He’ll Always Be a Familiar Face

Seeing Fernando Valenzuela in red was like seeing a green robin. But there he stood, in living color. Out there on the diamond of Dodger Stadium, large as life, familiar as yesterday, Fernando strode across the white lines Sunday, careful to avoid the lime, to pitch against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a strange, strange thing to see.

“Do you know this fellow who is pitching against us today?” joked Peter O’Malley, owner of the Dodgers, according to the talent scout Mike Brito, who helped discover Valenzuela many years ago in Mexico.

“Hmmm, yes. Didn’t you introduce me to him once?” Brito replied to O’Malley, in amusement.

Before the game, Brito spotted Valenzuela.

“I hope we defeat you today, 1-0,” the Dodger scout said.

Valenzuela’s great jowls shook back and forth.

He said, “No, no. Me, 1-0.”

Neither was far off. In a never-before-seen pitching engagement between Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser that simultaneously was as appropriate and as peculiar as that scene in a boxing ring a few nights ago when Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier sparred in their street clothes, Hershiser was the victor, 3-1, but Valenzuela was a hauntingly beautiful vision, the ghost of World Series past.

He threw 93 pitches--about a hundred fewer than Tom Lasorda would have let him throw--and a noteworthy 61 were strikes. Among the six hits Valenzuela surrendered were a broken-bat single by the first man he faced, Brett Butler, one of the few boys in blue who had enjoyed the privilege of having faced Fernando before.

Was he nervous?

“No. A little excited,” was all Fernando would admit to later.

But then again, when has anyone ever seen Fernando nervous?

Brito smiled and said, “You will never see anything on the face of an Indian. His face will always be the same.”

Jaime Jarrin, the Spanish-speaking voice of the Dodgers, also encountered his old friend Fernando on the morning of the game. Just as back in the bygone era when Jarrin served as the English-speaking voice of Valenzuela, his trusted translator, there was very little in the pitcher’s tone or manner to suggest that one day’s game was any different from another.

“I did ask him today if he felt nervous,” Jarrin said.

And?

“He said, ‘No. Just another game.’ ”

But was it? Not for the fans, certainly. Not for the 54,167 who came to see a sight none had ever seen--Fernando Valenzuela dressed in scarlet letters, doing some pregame stretching under the watchful eye of Johnny Podres, the pitching coach of the Phillies, one man who won Game 3 of the 1981 World Series for the Dodgers being escorted by another man who won Game 7 of the 1955 Series, Game 2 of the 1959 Series and Game 2 of the 1963 Series for the Dodgers, and what next? --Sandy Koufax wearing red?

Hershiser said the sight of Valenzuela returning to Chavez Ravine was like “seeing Ben Hogan come back to Augusta.”

At the moment when Fernando surfaced from the visitors’ dugout and began his familiar gait toward the mound, everyone rose in the grandstand. On the organ, Nancy B. Hefley struck up “I Get Ideas,” or, as the melody is more familiarly known south of the border, “Adios, muchachos. Companeros de mi vida , “ a little tango about being companions for life. Which the Dodgers and Fernando Valenzuela will ever be, color of uniform notwithstanding.

Fernando tipped his red cap and went to work.

Never one for sentimentality, he said afterward that there was no reason to make too much of the occasion, inasmuch as he and Hershiser were simply “two professionals,” going about their business. So unnerved was Valenzuela after the game, far more than during it, that at the sight of dozens of reporters waiting near the dugout, he ducked back into the Phillie clubhouse and spoke to a select few.

“I like the fans. They still remember those moments from the ‘80s,” said Fernando, who still calls Los Angeles his home. “But I wish you would understand, for me this is just another game, another team I must pitch against. I know everyone has some feelings. But in my case, I can only try to do my best, no matter who I must face.”

Or who faces him.

Valenzuela versus the Dodgers. Something is wrong with this picture, but, either way, it was a wonderful sight to behold.