Fernando Valenzuela (1960-2024), Ace Pitcher and Global Ambassador

On October 23, 1981 in Los Angeles, the Dodgers found themselves in an all-too-familiar spot: on the short end of a World Series tally against the Yankees. Down two games to none after the first leg of the series in the Bronx, they needed a win at Dodger Stadium to maintain any real hope of a comeback. Fortunately, they had an ace up their sleeve in Fernando Valenzuela. The portly 20-year-old Mexican southpaw had seemingly emerged from nowhere to become an overnight sensation, when he opened the season with eight straight wins, five of them shutouts. He would not be as stingy on this night, instead gritting out an 147-pitch complete game, working around nine hits and seven walks with what felt like unlimited reserves of guile and moxie — a Herculean effort that recalled Luis Tiant’s 155-pitch grind in Game 4 of the 1975 World Series. The Dodgers’ 5-4 victory turned the World Series around; they won the next three games as well, taking the series in six without needing their young ace again.

Sadly, just three days away from the first World Series rematch between the two storied franchises since then, Valenzuela died on Tuesday at the age of 63. No cause of death was given. In late September, he left his role as one of the team’s Spanish-language broadcasters and was hospitalized; on October 2, the Dodgers announced that he had stepped away “to focus on his health,” and that his family had “asked for privacy during this time.” The Dodgers announced on Thursday that they will wear a patch in his honor, both for the World Series and for 2025.

This is an absolutely heartbreaking turn of events, not only for the Dodgers and their fans but for the baseball world in Southern California and beyond. Valenzuela wasn’t just a star pitcher, he was a beloved global ambassador who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball and helped to heal the wounds caused by the building of the very ballpark in which he starred. His appeal was hardly limited to those who shared his background. For me, an 11-year-old baseball nut and third-generation Dodgers fan growing up in Salt Lake City, Valenzuela was a contemporary hero, a magical player whose superhuman feats made anything seem possible. The phenom whose box scores I clipped from the Salt Lake Tribune became the equalizer who helped avenge the team’s back-to-back losses to the Yankees in the 1977 and ’78 World Series, at the dawn of my baseball consciousness.

Despite speaking barely a word of English, Valenzuela had become an international celebrity in 1981, charming the baseball world — and expanding its reach — with his bashful smile while bedeviling hitters with impeccable command of his screwball, delivered following a high leg kick and a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup. Fans flocked to his games in Los Angeles and elsewhere, setting off Fernandomania. Valenzuela graced the cover of Sports Illustrated less than two months into his rookie season, and soon afterward was invited to the White House. In Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, a 2023 biography, author Erik Sherman described the pitcher as baseball’s version of the Beatles, a composite of the Fab Four with a universal appeal.

Valenzuela won the 1981 NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, made six consecutive All-Star teams during a 17-season major league career, and then spent the past 22 seasons in his broadcasting role. In 2019, the team included him within their inaugural class of Legends of Dodger Baseball. In 2023, the Dodgers dedicated a full Fernandomania Weekend in his honor. The festivities culminated with the retirement of his jersey no. 34, which equipment manager Mitch Poole had kept out of circulation since his 1991 release. The franchise had almost exclusively limited jersey retirements to Hall of Famers, but the move befit Valenzuela’s iconic stature with the team and within the larger community. The lone exception to the policy came in 1978, when coach Jim Gilliam, who had starred for the Dodgers during a 1953–66 run, died of a brain hemorrhage on October 8, the day after the Dodgers won the NLCS.

“Roberto Clemente is ‘The Great One,’ but culturally, Fernando Valenzuela has been more significant in terms of bringing a fan base that didn’t exist in baseball,” José de Jesus Ortiz, the first Latino president of the BBWAA, told Sherman for Daybreak. In the New York Times, Scott Miller reported that the Dodgers estimate that more than 40% of their current fan base is Hispanic.

My favorite photo of Fernando Valenzuela, because it captures the joy and the magic of Fernandomania. The boy shaking his hand is proud to wear his charro outfit, proud to be exactly who he is. Fernandomania was all about the power of representation and the power of authenticity. pic.twitter.com/s9LzchocCy

— Nathalie Alonso (@NathalieMLB) October 23, 2024

“He is one of the most influential Dodgers ever and belongs on the Mount Rushmore of franchise heroes,” Stan Kasten, team president and CEO, said in a statement. “He galvanized the fan base with the Fernandomania season of 1981 and has remained close to our hearts ever since, not only as a player but also as a broadcaster. He has left us all too soon.”

For his career, Valenzuela went 173-153 with a 3.54 ERA (104 ERA+), 31 shutouts, and 2,074 strikeouts in 2,930 innings. In addition to winning the Cy Young, he placed among the top five in voting three other times. He sparkled in October, going 5-1 with a 1.98 ERA in 63 2/3 innings. In eight postseason starts, he allowed more than three runs just once, in the aforementioned World Series game.

