COMMENTARY : With Valenzuela, Patience Wasn’t an Angel Virtue

The word for it, in the native tongue of Fernando Valenzuela, is paciencia . Patience. Some of us have it in spades, others would pass on a free sample if it meant having to wait in line.

What this has to do with tonight’s pitching match-up at Anaheim Stadium is just about everything.

The Angels will start Julio Valera, who is filling the role that belonged, ever briefly, to Valenzuela in 1991. But Fernando had no fastball then, so the Angels had no time for Fernando. Two starts, two bombings, thanks for the walk-up sales, have a nice life.

Instead, Valenzuela will pitch for the Baltimore Orioles tonight. The Fernand-O’s. It is, at once, a testament to both determination and desperation--Valenzuela having nothing better to do than to keep throwing until someone noticed, Baltimore having so little pitching depth that what began as a public-relations ploy is now the only thing standing between the Orioles and a three-man rotation.

Valenzuela invested a year of his life, toiling on the tattered fields of Jalisco and Mazatlan in the Mexican leagues, for this opportunity.

The Orioles have endured public ridicule and losing scores of 7-0, 8-3 and 9-1 on the hope that Valenzuela’s left arm wasn’t totally savaged by those 270-inning seasons for Tommy Lasorda, that the tarnished screwball still had a couple more inside corners to paint.

Is there anything left?

So far, the record would suggest a shrug. After seven starts and eight appearances for the Orioles, Valenzuela is 1-4 with an earned-run average of 4.09. His last start was a 9-1 blowout against Milwaukee. Valenzuela lasted 5 1/3 innings, gave up eight hits and five runs.

But the start before that was an eight-inning, rain-shortened two-hit shutout against the Cleveland Indians--Valenzuela’s first major league victory since his last with the Dodgers in mid-September, 1990.

He has also pitched well enough to win two other games, but the Orioles generally support Valenzuela the way the Angels used to prop up Jim Abbott. In seven starts, he has had 17 runs to work with, resulting in a 2-0 loss to Boston and a non-decision in an eventual 3-2 loss to Toronto.

“I’m starting to find my groove,” Valenzuela said Thursday at a small news conference at Anaheim Stadium. “I have to thank the Orioles. They have had patience with me.”

Unlike, say, tonight’s unloyal opposition?

“I spent so little time with the Angels,” Valenzuela said. “I don’t think you can prove anything with two games. With the Orioles, I threw bad in my first outing against Texas and in my second, in Chicago, I only went four innings.

“But they’ve been more patient. Now, I’m working more innings. Right now, I feel pretty good.”

Valenzuela was asked what he remembered most about his Angel experience.

“One day game,” he replied with a grin. “That’s it.”

Well, there was that--an 8-0 afternoon loss to Milwaukee. There was also a night game--a 5-0 defeat against Detroit in Valenzuela’s much-awaited, much-attended Angel debut.

But in June of 1991, the Angels thought they were in a pennant race. Oh-and-two and a 12.15 ERA weren’t going to cut it. The speed-gun numbers were no help, either. The word on Fernando then was four letters long: D-O-N-E. And when the Angels cut their losses so quickly, giving up on July 5, they poisoned the well with every other team in the major leagues.

Valenzuela spent the 1992 season back home in Mexico, pitching in the only league that would have him. He went 10-9 and pitched in the Caribbean World Series. It made for happy late-night filler on ESPN’s “Sports Center.”

But the National and American leagues regarded him in the past tense. Tony DeMarco, Valenzuela’s ever-faithful agent and sidekick, exhausted the Rolodex, phoning for a spring tryout.

“The Orioles,” DeMarco said, “were the only ones who said, ‘We’re interested and we want him here tomorrow.’ ”

The timing was most interesting, coming on the heels of an Oriole scout’s public assessment that Mexican ballplayers were genetically lacking in foot speed. Valenzuela’s a thrower, not a runner, but his signing was seen as an attempt by the Orioles to defuse the outcry.

Not true, claims DeMarco.

“We were talking with the Orioles before the controversy,” he said. “The Orioles needed a left-handed starter, and they had scouted him from Mexico.”

Either way, Valenzuela was greeted by the Baltimore coaching staff with crossed arms and arched eyebrows. Just what Johnny Oates needed, another Jim Palmer circus.

“You have to remember,” DeMarco said, “the last time Johnny Oates saw Fernando was when he was shelled by the Orioles in spring training, 1991. That was Fernando’s last game as a Dodger. So you can understand why Johnny Oates was kind of leery about it.”

Fernandomania, 1993: Valenzuela pitches 15 scoreless innings to force his way onto the opening-day roster. Then, with Oates clinging to a four-man rotation as long as humanly possible, Arthur Rhodes tears up a knee and Ben McDonald can’t find the victory column.

Just like that, Valenzuela goes from novelty to necessity. Suddenly, the Orioles need him more than the other way around.

“I’m back,” Fernando is pleased to report.

And the Angels?

“They were impatient,” DeMarco said. “The Angels didn’t have the patience and the Dodgers didn’t have the confidence.

“Business is funny. Sometimes, we’re nervous. But there are also times when the businessmen get nervous.”

This is what happens when one of them flinches.

Nearly two years later, Fernando Valenzuela finally gets to make that third start at Anaheim Stadium.

He will be working on 716 days rest.