Dusty Baker remembered the games. Not the ones that Fernando Valenzuela would bend to his will, such as his trademark screw ball, but the moments in between. The precocious southpaw’s skills went beyond the iconic windup he taught himself on hills in a small Mexican town called Etchohuaquila. Valenzuela could hit so well that even on nights he wasn’t pitching, he remained on the bench at Dodger Stadium. He could fulfill his position so well that he would win a gold glove.

But Baker marveled at another athletic feat: Valenzuela hit a hacky sack in the air, his eyes floating skyward just as they would when he delivered a throw.

“That was the first time I really saw someone who was that good at it,” Baker recalled by phone Tuesday evening.

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

“Fernando was a kid,” Baker said. “He behaved like a child. He was nice. He acted like a child everywhere except on the hill.

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

Dusty Baker and Fernando Valenzuela were friends from the start and forged a long-lasting bond. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today)

Valenzuela wasn’t the first Mexican superstar and won’t be the last, but there will only be one Fernando. It was during one summer, when he was twenty years old, that an entire town came to know the mild-mannered southpaw based on the first name that has echoed ever since.

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

Valenzuela’s fame sparked a cultural shift in Los Angeles by revitalizing a Mexican-American community damaged by the franchise’s move to the area and the relocation of families in Chavez Ravine to build the now legendary ballpark.

Valenzuela debuted in 1980 to little fanfare, turning in ten scoreless performances. His first start of 1981 came on opening day, but only after Jerry Reuss injured his calf. Valenzuela had already given his bullpen session on the eve of opening day when Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda told him he would be taking over baseball.

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

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

“It’s a 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 became estranged from the club and retired due to lingering resentment over 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 number 34 in August 2023 (the franchise waived its long-standing policy of not doing so for non-Hall of Fame players).

But if Valenzuela’s relationship with the Dodgers was complicated, his relationship with the city and its residents is not. His jersey remains one of the most popular on a baseball field where the crowd regularly chanted his name. The pitching mound at Dodger Stadium always felt like the highest place in the world when the 6-foot-1 left-hander stood atop it.

He was exactly what Los Angeles and the Dodgers needed.

“He came to us like an angel when we needed him 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 dinner, like Felipe Alou and Hank Aaron did before him as a young Atlanta Brave. When Baker returned to Dodger Stadium in August as part of a bobblehead night and spoke with Valenzuela, who by then had shown signs of his illness and had lost weight, Baker took time to be with his former teammate.

The southpaw who threw like a man, Baker said, was always a boy. He recalled a play during Valenzuela’s peak: Andre Dawson had scored a solo home run off Valenzuela at Dodger Stadium in May 1981, tying a complete-game victory when Pedro Guerrero hit a walk-off home run a half-inning later. . When Valenzuela faced Dawson’s Montreal Expos in a winner-take-all Game 5 in the National League Championship Series in October, he held Dawson 0-for-4 and struck him out – while simultaneously outlining to Baker the sequence he had thrown . Dawson earlier in the season.

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

Valenzuela pitched eight shutouts in 25 starts to win a no-brainer Rookie of the Year award, which served as a side dish to a Cy Young Award.

The Dodgers, always on the horizon, would return to the World Series against the New York Yankees in 1981 and win. Since then, there hadn’t been a Fall Classic meeting between the two iconic franchises until now. Valenzuela died just three days before Game 1 started at Dodger Stadium.

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