Group Calls for Boycott of Dodgers

After 30 years of following the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tina Delgado says she is calling it quits.

“The Dodgers have just struck out as far as I’m concerned,” said the South Gate community activist, angry over the release last week of onetime superstar pitcher Fernando Valenzuela after 11 seasons with the club.

“Fernando,” she said, “got a raw deal.”

On Thursday, as fans eager for the season to start queued up for tickets outside Dodger Stadium, Delgado joined about two dozen Mexican-American leaders gathered in a nearby parking lot to call for a boycott of the team as a show of support for their fallen hero.

By placing the former Cy Young Award winner on waivers, the Dodgers may have opened a deep public relations wound among some fans in the Latino community, where the portly left-hander is a folk hero.

“It’s apparent that the Dodgers don’t like Mexicans, but they like their money,” said Raul Ruiz, vice president of the Mexican American Political Assn., which joined with officials of the League of United Latin American Citizens and others in calling for the boycott.

The leaders angrily accused the Dodgers of systematic discrimination against Mexicans and Chicanos, starting with the destruction of a barrio in Chavez Ravine in the late 1950s to make room for Dodger Stadium.

Ruiz said that, in the past 25 years, the Dodgers have employed only four players from Mexico’s baseball league and only one player from “any barrio school in this country.”

“The Dodgers have gone many thousands of miles out of their way to recruit talented players from the . . . Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, yet cannot seem to find a single Chicano youngster that can play baseball just a few miles east of this stadium,” he said.

“For us,” boycott organizer Leo Guerra said, “Fernando’s departure represents the last straw.”

The leaders called for a Justice Department investigation of the Dodger organization’s hiring practices and demanded that the Dodgers apologize to the Latino community.

Dodgers spokesman Jay Lucas said the club had no comment on the proposed boycott or the leaders’ demands.

The Dodgers have defended their decision to release Valenzuela, 30, saying that it made good baseball sense after the left-hander’s fortunes declined the past two seasons.

Although offered an unspecified job with the club, Valenzuela has said he still wants to pitch and expects to be picked up by another team. He cleared waivers recently and is free to negotiate with any major-league team.

During Valenzuela’s career, the Dodgers captured four National League West titles and twice won the World Series. But the last two seasons, the six-time All-Star posted a 23-26 record with a 4.02 earned-run average. His career stats are 141-116 with a 3.31 ERA.

Valenzuela’s recent rough times on the mound failed to tarnish his hero’s image among Los Angeles’ huge Mexican-American population, enchanted with the rags-to-riches story of an unorthodox athlete who rose to stardom from a small pueblo in the Mexican state of Sonora.

“He’s a symbol of hope for every Mexican kid you see in the streets of the barrios where there’s precious little hope,” said Virginia Reade, a Mexican-American political activist, who supports the boycott.

Although Valenzuela’s departure from the Dodgers was still being mourned Thursday in neighborhoods where fans used to schedule their affairs around days when Fernando pitched, the boycott talk drew mixed reaction.

“I don’t care whether I ever go to another Dodger game after what they did to Fernando,” said Cristina Quinto, an East Los Angeles housewife, who said she began following the pitcher’s career--and the Dodgers--shortly after her family moved here from Mexico 10 years ago.

At the Panaderia Acapulco in Boyle Heights, where customers often talk baseball, owner Miguel Rodriguez, 63, offered a different view. “Everybody is going to miss him,” he said. “But I still like the Dodgers.”