Why it’s past time to elect Fernando Valenzuela to the Hall of Fame

In 2023, the Dodgers finally retired the number 34, worn with distinction by Fernando Valenzuela. It had been 42 years since the Fernandomania season, 26 years since Valenzuela last threw a pitch in the major leagues.

Better late than never. The Dodgers generally don’t retire the number of players not selected for the Hall of Fame, but it’s never too late to make the right choice.

On Sunday, a committee is scheduled to vote on whether Valenzuela should be admitted to the Hall of Fame. To the members of the committee: we recommend Valenzuela with the same adage: it is never too late to do the right thing.

“He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” said longtime Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrín, himself a Hall of Famer.

“The Hall of Fame is of course a special, special place. But what Fernando did for baseball, very few have done.”

Eight players are on the ballot and eligible for a second chance in Cooperstown after the Baseball Writers Assn. of America passed them all on: Valenzuela, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy and Gary Sheffield.

The 16-person committee includes seven Hall of Famers, two owners (including the Angels’ Arte Moreno), four former general managers, two writers and a statistician. Each committee member can vote for up to three players; 12 votes are required for the election.

In numbers alone, Valenzuela’s candidacy is borderline. Sandy Koufax or Clayton Kershaw, he wasn’t.

Yet of the 90 pitchers in the room, according to Baseball Reference, Valenzuela had a better ERA (3.54) than 11 of them. One of them, Jack Morris, had a 3.90 ERA. He was elected by a commission like the one that will examine Valenzuela.

Morris was a workaholic and five-time All-Star, best known for one game: a 10-inning shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. But Valenzuela, a workaholic, Cy Young Award winner and six-time All-Star, threw a complete-game 147 pitches in Game 3 of the 1981 World Series, with the Dodgers in danger of losing the first three games of the series. Valenzuela’s career postseason ERA: 1.98. For Morris: 3.80.

If you evaluate Valenzuela on numbers alone, you’re missing half the story and legacy of a player who transformed a city and a sport.

The Dodgers built their stadium on land that previously housed three Latino neighborhoods. The city of Los Angeles had planned major housing projects there and had evicted the residents, long before the Dodgers left Brooklyn. The projects were never built, but many Latinos viewed the destruction of neighborhoods and eviction of residents as an original sin of the Dodgers and vowed never to set foot inside Dodger Stadium.

Until 1981, when a shy, modestly chubby and virtually anonymous 20-year-old Mexican showed up, looked at the sky before every pitch and began his rookie season with eight straight wins, including seven complete games and five shutouts.

This was the origin of Fernandomania.

Shohei Ohtani attracts baseball fans around the world. Valenzuela attracted humans from everywhere.

“People who hadn’t really thought about baseball or Dodger Stadium,” said Peter O’Malley, who became Dodgers president in 1970 and then owner from 1979 to 1998. “All of a sudden, they were coming. They were flying from everywhere to see it.

Fernando Valenzuela looks up before throwing a pitch.

(Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Los Angeles Times)

“He captured everyone’s imagination. It was the most exciting moment for me on my watch.”

If they didn’t come to Dodger Stadium, they came to see it elsewhere. President Reagan invited Valenzuela to a White House event with the president of Mexico.

“He was able to generate such interest in baseball – not only in the Dodgers, but in baseball in general,” Jarrín said. “In St. Louis. In Atlanta. In New York. In Chicago. They went wild when Fernando was pitching – 10,000 more people in the stadium when he was pitching.”

The Dodgers quickly set up a radio network in Mexico, so that Jarrín’s broadcasts of Valenzuela’s games could be heard south of the border.

And talk about bringing the city together: In Los Angeles, half of the televisions in use were tuned to Valenzuela on a Friday night, 60 percent on a Sunday, the Times reported.

“It was like watching the pope,” actor Danny Trejo said in the Times’ 12-part Fernandomania@40 documentary series. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re one of the committee members voting on Sunday.

The series did not focus on interviews with players or fans. Valenzuela’s impact on the community has been widely told through the words of a playwright, filmmaker, historian, actor, singer, songwriter, and mayor.

O’Malley said, “He has never gotten the credit he deserves for the impact he has had on baseball – not just on the Dodgers organization, but on Mexican baseball, international baseball and the community.”

Valenzuela belongs in the Hall of Fame because his legacy outlasted his career.

The Dodgers didn’t attract 3 million fans in any of their first 20 years in Los Angeles. They collected 3.6 million in Valenzuela’s first full season, 3.5 million in his second, and now 3 million is a disappointment rather than an aspiration.

Jarrín said the Dodgers’ Latino fan base has grown from “8, 9, 10 percent” when he started calling their games in 1959 to nearly 50 percent today.

And when Valenzuela made his debut, O’Malley said international baseball was “a nonexistent topic” in league meetings. Coming off a World Series that set viewership records in Canada and Japan, and ahead of the World Baseball Classic in three months, Valenzuela’s election to the Hall of Fame would not only be dignified, but entirely appropriate.

Fernando Valenzuela in 1982.

(George Rose/Los Angeles Times)

The Hall of Fame includes players born in Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Japan, Panama, Puerto Rico, Netherlands and Venezuela.

Valenzuela would be the first Mexican player. The Hall of Fame’s motto: “Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations.” » Who is best suited?

“An entire nation knows the Hall of Fame very well,” Jarrín said. “I’m sure they would declare a holy day the day Fernando comes in.”

And we know what we’d say: if you have a sombrero, throw it skyward.