Dusty Baker on the passing of Fernando Valenzuela: ‘He came like an angel to us’

Dusty Baker remembered the games. Not the ones that Fernando Valenzuela would bend to his will like his signature screwball, but the moments in between. The precocious left-hander’s skills went beyond the iconic windup he taught himself on mounds in a small Mexican town named Etchohuaquila. Valenzuela could hit so well that he remained parked on the bench at Dodger Stadium even on nights when he didn’t pitch. He could field his position so well that he’d win a Gold Glove.

But Baker marveled at another athletic feat: Valenzuela knocking a hacky sack into the air, his eyes floating to the sky just as they would when he delivered a pitch.

“That was the first time I had really seen anybody that good at it,” Baker recalled by phone on Tuesday night.

Baker was 31 when Valenzuela, still just 19 years old, made his Dodgers debut in 1980. As a running gag, the pitcher would tap Baker on the shoulder to get him to look the wrong way and then giggle with childlike vigor when it worked.

“Fernando was a kid,” Baker said. “He acted like a kid. He was fun. He acted like a kid everywhere but on the mound.”

Valenzuela died on Tuesday, the Dodgers announced. He was 63 years old. The man who sparked “FernandoMania” in 1981 is gone. By that summer, he’d captivated a city and a market that hasn’t been the same since.

Valenzuela was not the first Mexican superstar and will not be the last, but there will only be one Fernando. It was over one summer, as a 20-year-old, that an entire city got to know the soft-spoken left-hander on a first-name basis that has echoed ever since.

“Everywhere we went — it wasn’t only the Dodgers — where we went, he packed the stadium,” Baker said. “And he packed the stadium, especially with the Latin American people from all over, all over the world. He made everybody, especially Latin Americans, made them proud.”

Valenzuela’s stardom fueled a cultural shift in Los Angeles by reinvigorating a Mexican American community damaged by the franchise’s move to the area and displacement of families at Chavez Ravine to build the now-storied ballpark.

Valenzuela debuted in 1980 to little fanfare, delivering 10 scoreless appearances. His first start of 1981 came on Opening Day, but only after Jerry Reuss injured his calf. Valenzuela had already thrown his bullpen session on the eve of Opening Day when Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda informed him he would take the baseball.

The left-hander responded by throwing a five-hit shutout in a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros.

“Fernando — he was The Man as a kid,” Baker said.

“Good thing we won that game,” Valenzuela recalled with a chuckle last year.

He won each of his first eight starts — all complete games.

Valenzuela was estranged from the club into retirement over lingering resentment from the Dodgers’ decision to release him in 1991, just before his $2.55-million contract would have become guaranteed. He returned to the organization as a Spanish-language broadcaster in 2003 and the Dodgers retired his No. 34 in August 2023 (the franchise waived its longstanding policy on not doing so for players not in the Hall of Fame).

But if Valenzuela’s relationship with the Dodgers was complicated, his relationship with the city and its people is not. His jersey remains among the most popular at a ballpark where crowds regularly chanted his name. The pitching mound at Dodger Stadium always felt like the tallest place in the world when the 5-foot-11 left-hander was standing on top.

He was just what Los Angeles, and the Dodgers, needed.

“He came like an angel to us at the time we needed him the most,” Baker said.

Baker was Valenzuela’s teammate from 1980 to 1983 and they developed a bond. He took care of him. Baker took Valenzuela out to dinners, as Felipe Alou and Hank Aaron did for him as a young Atlanta Brave. When Baker returned to Dodger Stadium this August as part of a bobblehead night and spoke with Valenzuela, who by then had shown signs of his illness and lost weight, Baker took time to be with his former teammate.

The left-hander who pitched like a man, Baker said, was always still a boy. He recalled a stretch during Valenzuela’s peak: Andre Dawson had slugged a solo home run off Valenzuela at Dodger Stadium in May 1981, a game-tying shot during a complete game victory as Pedro Guerrero hit a walk-off home run a half-inning later. When Valenzuela faced Dawson’s Montreal Expos that October in a winner-take-all Game 5 in the National League Championship Series, he kept Dawson 0-for-4 and struck him out — all the while outlining the very sequence to Baker that he had thrown Dawson earlier in the season.

“Fernando was smart. I mean, this cat, he was like a man, pitched like a man, but he was a young, young boy,” Baker said.

Valenzuela tossed eight shutouts in 25 starts, winning a no-brainer Rookie of the Year award to serve as a side dish to a Cy Young Award.

The Dodgers, always on the doorstep, would return to the World Series against the New York Yankees in 1981 and win. There hadn’t been a Fall Classic meeting of the two iconic franchises since — until now. Valenzuela passed away just three days before Game 1 begins at Dodger Stadium.

(Top photo from 1985: Rick Stewart / Getty Images)