Something Left

He is said to be 35, which is another story in itself.

For the present, it is enough to report that the toll of time and travel, his 2,800 major league innings and hundreds of others in Mexico and the minor leagues, have forced adjustments.

The screwball isn’t as dominating, the fastball isn’t as fast.

They are now thrown in concert with a cut fastball that bores in on right-handers and a curveball that comes out of the same plane as the screwball and gives him a breaking pitch for both sides of the plate.

The repertoire has changed, but what comes with it hasn’t.

“He still has that lion’s heart,” Davey Lopes, a San Diego Padre coach, said of Fernando Valenzuela, his former Dodger teammate and now . . . well, the No. 5 starter in the San Diego rotation but otherwise the team’s most reliable starter during the pressure of the second half.

Pretty much the ace, as he once was in another time and place, or as a reflective Fred Claire, the Dodger vice president, said of the years known as Fernandomania: “Storybook stuff.”

Now, 16 years after his Los Angeles debut at 19, 5 1/2 years after his release by the Dodgers with a worn and ailing left arm in the spring of 1991, wearing his 10th uniform since he took the blue off for the last time, the indomitable Valenzuela is authoring a remarkable new chapter for which he hopes to supply a dramatic conclusion.

“I want to go back to the playoffs and World Series,” Valenzuela said. “It would mean a lot to me to be able to do it this late in my career.”

He faces a pivotal step on that road today, facing the Dodgers, the team of his youth, in the first of a four-game series that could determine the winner of the National League West, as well as the wild card.

For Valenzuela, there is no irony in this September matchup, only a job to do.

Doesn’t matter that it’s the Dodgers. Might as well be the Rockies or Giants.

“I have to keep my team in the game, give it a chance to win,” he said, a pitch he has delivered so many times in so many places.

Said Tony DeMarco, his longtime agent: “Fernando believes his job is to use every ounce of strength and talent to repay the support of the Padres, not to beat his ex-team. He is not the type to say that he wants to kick anyone in the [rear].”

The line might be a long one if Valenzuela were to get started. Who has the time? Why waste the energy?

Said DeMarco:

“Fernando has continued to pitch because he loves the game and has always believed in himself. Many people buried him and said he should quit, but that is a word not in his vocabulary.

“He never lost faith in himself. He feels it would be sensational to contribute to a Padres victory because they gave him the opportunity others wouldn’t.”

This is how he has contributed:

--He is 8-0 over his last 11 starts and 13-7 with a 3.49 earned-run average overall.

--He has given up only six earned runs in the 31 innings of his last five starts.

--He was 8-3 with the Padres in 1995 and finished 6-0, meaning he has won 19 of his last 26 decisions since Aug. 22, 1995.

John Smoltz is the only National League pitcher with more wins (23) in that time, and Valenzuela’s 13 this year are his most since he was 13-13 with the Dodgers in 1990.

“He’s the consummate pitcher,” Padre pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “He can throw anything he wants when he wants and where he wants, and it takes him all of one pitch to decipher what a hitter is sitting on and what will get him out.”

Warthen and Valenzuela worked on mechanical changes after his signing by the Padres before the 1995 season: increasing his body turn and changing the release point of his screwball.

The pitching coach convinced Valenzuela that he needed to throw more curveballs, giving him a breaking pitch on the outside of the plate against left-handers to complement the screwball, which serves as a breaking pitch on the outside of the plate against right-handers, who are kept honest by the cut fastball.

Said Tony Gwynn, the thinking man’s hitter: “I stand in the outfield trying to think it through with him, trying to guess what he’s going to throw. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t.

“I mean, sometimes I think he invents pitches. He’s unbelievable. I say to him, ‘Fernando, how do you do it?’ He just shakes his head and smiles. The man is capable of beating anyone when he’s on.”

There may be no other staff with as many pitchers capable of lighting up the speed gun. The Padres can bring it, as they say.

“We’ve got guys with more dominant stuff, but they’ve learned things about pitching from Fernando,” Warthen said. “He’s one of the smartest pitchers I know, and maybe he’s never gotten enough credit for that.

“He never gives in to a hitter, and he’s worked his butt off. I don’t know anyone who’s been a more effective pitcher for five innings at a time, and I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t take him as their fourth or fifth starter.”

A reincarnation? Valenzuela shrugged and said the only difference since his arrival in San Diego is the good offensive and defensive support and the ability to establish consistent preparation, knowing he will pitch every five days.

“I never lost confidence,” he said. “I always believed in myself, but I’m more comfortable knowing I’m in the rotation. I respect people’s opinion, but if I had listened to everyone who said I couldn’t pitch any more, I’d be sitting home doing nothing.”

There were times when Valenzuela seemed to be the only one who believed.

He was released by the Dodgers, proving that business is business, and released by the Angels after an abbreviated trial at a point when he had not recaptured arm strength.

He returned to his Mexican League roots in Jalisco in 1992, bounced back to go 8-10 in 31 starts with the Baltimore Orioles in 1993, was forced to return to Jalisco at the start of the 1994 season, got seven starts with the Philadelphia Phillies late that year, then was released again.

The Padres, under new ownership and trying to strengthen ties to neighboring Mexico, saw an opportunity. Club President Larry Lucchino, the former Oriole president, also felt Valenzuela could still contribute on the field and in the clubhouse.

“We knew Fernando would bring a certain marketing dimension, but we also knew that would be useless unless he could pitch,” Lucchino said.

