Waive Adios to Fernando : Dodgers Can’t Find Room in Rotation

The slow death of Fernandomania reached its conclusion Thursday when Dodger officials decided they had seen their once-great pitcher struggle for the last time.

In a tiny, windowless office in Dodgertown, Fernando Valenzuela was told that he no longer was a Dodger. Intending to give him his unconditional release, the Dodgers put him on waivers. “They call me into the office and say, ‘This is very hard for us,’ ” Valenzuela recounted. “I said, ‘What is so hard? Just say it!’ And so they said it.

“I said, ‘OK, thanks.’ And that is all I say.’ ”

Words did not come easily as 10 years worth of memories were ushered away by a team that simply felt Valenzuela, at 30, could no longer pitch.

“I have said that the end of this spring, I wanted to leave with the best five starting pitchers,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “We have five starters, and Fernando is not one of them.”

Valenzuela spoke softly, his eyes often wandering into space.

“Baseball is fun for me,” he said. “But today, it is not fun.”

Said Dodger owner Peter O’Malley: “All careers must end.”

Valenzuela does not agree that this is the end of his and hopes to prove the Dodgers wrong after he clears waivers Tuesday. He is not expected to be claimed before then, because the claiming team would have to pay his full salary, $2.55 million.

If unclaimed, he will become a free agent and can deal with any team. In that case, the Dodgers would owe him $630,494.

“I still feel good, I still feel I can pitch,” Valenzuela said. “I hope I can get with a new team, start a new life.”

In conversations earlier this spring, Valenzuela said he wanted to stay in the National League, preferably in the NL West. Teams with interest will probably include San Francisco and Houston, with the Giants probably Valenzuela’s top choice.

“We will discuss it internally,” said Ralph Nelson, the Giants’ assistant general manager.

Valenzuela said he would retire only if nobody has called by the first month of the season.

“I want to start with a team in the beginning,” said Valenzuela, who plans to play golf in the meantime. “If they call me in June or July, I will say, ‘Sorry, I’m on the back nine.’ ”

The Dodgers’ decision was not made quickly. They had been discussing this since last winter, when some officials did not want to re-sign Valenzuela as a free agent even though last season he pitched a no-hitter and his 13 victories were more than the totals posted by all but two National League left-handers.

Many felt he cost the club the division title last season by going 1-3 with an 8.40 earned-run average in his final six starts. That led to a 4.59 ERA, the worst of any regular National League starter.

And many felt his shoulder had never recovered from the injury he suffered in 1988. In the last two seasons, he had a 23-26 record with a 4.02 ERA.

Even Valenzuela, from the moment he signed his contract this winter, sensed that he might not start the season with the Dodgers.

“I saw him and congratulated him on the contract and he said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t know if I will stay here,’ ” said Jaime Jarrin, the Dodgers’ Spanish-language broadcaster who became Valenzuela’s interpreter during his standout 1981 season that spawned Fernandomania.

Valenzuela struggled in his first start this spring but then allowed only two hits in five innings in an emotional victory March 17 over the Milwaukee Brewers in Monterrey, Mexico. It was his first pitching appearance in his native country in 10 years.

On that same day, Orel Hershiser decided that because of his injured shoulder, he could not start the season in the rotation. Many figured that ensured Valenzuela a spot on the team.

But he struggled in his next start, giving up four runs--three earned--and eight hits in 4 2/3 innings against the Philadelphia Phillies. That led to what Lasorda acknowledged was the last straw.

On Wednesday afternoon, Valenzuela gave up eight runs in 3 1/3 innings against the Baltimore Orioles. After spending a restless night, Dodger officials met early Thursday morning and decided they could not endure that sort of performance during the regular season.

Instead of allowing Valenzuela to make one more spring start Monday as scheduled, they decided to release him with a spring record of 1-2 and a 7.88 ERA.

One group of people have little doubt that Valenzuela can still pitch. The Dodger players lost another clubhouse favorite only days after Mickey Hatcher’s release.

“Just like Hatcher, it’s one of those things that’s tough to swallow. . . . It’s just very surprising,” said catcher Mike Scioscia, the only Dodger who has played with Valenzuela throughout his Dodger career. “There is no doubt, he can still pitch and get guys out. I still have a lot of confidence in the guy.

“Some guys get in tough situations and they melt. This guy fights all the way to the end.”

Pitcher Tim Crews said that when he heard the news, he thought it was a joke.

“I said ‘Man, I don’t believe it,’ ” Crews said. “I know things haven’t been going too well for him, but with a competitor like him, he will win games for you. He will resurface somewhere, just watch.”

Mike Morgan, who probably will become the Dodgers’ fifth starter, is one of Valenzuela’s closest friends. He also was shaking his head.