Valenzuela didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but the 150-person town of Etchohuaquila, Mexico, where he was born on November 1, 1960, was the humblest of beginnings. He was the youngest of 12 children of parents Avelino and María, farmers who lived in a house with dirt and concrete floors, no electricity and no running water. “The family is very, very poor. The farm is about half the size of the Dodger Stadium infield, about from shortstop to home plate,” superscout Mike Brito (he of the omnipresent Panama hat and radar gun) told Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf for a March 23, 1981 feature on the rookie. While growing up, Valenzuela and his six older brothers earned additional money working on a nearby ranch in the afternoons.

As a youngster, Fernando played soccer as well as baseball. By age 13, he had joined his brothers on the town team. The oldest, Rafael, marveled at his arm strength, telling Fernando, “You have the arm to be a pitcher.”

In 1976, the 15-year-old Valenzuela signed his first professional contract with the Mayos de Navojoa of the Mexican Pacific League, a winter league; they farmed him out to their affiliate, Cafeteros de Tepic. The next year, he signed with Puebla of the Mexican Central League, and in turn the team loaned him to the Guanajuato Tuzos, for whom he went 5-6 with a 2.23 ERA and a league-high 91 strikeouts. After the MCL was absorbed into the Mexican League the following year, Valenzuela went 10-12 with a 2.49 ERA and 141 strikeouts for Leones de Yucatán.

The Cuban-born Brito, who had caught in the Washington Senators organization in the mid-1950s, spotted Valenzuela while scouting Silao shortstop Ali Uscanga in a game against Guanajuato, a start in which Valenzuela struck out 12 batters. The next year, Brito brought Dodgers general manager Al Campanis to Mexico to see Valenzuela pitch. After protracted negotiations, the Dodgers paid Puebla owner Jaime Avella $120,000 — $20,000 of which went to the pitcher. Avella honored a commitment to give the Dodgers first crack at Valenzuela despite the Yankees’ offering $150,000.

In late 1979, Valenzuela made an impressive three-start stateside debut with the Dodgers’ A-level Lodi affiliate, and was sent to the Arizona Instructional League, where his future Dodgers teammate Bobby Castillo — a Brito discovery who had washed out as an infielder in the Royals organization, and then dominated as a pitcher in the Mexican League in 1976 and ’77 before being signed by the Dodgers — taught the young lefty the screwball. Castillo had picked up tips both from major league reliever Enrique Romo and the greatest screwballer of all time, Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell, who counseled his protege to throw fast and slow versions of the pitch.

Valenzuela proved a quick study, more than holding his own as a 19-year-old at Double-A San Antonio in 1980. The Dodgers called him up after a stretch in which he’d gone 7-0 with a 0.87 ERA and 78 strikeouts in 62 innings, a Texas League dry run for the coming streak. Even as a virtual unknown, he drew increasingly loud ovations upon entering games, particularly because he was just the second native Mexican to pitch for the Dodgers since their move to L.A. — significant given the original sin of evicting nearly 2,000 Mexican American families from the Chavez Ravine barrio. That process began in the early 1950s with the city’s plan to build public housing; when those plans fell apart, the city used the land to lure O’Malley, using eminent domain to clear the last of those families before building Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962.

According to Jaime Jarrín, the Dodgers’ Ford Frick Award-winning Spanish-language broadcaster from 1959–2022, owner Walter O’Malley sought “a Mexican Sandy Koufax“ in order to grow the fan base. “He realized it was very, very important to please the Mexican community in Southern California, because he knew that they were going to come to the ballpark,” Jarrín told the Los Angeles Times for a 2021 documentary series, Fernandomania at 40.

Valenzuela arrived amid a tight NL West race. The Dodgers had gone 20-5 from August 19 to September 14 but gained just two games on the division-leading Astros. Debuting on September 15 with two innings of relief against the Braves, Valenzuela struck out Jerry Royster but allowed two unearned runs stemming from errors by his infielders. Four days later, he threw three shutout innings against the Reds, striking out Johnny Bench and three others. Quickly gaining the trust of manager Tommy Lasorda, he was thrust into high-leverage situations — and he dominated. In 17 2/3 innings, he allowed just eight hits and five walks while striking out 16; he didn’t yield a single earned run. The Dodgers ended the 162-game schedule by beating the Astros in three straight games to tie them at 92-70. While Valenzuela would have been an inspired choice to start the tiebreaker game, he’d worked two innings the day before, so Lasorda instead tabbed Dave Goltz, who got shellacked; the Dodgers trailed 7-1 by the time Valenzuela turned in two shutout innings.

