1 innings.

Ken Howell’s wife, Denise, gave birth to a 9 pound 10 ounce Ken Howell III at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood. Howell was back in Los Angeles for the birth and the Dodgers have not said when he will rejoin the team. . . . Infielder Craig Shipley started at shortstop Wednesday and had two hits.