El Toro.

That was the nickname fans gave Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela early in his career. Bulls are a symbol of virility and masculinity in Spanish culture, and the bull – thickly built, powerful yet graceful in his charge – manifested that fearsome animal for most of his career with the Blue Crew.

Many writers – including myself – have chronicled the importance of the southpaw to Latinos in Southern California and beyond. How, for one glorious season in 1981, a Mexican immigrant powered a city that had long treated its Mexican residents as little better than help, winning the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year and leading the team to its first World Series victory in 16 years to drive years.

How he showed Major League Baseball that Latinos could be superstars instead of just fiery underachievers. How he inspired Latinos to advocate for a franchise whose original sin was building a ballpark on the site of neighborhoods the city had demolished in the name of progress.

That’s where the obituaries will rightly lead. But that wasn’t on my mind Tuesday night, when news of his death at age 63 flashed on my phone.

Instead I thought of El Toro.

Our love for bulls is conditional. They are revered because they fight for an inevitable defeat. Bulls are flipped, lassoed or gored, sacrificed for public spectacle and then discarded when they can no longer compete. If they’re lucky, their heads will be stuffed and mounted.

Unfortunately, that was the arc of Valenzuela’s career.

Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda played him until his once-powerful left arm hung like a torn rubber band — another overworked, underappreciated Mexican in Los Angeles. The team thanked El Toro for his sacrifice by releasing him before the start of the 1991 season. Over the last seven years of his big league run, the hero was reduced to a journeyman bouncing around five teams, an afterthought whose main purpose was to fill the stands with still-admiring fans gleefully shouting his nickname –¡Toro!

Valenzuela visits children at a Dodgers clinic in East Los Angeles in 1981.

(Rick Meyer/Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers brought Valenzuela back in 2003 as a color commentator for their Spanish-language broadcasts, but never leaned on his baseball knowledge to coach the next generation of players. They waved it like a trophy to prove how much they loved their Latino fans, a reminder of what once was even as many wondered what could have been.

His career numbers – 173 wins, 153 losses, a 3.54 earned run average and a wins above replacement value (WAR) of 37.4 – are good, but not exactly Hall of Fame worthy. The Dodgers didn’t even bother to retire his jersey number, 34, until last year.

Still, many Dodgers fans have argued that Valenzuela deserves a spot in the Hall because of his cultural impact.

I wasn’t one of them.

I found that kind of reasoning too transactional, too focused on how much money Major League Baseball makes from Latino players and fans. Furthermore, the Hall of Fame is supposed to represent the best of the best, not players who excelled for a few seasons.

But now that I’ve witnessed the outpouring of love and sadness since Valenzuela left us for the Great Ballpark in the Sky, I’ve changed my mind.

In a sport now reduced to algorithms and pitching clocks, Valenzuela represents more than a team or a career. He was the magic of baseball at its best.

Baseball, more than any other sport, sees the emergence of players with each generation who fundamentally change not only the game, but the imagination. They personify intangibles that sabermetrics can never quantify and that fans long to encounter: hope. Passion. Joy. Brilliance.

Babe Ruth was one such player. Jackie Robinson, of course. Ichiro Suzuki. Shohei Ohtani.

That also applied to Fernando Valenzuela.

What comes to people’s minds — even those who were no longer alive when Valenzuela retired for good in 1997 — is not the San Diego Padre or the St. Louis Cardinal. They’re not even really thinking about the Dodger. They think of Fernandomania. Few can tell you a specific game he was involved in, or any game other than his 1990 no-hitter. They think of the mythical Valenzuela of 1981, the shy, portly pitcher with the unorthodox execution who overcame everything by giving it his all.

What could have been shrinks in the shadow of what was: an encounter with the divine. No matter how fleeting the moment is, it changes everyone who is lucky enough to see him, whether in real life or on TV, or in online clips years later, or even just a photo of him on the mound. His magical year has made our lives better and challenges us to be better.

He may be gone, but his spirit never will be.

I never met him, and I never needed to. They always say that you should never meet your heroes after all. Moreover, El Toro will forever live in my thoughts, as his eyes looked to the sky as he mowed down opponents like a bull in the streets of Pamplona.

May Fernando Valenzuela join baseball’s other immortals in Cooperstown.