A Pitcher Who Told the Future

They came in caravans from as far away as Fresno, Mexicali and Tucson, all to wonder at No. 34, one of their own.

“All of a sudden, everyone was cheering for this guy who was a Mexican,” recalled Arturo Vargas, a college kid with big dreams in those heady days, remembering the ubiquitous buzz. “Here we had a Mexican--one of us!--who was a hero for all of L.A., not just for us.”

It has been 20 years since the craze known as Fernandomania shook Los Angeles. The episode would have been an improbable work of fiction: Fernando Valenzuela, an unassuming young man from rural Mexico, comes to the big city and wins his first eight baseball games in 1981, a remarkable five of them by shutouts; helps the Dodgers win the World Series; and is voted the National League’s rookie of the year and its best pitcher.

Today, as Los Angeles stands on the verge of becoming a majority-Latino city and county, Fernando-mania the sports phenomenon can also be recalled as something more profound.

It reflected the stirrings of an often overlooked community newly invigorated by immigration. For people who sometimes still concealed their ethnicity to avoid prejudice, Valenzuela’s emergence was a liberating jolt.

Viewed through this prism, Valenzuela’s ability to pull in as many as 10,000 extra Latino fans on the days he pitched at Dodger Stadium was an early indicator of both the demographic revolution and the cultural and political breakthroughs that would soon be too pronounced to ignore. Southern California’s Latino character, obscured through decades of western migration by English-speaking whites and blacks, was coming back.

“Valenzuela gave the mexicano population a kind of legitimacy,” said Carlos Velez-Ibanez, an anthropologist at UC Riverside who recalls gathering with fellow Latino scholars at a Westwood bar and hexing opposing batters while Valenzuela manned the mound. “He gave people a reference of success, without having to sell your cultural soul.”

In 1981, Valenzuela’s first full season, conventional wisdom often portrayed Southern California’s Latinos as a kind of insular, largely Spanish-speaking population ghettoized in seldom-visited and dangerous barrios east of the Los Angeles River. In reality, the Latino population of Los Angeles County had grown 60% in the previous 10 years, and Latinos made up more than a quarter of the county.

Still, as Fernandomania dawned, it seemed improbable, particularly to many in Los Angeles’ non-Latino white majority, that the city was changing so dramatically: that a Mexican American would one day win 46% of the mayoral vote, that Latinos would be players in virtually every stratum of the city’s civic and cultural life, that increasing numbers would speak English, own homes, be university-educated, don business suits and no longer be consigned to East Los Angeles or the cheap seats in Dodger Stadium’s upper deck.

Latinos still lag in economic progress, education and other categories. But the community, as witnessed by its growing middle class, has undeniably come a long way. The transformation would have taken place without Valenzuela, but his arrival can be taken as a point of departure.

“It’s a very different city than 20 years ago,” noted Vargas, who was reared in L.A.’s Pico-Union neighborhood and is now executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials. “You have a generation of Latinos who are now doctors, businessmen, lawyers. They have disposable income to spend as they want and are part of the city leadership throughout.”

Valenzuela was never political, but the stunning success of this Mexican Everyman transmitted a message of hope to an ethnic kin scuffling at the margins.

“You could say that was a breakthrough period for a whole generation,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino voting rights group. “That’s like the beginning of the Long March.”

Today’s often-celebratory media focus on Latinos tends to exclude an unfelicitous fact: For most of the nation’s history, being Latino was mostly far from an advantage. Generations eschewed Spanish and even changed their names--Garcia became Grace, Rivera became Rivers.

“In the eyes of Hollywood and the news, we were definitely gang members or undocumented aliens or maids or some kind of criminal,” recalled Moctesuma Esparza, a Los Angeles native and baseball fan who was starting out as a film producer when Valenzuela arrived. “There was so much historical angst and pain and shame about being Mexican in the United States.”

By contrast, being Latino, and speaking Spanish, is now a plus in many quarters. “Today a lot of people going into the middle class don’t have to run from being Latino,” said Rodolfo Acuna, professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge. “It’s an asset.”

Valenzuela became an instant object of adulation in L.A.’s Latino community, which was, and is, overwhelmingly of Mexican origin. Latin American big leaguers were no longer a novelty, but most were from the Caribbean. And Valenzuela was a rare double-crossover hit: Not only did he attract Latinos and non-Latinos, his following transcended the broad cultural chasm between Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born Mexican Americans.

“Mexican immigrants may have soccer heroes, for whom there is no relevance among Mexican Americans,” noted Rodolfo de la Garza, vice president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino think tank. Both groups succumbed to Fernandomania.

The extra fans he drew kicked off an upward trend in Latino attendance at Dodger Stadium that continues. Valenzuela even helped smooth some of the hard feelings that remained from the bulldozing in 1959 of hundreds of homes in the tightknit Mexican American communities of Chavez Ravine to make way for the ballpark. Latinos now represent one-third of the Dodger fan base.