“Fernando has always demonstrated a certain resilience, and I had seen enough in Baltimore to know he brought a certain style and guile that might rub off on a young staff.

“We wanted to create a cross-generation affect, and we needed the left-hander. I don’t know that anyone could have predicted how well he’s done, but he’s proven that reports of his demise were definitely premature.”

One such report came from an American League general manager, who sent a brief telegram to the Padres after they signed Valenzuela. It read:

“Ha-ha-ha.”

San Diego is enjoying a last laugh, but Lopes said: “Anybody who says they knew this is somebody who just jumped on the bandwagon.”

Lopes, of course, has seen Valenzuela from the start: a teammate with the Dodgers, an adversary when Lopes was with the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros, a coach in Baltimore and a coach in San Diego.

The stuff changes, Lopes said, but not that lion’s heart.

“No matter how many times he’s been racked, he’s kept coming back like a boxer who knew he still had the ability to get up and win the championship,” Lopes said.

“Fernando has always been characterized as much by the intangibles as by anything else.”

Claire saw it on opening day of the 1981 season when the 20-year-old rookie was asked to become the emergency starter for an injured Jerry Reuss.

“I sat next to Fernando on the bench before the game and never saw anyone so calm in my life,” Claire said.

“It was as if he was saying, ‘This is my stage, and I’m prepared for it.’ He went on to one of the great pitching streaks in history.”

Winner of the Cy Young and rookie-of-the-year awards in that same season. Six consecutive seasons of 250 or more innings. Focus of a mania that outstripped anything he has produced with the Padres, which is not to diminish his ongoing popularity in Mexico.

That popularity was demonstrated during San Diego’s recent series in Monterrey, where Valenzuela defeated the New York Mets and otherwise never left his hotel room because of the commotion.

It was demonstrated in another way recently when a left-hander named Fernando Valenzuela Jr., his 13-year-old son and a freshman at St. Francis High in La Canada, pitched for the U.S. team in an age-group Pan-American Games in Mexico City. In what was akin to a time warp, the young Valenzuela was greeted at the airport and followed everywhere by cameras and reporters.

For Fernando Sr., a 1988 shoulder injury had spelled the beginning of the end with the Dodgers.

Valenzuela pitched 400 innings over the next two years (“He stayed in so many games longer than he should have,” Lopes said.), producing records of 10-13 and 13-13, but he was released in the spring of 1991 when “he was clearly not strong enough to be one of our five starters,” Claire said.

“I mean, there’s no way to describe how difficult and emotional it was to release a great pitcher and great contributor, but the bottom line is, this is a game based on competition. No one understands that better than Fernando.”

Said Valenzuela: “It is a great game, but also a business. The Dodgers felt I couldn’t help them anymore. I had 10 great years. I understood.”

Said agent DeMarco: “Fernando was released at a very bad time [late in the spring when other clubs had their rosters set] and that part isn’t a good memory. It spoiled the perfection of what had been poetry.

“Fernando will never forget the opportunity the Dodgers gave him and the 10 years of great memories, but more than a couple times he has said that the Dodgers should have kept him and that things would have been different for the ballclub and himself if they had.”

Perhaps, but it is difficult to be critical of the Dodgers, considering Valenzuela’s struggle for most of the last five years.

Now DeMarco, an entrepreneur who handles many Mexican entertainers, plans to produce a film of Valenzuela’s life, but when friends ask him when he will do it, he answers, “The story is still being written.”

No surprise, said Claire.

“As great a competitor as he is and as much love as he has for the game, I would never be surprised at anything Fernando does,” he said.

“In my view, there are two things involved. Fernando never gave up on himself, and he recognized the need to adjust and use the cut fastball more to get in on right-handers.

“You’ve got to admire what he’s done, but come Thursday . . . well, he understands and we understand.

“I mean, we don’t expect anything less than 100% because that’s all he’s ever given, but we’ll come at him the same way.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Long and Winding Road

Fernando Valenzuela’s journey back to baseball’s center stage has taken him to numerous stops since he left the Dodgers. A look at his post-Dodger career:

*--*

DODGERS (1980-90) W L ERA G CG SHO IP H R 141 116 3.31 331 107 29 2348 2/3 2099 981

DODGERS (1980-90) ER BB SO 864 915 1759

*--*

*

*--*

YR TEAM W L ERA G CG SHO IP H R 1991 Palm Springs (Cal.) 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 4 4 1 -- Midland (Texas) 3 1 1.96 4 1 1 23 18 5 -- Angels 0 2 12.15 2 0 0 6 2/3 14 10 -- Edmonton (PCL) 3 3 7.12 7 0 0 36 2/3 48 34 1992 Jalisco (Mex.) 10 9 3.86 22 13 0 156 1/3 154 81 1993 Baltimore 8 10 4.94 32 5 2 178 2/3 179 104 -- Rochester (Int’l) 0 1 10.80 1 0 0 3 1/3 6 4 -- Bowie (Eastern) 0 0 1.50 1 0 0 6 4 1 1994 Jalisco (Mex.) 10 3 2.67 17 8 0 118 133 56 -- Philadelphia 1 2 3.00 8 0 0 45 42 16 1995 San Diego 8 3 4.98 29 0 0 90 1/3 101 53

YR ER BB SO 1991 0 3 2 -- 5 6 17 -- 9 3 5 -- 29 17 36 1992 67 51 98 1993 98 79 78 -- 4 3 1 -- 1 0 4 1994 35 39 73 -- 15 7 19 1995 50 34 57

*--*