Typical Night for Fernando

With a big uniform to fill--Reggie Jackson’s--and big shoes to fill--his own--Fernando Valenzuela stood on a minor league pitching mound Wednesday night and stared back at the one thing he still knows he can fill.

The stands.

If you’re looking for a bottom line to Valenzuela’s first performance as a property of the California Angels, this was it:

Several dozen fans jumped the fences at Angels Stadium, trying to get in.

No baseballs jumped the fences, trying to get out.

Fernandomania marches on.

Wednesday marked the first of three minor league trial runs for Valenzuela and he looked every bit the pitcher who had not faced live hitting in nearly two months. In fact, he looked very much the part of the pitcher who parted ways with the Dodgers in late March.

His fastballs were not so fast. How fast, no one can be sure, because the Angels kept the speed gun in its holster in firm belief that no news most assuredly is good news.

He threw a lot of pitches, 84 in four innings.

He fell behind the hitters, issuing three walks and requiring more than 90 minutes to complete his stint.

But he left the game with a 5-1 lead over a team called the High Desert Mavericks, his exit coinciding roughly with a phone report from Anaheim Stadium: Scott Lewis had just surrendered a three-run home run to Chicago’s Sammy Sosa, knocking him out of the game in the fourth inning, down, 5-2.

Valenzuela has two more starts scheduled.

Valenzuela is scheduled to pitch Monday night for double-A Midland (Tex.) at Jackson, Miss., in his second minor league assignment.

For the record, Valenzuela began his comeback by issuing four hits and three walks in four innings, striking out two and allowing one unearned run. Palm Springs eventually won, 10-4. One more number: He brought a crowd of 5,188 with him.

Tuesday night, the Palm Springs Angels played in front of a crowd of 604.

The mania part, Fernando still has down. Stadium officials opened the gates at 5 p.m., two hours before game time, one hour earlier than usual, hoping to accommodate the crowd. Nice try. The stadium filled to its 4,800-seat capacity quickly, the first inning was complete and several hundred fans continued to mill outside, some holding reserved tickets, many losing their cool.

Tony DeMarco, Valenzuela’s agent, studied the scene and fretted. They had to find a way to let more people in, he said. The people had to see Fernando.

Eventually, the people took the matter into their own hands. With them, they grabbed the top of the chain-link fence that surrounds the park and pulled themselves up and over.

Minutes later, police, doing what they could to remedy the situation, opened the gates near the left and right foul poles and ushered fans onto the field, seating hundreds of them on the warning track, behind orange traffic cones and yellow rope.

They stayed as long as Fernando did, filing out as soon as 3 1/2 innings were in the book.

The book itself was no keeper, but Fernando stopped short of tossing it in the dumpster.

“I was surprised,” he said, speaking to the 135 credentialed media types who assembled for a press conference in a nearby recreation center auditorium. “The first couple of innings, I kept the ball close to the plate. I walked only two (actually three). I threw 50 strikes and 34 balls. That’s pretty good for the first time in two months.”

Relying primarily on screwballs and huge, rolling breaking pitches, Fernando yielded at least one baserunner in every inning, but would have left with a shutout had he been able to field a sharp comeback grounder off the bat of Mavericks third baseman Steve Bethea. With a runner on second base, Bethea drove the ball into the ground and right at Valenzuela. Two months of simulated games were evident immediately, as Fernando danced away from the ball and allowed it to skip behind him through the infield for an RBI single.

“I was disappointed in that,” he said. “I’m supposed to catch that ball. It was a ground ball right back to me.”

An inning later, Fernando had a full count on Matt Mieske. Another pitch, another ball, another runner on base. Fernando disagreed and promptly gestured to the first base umpire for an appeal.

Fernando quickly discovered that in the California League, there is no first base umpire.

Fernando wore No. 44, the number Reggie Jackson made famous, and he claims he wore it for no particular reason. “The number is nothing special,” he said. “All I want is to use a major league uniform again.”

From here, Fernando moves up in class, from Class-A Palm Springs to double-A Midland, for starts in Jackson, Miss., and Little Rock, Ark. If all proceeds well, or if his pitches proceed a little faster, he is looking at his first start for the Angels the first week in June.

“This is an important first step back to where he belongs, the major leagues,” DeMarco said. “ . . . With the Dodgers, Fernando had Rocky I. Here, we are looking forward to Rocky II, III, IV and V.”