Fernando Valenzuela Keeps His ‘Fernandomania’ Alive

When Fernando Valenzuela took the mound on opening day 1981, no one could have imagined that, 40 years later, many would point to that day as a momentous turning point in Dodgers history. 

After all, the pudgy 20-year-old kid from Navojoa, Sonora didn’t look like anything special, but, boy could he pitch. 

Making an emergency start in place of the injured Jerry Reuss, Valenzuela took the mound and  tossed a complete game shutout, beating the Houston Astros 2-0. From there, “El Toro” (as he would come to be known), proceeded to rattle off eight consecutive victories (five shutouts) with a 0.50 ERA, giving birth to the phenomenon known as Fernandomania.

Valenzuela and his signature screwball (a pitch taught to him by former Dodgers pitcher Bobby Castillo) became so popular, that the games he pitched became the hottest ticket in town.

“The phones kept ringing at Dodger Stadium,” Steve Brener, the team’s former director of public relations, told Los Angeles Times in 2011. “People were asking, ‘when is Fernando going to pitch?’”

Games on the road brought more of the same. Valenzuela held a news conference in every city the Dodgers visited. Jaime Jarrin, the long-time Spanish voice of the Dodgers, stood by his side and served as his interpreter.

When the dust had settled on the whirlwind that was 1981, Valenzuela was the National League rookie of the year, the N.L. Cy Young award winner, and a World Series champion. To this day, he is the only player to win both awards in the same season. 

Perhaps his biggest contribution, however, was his role as a sort of liaison between the Dodgers and the latino community in Los Angeles. Before his arrival, relations between the club and the latino community were frigid at best.

Dodger Stadium sits on land formerly inhabited by a tight-knit community of 300 families. Those who lived in the neighborhoods of La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop (collectively known as Chavez Ravine), were unceremoniously uprooted in order to make way for low-income housing as part of the 1949 federal housing act. Residents were promised first choice of the new homes, but, as is the case in many instances, the project ran into a ton of red tape, and it was scrapped altogether in 1953. The city of Los Angeles purchased the land from the federal government, and, ultimately ended up using it as a bargaining chip to lure Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers to the west coast.

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Jarrin estimated that, before Valenzuela, only 8-10% of the audience at Dodger Stadium was Latino. 

“Now, you go to the ballpark, there are certain sections where they speak more Spanish than English,” he told Los Angeles Times. 

According to survey research conducted by the organization, 40% of the Dodger fan base is Latino. In fact, in 2015, 2.1 of the 3.9 million fans attending Dodger Stadium were Latino, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Although Valenzuela spent time with other clubs, including stints with the Angels and Padres, the bulk of his accomplishments came with the Dodgers. However, the organization has yet to officially retire the lefty’s number. The club has a longstanding tradition of only retiring numbers of players that have been inducted into the hall of fame, with the only exception being Jim Gilliam’s no. 19, which was retired immediately upon his sudden death in 1978.

No one has worn the iconic no. 34 since Valenzuela last donned it in 1991, and much of that can be attributed to longtime Dodgers clubhouse manager Mitch Poole.

“I’ve known Fernando for a long time, and he was the man when I first started out,” Poole told the LA Times in 2019. “He meant so much to this team and the Latin American community. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future with Fernando’s number. I just think leaving it alone right now is good.”

According to Poole, the only player to request no. 34 was Manny Ramirez, whom the Dodgers acquired in 2008. Ramirez typically wore no. 24, which belonged to hall of fame manager Walter Alston and is officially retired by the club. So, when informed that he couldn’t have 24, he requested 34 instead.

“I said it was Fernando’s,” Poole said. “He was ok with that.”

Ramirez ended up wearing no. 99.

Valenzuela returned to the Dodgers in 2003, this time as part of the Spanish-language broadcast team alongside Pepe Yñiguez and longtime friend Jarrin. Even now, forty years later, Valenzuela marvels at just how much of an impact he had on the community. 

“I had just come here and I didn’t know what life was like for the Mexican, the Latino, in the United States,” he said in 2011. “It was difficult for me to comprehend that. I was focused on myself.”