‘FernandoMania’ lives on: Dodgers retire Fernando Valenzuela’s number, a long time coming

LOS ANGELES — Over the years, Fernando Valenzuela wondered.

He had last thrown a pitch in a Dodgers uniform in spring training 31 years ago. He’d remained around the organization even after spending the rest of his career elsewhere. During his trips to Dodger Stadium, he’d frequently see his No. 34 being worn, and his name on the back. But no one else ever took it.

“The number was there, open,” Valenzuela said. “It surprised me. It’s not too high of a number … but nobody used it. I just thought, something’s happening here.”

But he never figured this. He never figured that eventually, at long last and much later than necessary, the club would retire his number. That an unspoken tradition passed along from one clubhouse attendant to another would finally become official.

The Dodgers retired Valenzuela’s number Friday in a ceremony attended by luminaries, friends and those he inspired, from Sandy Koufax to Mike Scioscia to Julio Urías, himself a Mexican left-hander seen by the late, legendary scout Mike Brito as a prodigy. A band of mariachis serenaded him as he walked a blue carpet. The crowd cheered him. Fernando Fever was back, even for just a weekend, to honor the Sonoran who transcended the sport.

For as much as he had wondered over the years, Valenzuela thought the door was closed. The Dodgers’ unofficial policy was that they’d only retire the numbers of players who had been enshrined in Cooperstown, with one exception: Jim Gilliam, whose No. 19 was retired after he passed away in 1978. Valenzuela had two brief years on the writer’s ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but fell off after receiving just 3.8 percent of the vote in 2004. Other avenues to induct Valenzuela to the Hall have yet to come to fruition.

The Dodgers didn’t bend their rule. Until January, when they announced that No. 34 was no longer open.

“42 years ago — 42 — a meteor descended on this mound,” longtime Dodgers broadcaster Charley Steiner said during the ceremony.

No. 34 is now up there at Dodger Stadium. pic.twitter.com/WMX2LyceVJ

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) August 12, 2023

The opportunity that gave him the chance to capture hearts and leave a legacy was circumstantial; he didn’t know he was starting his magical “FernandoMania” run on Opening Day in 1981 until the day before, and hours after he had already thrown a bullpen session. Jerry Reuss had injured his calf, so Tommy Lasorda turned to his chubby left-hander. He insisted he was ready anyway, and delivered a complete game shutout.

“Good thing we won that game,” he joked.

Valenzuela won each of his first eight starts, taking a Mexican-American community with a complicated at best relationship with the organization and fostering something magical in the summer that followed.

“He was our champion, nuestro campeón,” Los Angeles native and current United States Senator Alex Padilla said at the dais.

The cherubic 20-year-old would win a Cy Young Award as a rookie, taking the ball and taking the Dodgers through to a World Series title that October. It was a tale that shouldn’t have, and almost didn’t, happen. No Mexican player before or since has captured the baseball world like he did. No player has defined a community as he did in the years since. Few have taken the ball as often, either — in his 320 starts as a Dodger, he threw 107 complete games. If fans were going to pay for nine innings, he’d reason, he wanted to pitch all of them.

Years of overuse cut down his longevity, and with it a likely visit to Cooperstown. He had thrown his last pitch as a Dodger by the age of 30, when the organization unceremoniously cut him in 1991 during spring training. But years passed, and no one ever issued the No. 34. Valenzuela would bounce around, to Anaheim, back to Mexico, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, San Diego and St. Louis. The image remained of Valenzuela, the man nicknamed “El Toro” in Dodger blue, eyes looking toward the sky as he delivered to the plate, firing screwball after screwball.

This call was overdue. Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten called Valenzuela, who has served as one of the club’s Spanish radio voices since his retirement, to Dodger Stadium to record promotional content for the upcoming season. Instead, he told him that his wait was over.

“‘FernandoMania’ wasn’t just in 1981,” Kasten said in the ceremony. “‘FernandoMania’ never has ended.”

Now, that was being cemented. His number was being retired. An option that he thought was out of reach was happening.

“I never thought this would happen,” Valenzuela said. “Never thought I’d be in this situation. It’s hard to put into words.”

As he spoke Friday, Valenzuela looked to his right and jokingly asked if Jaime Jarrín was joining him. Each man — Valenzuela, the pitcher and Jarrín, the broadcaster — have carried the torch forward for a community that embraced them and hadn’t had anyone like them, yet they were inextricably bound. The media attention was consuming, and Valenzuela was hardly loquacious.

“I would rather have the bases loaded with no outs” than talk about himself, Valenzuela said in Spanish.

Jarrín, the Spanish voice of the Dodgers for 64 years, in many ways served as Valenzuela’s voice, the background music to the rousing symphony Valenzuela created in the ballpark on the days he started.

That was something no figures or career compilations could capture, an impact worth honoring, club policies be damned. So the Dodgers corrected their omission this winter. When Valenzuela’s No. 34 was unfurled by Orel Hershiser and Manny Mota, it was next to Koufax’s No. 32. The two arms that have defined the franchise’s run in Los Angeles were forever linked, too.

Fernando will have to wonder no longer.

(Photo of Fernando Valenzuela at a news conference before his jersey retirement ceremony: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)