“I don’t think Fernando is the kind of guy to let somebody in a suit tell him his career is over with,” Morgan said. “I’m not going to sit here and say he had a great career, because he is still going to have a great career.”

Morgan paused and added: “This is a tough business. A guy throws a no-hitter and the next thing he knows, management says, ‘If you have a bad spring, you’re gone.’ And Fernando is gone.”

Critics have long speculated that Valenzuela’s diminished performance was hastened by the many innings he pitched every season--2,348 2/3 innings in 10 full major league seasons.

The Dodgers answered those critics Thursday by saying that Valenzuela never had tremendous control, meaning his “normal” games involved more pitches than normal. They also said it was difficult to judge his arm strength because he never wanted to leave a game.

“With so many three-ball counts, he would pitch a normal game and it would be a lot of pitches,” pitching coach Ron Perranoski said. “And he would never tell us if he wasn’t feeling right. We had to figure it out by looking at him.”

The Dodgers also wonder how many innings Valenzuela pitched before he signed with them in 1979.

“We don’t know how long he had been throwing all these innings,” Perranoski said. “Heck, he could have been doing it since he was 14.”

Some say that the real reason for the end of Valenzuela’s Dodger career occurred in the last couple years. They said it was not a problem of overuse, but of adaptation.

“Management never realized that since his shoulder problems, Fernando was not the same pitcher,” one veteran said. “They would leave him in blowout games in the seventh and eighth innings, and then five days later he would be worthless. They did not protect him.”

Valenzuela agreed that he was a new pitcher of whom old heroics were expected.

“I tried to do good every time, I really did, but I can’t always do things the same way I did them,” Valenzuela said. “No human being can do that.”

The problem was that from the beginning, Valenzuela seemed like more than a human being. He was a chubby, long-haired pitcher who rose from the Mexican village of Echohuaquila to help them win four division titles and two World Series championships and appeared in six All-Star games.

Valenzuela is best known for capturing the imagination of an entire country during his rookie season in 1981, when he won both the Cy Young and rookie of the year awards while causing a sensation known as Fernandomania.

“He turned a game into a religion,” Jarrin said. “Here was a hero who did not speak English, who did not have a good body, who came from a humble background . . . but who walked like a general. All of a sudden, people who did not care about the game, because of Fernando they cared.”

Jarrin added: “You would come to the park on nights he would pitch and there would be hundreds of people waiting outside, selling T-shirts and postcards with his picture on them. It was unbelievable.”

Jarrin lowered his voice. “There will never be another one like him. This will never happen again. Never.”

Earlier in the day, on a minor league field, the scout who had signed Valenzuela was staring at the bench.

“Look at that kid, that number 20,” Mike Brito said, wearing a smile and his white Panama hat. “A left-handed pitcher. Just signed him from Mexico. Wait till he eats a little American food, drinks some of that good American milk, just wait. . . . “

Dodger Notes

Orel Hershiser felt good after throwing 60-65 pitches Thursday but said he would not face hitters until the start of the regular season. “The next hitters I’ll face will be in an early batting practice or something,” Hershiser said. He said he hoped to remain in Vero Beach during next weekend’s Freeway Series to attend his sister’s wedding, then rejoin the team for the season opener in Atlanta. He will remain with the Dodgers while on the disabled list, leaving them only for his minor league rehabilitation starts, which won’t begin for several weeks.

Mike Morgan gave up four runs, two earned, with five walks in five innings Thursday in an 8-7 victory over the Kansas City Royals. Morgan is expected to be the Dodgers’ fifth starter when the season opens. Jim Neidlinger will probably be sent to triple-A Albuquerque with Dennis Cook. If the Dodgers trade Morgan and start Neidlinger, they will have no proven right-handed starter in Albuquerque in case a starter in Los Angeles is injured. . . . Mike Hartley struck out four in two innings to pick up the victory against Kansas City, and Jim Gott got three outs in the ninth inning for the save.

VALENZUELA’S STATISTICS

YEAR W-L ERA G CG SHO IP H BB SO 1980 2-0 0.00 10 0 0 17 2/3 8 5 16 1981 13-7 2.48 25 11 8 192 1/3 140 61 180 1982 19-13 2.87 37 18 4 285 247 83 199 1983 15-10 3.75 35 9 4 257 245 99 189 1984 12-17 3.03 34 12 2 261 218 106 240 1985 17-10 2.45 35 14 5 272 1/3 211 101 208 1986 21-11 3.14 34 20 3 269 1/3 226 85 242 1987 14-14 3.98 34 12 1 251 254 124 190 1988 5-8 4.24 23 3 0 142 1/3 142 76 64 1989 10-13 3.43 31 3 0 196 2/3 185 98 116 1990 13-13 4.59 33 5 2 204 223 77 115 Totals 141-116 3.31 331 107 29 2348 2/3 2099 915 1759