For baseball fans, “Fernandomania” marked a flash of pitching brilliance, the emergence of a unique talent in the history of one of the sport's most storied franchises.
For Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Fernando Valenzuela was something even greater: a beacon of hope, inspiration and pride.
Valenzuela, a Mexican-born phenomenon for the Los Angeles Dodgers, died Tuesday night at a Los Angeles hospital, the team said. He was 63.
For some, his death prompted memories of watching the left-hander pitch at home with their parents, not out of a love of sports but because of a surge of Mexican or Latino pride. They reflect on the doors he opened for future generations and the cultural impact he ushered as a Mexican.
Valenzuela’s rise from humble beginnings as the youngest of 12 children in Mexico and his feats on the mound made him hugely popular and influential in the Latino community while helping attract new fans to Major League Baseball. Their fondness for him continued after his retirement.
Baseball fanatic or not, there isn't a person in Mexico who does not know who Valenzuela is, said Mexican journalist Arturo Angel. He was born in 1983 and said his knowledge of Valenzuela came from his dad, who isn’t a sports fan, among other people. The way people talked about him made Angel realize how much of an idol he was to many.
Nathaly Morga, who knows of Valenzuela because of her parents, said no matter how many other Latinos in baseball there are, “Fernando was always the big one, like the God.”
Angel said that the explosion of television in the 1980’s and the broadcast of Dodgers games in Mexico catapulted Valenzuela into the phenomenon he became. The Dodgers, who had broadcast games in Spanish since 1959, saw a ratings increase and interest in expanding their radio network into Mexico once Valenzuela started playing. Years after his playing career ended, Valenzuela joined those radio broadcasts as a color commentator.
“The LA Dodgers in Mexico have a great fan base,” Angel said. “The taste of baseball expanded in Mexico, that is because of Fernando Valenzuela.”
Morga grew up in Tijuana in a soccer family. Yet they all knew Valenzuela. Morga recalls her mom, who does not understand how baseball is played, telling her how at the height of “Fernandomania,” she would watch Dodgers games at a local burger joint because Valenzuela was pitching.
The Dodgers, longing for a star to connect with the Latino population in LA, finally found one in Valenzuela, whose impact would transform what had been predominantly a white fan base. The city's Mexican community began to flock to Dodger Stadium during his starts. The Dodgers, who had become the first franchise to draw 3 million fans in 1978, averaged 48,430 fans during Valenzuela’s home starts and 42,523 overall during the strike-interrupted 1981 season — the highest average attendance in Dodger Stadium history to that point. That year, Valenzuela became the first in baseball history to win Rookie of the Year and a Cy Young Award as baseball's top pitcher in the same season.
“In Mexico, obviously everyone knows him,” Morga said. “Everybody loves the Dodgers because of him.”
Rob Martinez said for those growing up in Mexico, Valenzuela was the baseline. With Dodgers games always broadcasted in Mexico, Valenzuela became all anyone could talk about and someone to look up to, he said.
Watching Valenzuela was a family affair. Martinez said he remembers having cookouts to watch the games with his dad and friends. When Valenzuela would be taken out of a game, everyone would stop watching.
But seeing Valenzuela on television made Martinez believe that his dreams were achievable, too. Martinez has played baseball since he was 3 and is now the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley baseball team.
“It was a big push for everyone, watching him compete and be the guy in the big leagues,” Martinez said. “It gave us all hope.”
Valenzuela is widely considered one of Mexico's top athletes of all time, along with soccer player Hugo Sánchez and boxer Julio César Chávez.
Valenzuela’s rise from his tiny hometown of Etchohuaquila in the Mexican state of Sonora to stardom in the U.S. was improbable. He was the youngest child in a large family who tagged along when his older brothers played baseball.
His rise inspired many athletes. Martinez said he was able to have the career he has had because he saw Valenzuela, a guy who came from an identical background as him be successful.
″I don’t have to be (6-foot-3), 240 pounds to do what I love to do,” Martinez said. “As long as you work hard at it. So that was a big deal for me. Just giving us a chance to believe that, hey, man, you know, we can do it coming from someone else.”
In 2013, Morga was living in California and met Valenzuela at Petco Park in San Diego.
“He invited me to sit at the table with him," Morga said. “Which was crazy for me because this was a person that my parents talked about, such an idol, and he was just a typical Mexican dad.”
Angel said reading profiles on Valenzuela published since his death, he has a better understanding of how not only was he a baseball legend but a cultural ambassador at a time when the racial discourse was looked at differently than it may be now.
“The fact that we are not baseball fans and know him shows that his figure was important,” Angel said. “Younger people now may have more representation in other sports but for that generation Valenzuela was it.”
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