Nicknamed El Toro, Valenzuela first ambled to the mound like some possessed vision endowed with superior gifts. The nearly unhittable left-hander was only 20, the youngest player in the National League. He was stocky, shaggy-haired, didn’t speak English. He was the seventh son, the youngest of a dozen children, reared in the Mexican hinterlands of Etchohuaquila in a home without electricity or running water.

He combined the country grit of a Ring Lardner protagonist and the otherworldly aura of a Garcia Marquez creation. This was a character sprinkled with magic dust. “He was like a miracle wonder child,” recalled Edward James Olmos, the actor and Los Angeles native.

With each pitch, Valenzuela’s eyes rolled characteristically toward the sky. It was as if this seemingly unathletic figure was calling in the divine chips of laraza--seeking heavenly intercession to keep him from collapsing beneath such huge expectations.

One writer compared his screwball to a tiny model plane darting its way to the plate, toying with bewildered professional batters. On occasion, he would seem to lose his way, allowing batters on base--only to bear down for the big strikeout, further frustrating his diamond foes.

By May 1981, the prodigy had been invited to the White House to lunch with the new president, Ronald Reagan, and Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.

Riches awaited. Yet Valenzuela remained an honorable repository of old-country values. When asked what he wanted to do with his newfound wealth, he didn’t hesitate: “My first ambition is to buy a house for my parents.”

He lamented not having had a proper education. He carried himself with a certain humility and pride, striking just the right chord for his core constituency, the working-class Latino multitudes who often bristled instinctively at the rampant materialism all around them. Valenzuela lived part of his first full year as a Dodger in a motel off Alvarado Street. He was open about his fondness for beer and television.

“He gave expressions to a kind of modesty that had been lost in this vertical mobility, achievement-oriented culture,” said Velez-Ibanez, who is on the faculty of UC Riverside. “He clicked with a kind of cultural congruence.”

He conquered the non-Latino world, but he remained contentedly above it, respecting the majority culture but never bowing down before it. He refused to speak broken English, preferring to express himself in his native tongue. He simply was not ready for this initial step toward assimilation. Fans who understood Spanish enjoyed the bonus, the inside scoop, of catching the real Fernando on Spanish-language television and radio.

“He was a pioneer of a whole attitude which has happened in America over the last few years, which is: It’s cool to be ethnic,” said Carl Kravetz, who heads a Westside advertising agency specializing in the Latino market.

The confounded English-language media had to accommodate, reassigning Spanish-speaking reporters or relying on Valenzuela’s personal interpreter, Jaime Jarrin, longtime Dodger Spanish-language play-by-play man.

Then there was the inescapable matter of Valenzuela’s looks: the mestizo (Indian-Spanish) features, the jutting jaw, the ample midsection--”El Pauncho,” one sportswriter labeled him, just one of many media depictions that relentlessly focused on Valenzuela’s predilection for beer, tacos and frijoles. Some assailed media stereotyping, but even admirers saw something quintessential in his decidedly unglamorous appearance.

“He was so dorky-looking, he was just so perfect for every Mexican,” voting-rights activist Gonzalez recalled affectionately. “It was like, ‘That’s me: a short fat dark guy with a bad haircut.’ ”

Valenzuela’s timing was impeccable. The wave of immigration from Mexico and Central America, while still below the radar screen of much of the non-Latino population, had already been underway for a decade. Los Angeles was ground zero.

Major corporations now trip over each other in the rush to exploit or cater to the “Latino market.” Nationwide, tortillas are making a run at white bread’s popularity. Salsa has already overtaken ketchup. Marketing to a Latino clientele is now a much more conscious goal, in sports and other fields.

“There are people out there right now looking for the next Fernando,” said Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, who heads a Latino marketing firm. “There’s money to be made.”

These days, Valenzuela himself has become part of the fast-expanding ranks of successful Latinos whose presence is no longer a novelty. Still a young man (he recently turned 40), he appears to have used his investments to further the good of his family. Valenzuela lives in a rambling Spanish-style house in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood with his wife, Linda--whom he met while a teenage hurler in her home state of Yucatan--and his four children. Three attend area Catholic schools, and the eldest, Fernando Jr., 18, is a first baseman at Glendale Community College.

This past season, Fernando Sr. played winter ball in Mexico, where he began his professional career, but he seems to harbor no illusions about a major league comeback. Golf is now his passion. His English has improved, but he still resists the limelight.

“It was very hard for me when I first came up,” Valenzuela recalled the other day, speaking in Spanish on his cell phone from the links. He sounded modest as ever. “I was very fortunate. A lot of people helped me. I’m much more comfortable with myself now. I will always be grateful to the Dodgers, who gave me a chance. If what I accomplished helped open the doors for others, I’m very pleased. But I take no credit.”

The Dodgers will hold Fernando bobble-head-doll night July 29, providing customers with a plastic replica of the pitcher, whose 141 wins for the Dodgers in 11 seasons rank him seventh in franchise history. Valenzuela and his family plan to be in Mexico visiting relatives and are not expected to attend as the fans recall the accomplishments of the unassuming man from a Sonoran hamlet who, 20 summers ago, electrified the city and made his people proud.