If you weren’t there, like Woodstock, I imagine, the summer of 1981 in Los Angeles is impossible to fully appreciate. For months the City of Angels was deliriously captured in the grip of a 20-year-old Mexican lefty, armed with an unhittable screwball and a bashfulness you just don’t see in that city’s star attractions. To say Fernando Valenzuela came out of “nowhere” was an exaggeration – but not by much. His Sonoran village had a population of 140 – 11 of whom were his brothers and sisters. His story and his unlikely success had all of us swooning, all summer and straight into the Fall Classic.
I was in the cheap high seats along the first base line, closer to right field, the afternoon Fernando made his Dodger Stadium debut, coming out of the bullpen and striking out the side, in September 1980 as a late season call up. (Did that really happen, or do I just like to remember it that way?) I was there on Opening Day 1981 when Lasorda made him the emergency starter when Reuss couldn’t go. He shut out the Astros and started the season 7-0, with 5 shutouts, and a ridiculous ERA of 0.29. Unbelievably, all were complete games. I guzzled cold Buds with my buddies at the World Series victory parade in October. We continued to toast him when he won the Cy Young award as the game’s best pitcher, and Rookie of the Year a feat that has never been equaled.
When Fernando Valenzuela was on the mound, time stood still. “Almost a religious experience,” as Vin Scully, the legendary Dodgers broadcaster aptly put it. If you couldn’t get to Dodger Stadium, you turned to Channel 11 and watched him on KTTV. A dead stop on the 405 made a traffic jam infinitely more tolerable when you had Vin’s call and that of Spanish announcer Jaime Jarrin in north and southbound surround sound. We were all watching, listening, cheering our lungs out and beeping our horns in happy madness.
Over the years, and this morning, much has been written, rightfully so, about how Fernandomania was the bridge that brought Mexican and Latin American fans back to Chavez Ravine, stoking a passion for Los Dodgers that burns brightly today. And for this college kid, from small town Connecticut, suddenly planted in the eye-popping sprawl of LA, the legend, the performance and the temperament of Fernando Valenzuela also forever connected me to a city I grew to love. All 3 million of us were all-in on Fernando, and how wonderful it was to feel a part of that amazing experience. Two of my kids live there now and how I wish they could be swept up in that kind of harmony, so unique then – so impossible to imagine today – and to see it carried on the shoulders of so unlikely a hero.
At just 63, Fernando is gone, but Fernandomania is, for many of us lucky enough to experience it, forever.