The wait till next year included considerable hype. The Dodgers featured Valenzuela on the back of their 1981 media guide, Fleer issued a standalone rookie card, and SI’s Wulf penned the aforementioned profile, writing, “His ancestry is Mayan Indian, and he speaks just enough English to order a beer. He is a left-handed pitcher, and his body is more reminiscent of former Dodger left-hander Tommy Lasorda than it is of former Dodger left-hander Sandy Koufax. His future is more Koufax, though, than Lasorda.”

With staff stalwart Don Sutton departing via free agency after the 1980 season, the pump was primed for the team to produce a third straight NL Rookie of the Year to follow Rick Sutcliffe (1979) and Steve Howe (1980). Expected to compete with Sutcliffe and Goltz for a rotation spot behind Jerry Reuss, Burt Hooton, and Bob Welch, Valenzuela won the battle, then was tabbed to fill in for Reuss, who suffered a calf strain, on Opening Day. Facing the Astros in front of 50,511 fans at Dodger Stadium, he spun a five-hit shutout, striking out five over the course of 106 pitches. He was off to the races.

Both Valenzuela’s San Diego and Houston starts were on three days of rest, for some reason; in the latter, he drove in the game’s only run. Within 24 hours, the Dodgers sold out all of the reserved seats for his next start at Dodger Stadium — an unprecedented occurrence, as team vice president Fred Claire told SI. The word “Fernandomania” made its debut in print atop a Scott Ostler column in the April 27 Los Angeles Times; within, Jarrín, who was doubling as Valenzuela’s interpreter, said, “I’ve been doing Dodger games for 24 years and I’ve never seen this kind of reaction to a ballplayer.” So many people questioned Valenzuela’s age that the Times printed a copy of his birth certificate.

In front of 49,478 fans for just his second home start, Valenzuela blanked the Giants while going 3-for-4 and again driving in the game’s first run. The streak, which had helped the Dodgers to a sizzling 14-3 start, led SI’s Jim Kaplan to write about “The Epidemic of Fernando Fever” for its May 4 edition:

Delivered with a high-kicking motion that brings to mind Juan Marichal, Valenzuela’s scroogie tails away from right-handed hitters. When righties crowd the plate to get a better shot at it, Valenzuela jams them with an inside fastball he perfected under the tutelage of Pitching Coach Ron Perranoski. But like most outstanding pitchers, Valenzuela relies as much on carefully nurtured skills as raw ability. “He can hit either corner with his fastball, throw the scroogie at two different speeds and come in with a fine curve,” says Perranoski.

The increased media attention led the Dodgers to limit Valenzuela’s availability on the road to one press conference on his first day in town, and another after he pitched. At Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, he ran his scoreless streak to 36 innings before surrendering the game-tying run; he yielded to a pinch-hitter in the top of the 10th, during which the Dodgers scored five runs. Kaplan checked in again in New York for what would become the magazine’s May 18 cover story. In front of 39,848 fans at Shea Stadium, he stranded seven runners in the first three innings, finishing with a 137-pitch, 11-strikeout complete game. “Like a crafty fish, Valenzuela had allowed the Mets a good chase (five walks, seven hits) but no catch,” wrote Kaplan. “And like frustrated fishermen, the Mets had nothing to show for their efforts but exasperation.”

Rematched against the Expos, Valenzuela allowed just three hits, but two were solo homers; a third-inning shot by Chris Speier was not only the first that Valenzuela surrendered in the majors but the first time that he had fallen behind on the scoreboard all season. Pedro Guerrero’s walk-off home made him a winner nonetheless, running his record to 8-0 with a 0.50 ERA. His string of victories had matched a feat last accomplished by Red Sox right-hander Dave “Boo” Ferriss in 1945. With no Baseball-Reference Play Index in those days, writers invoking Ferriss’ name likely didn’t know the precocious lefty had matched the feat of an even bigger name in baseball history — or that both had been far outdone:

On May 18 (cover jinx alert!), Valenzuela allowed four runs in seven innings against the Phillies, beginning a descent into the more typical ups and downs of a 20-year-old pitcher. Of course, not every 20-year-old gets invited to the White House between starts, as Valenzuela was by President Ronald Reagan for a state luncheon honoring Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo on June 9. Two days later, he made his final start before the beginning of the seven-week players’ strike.

The Dodgers were 36-21 when the players walked out, half a game ahead of the Reds in the NL West race. When the strike was finally settled, the powers that be agreed that the division leaders would be crowned first-half champions and would face the second-half division winners in a best-of-five series, with the winners advancing to the best-of-five League Championship Series. Thus the Dodgers’ 27-26 second-half record and third-place finish behind the Astros and Reds was of little consequence, even if the Reds finished with a better overall record (66-42 to their 63-47).

Play resumed with the All-Star Game on August 9. Valenzuela got the starting nod and worked a scoreless inning, surrendering singles to Rod Carew (who was soon caught stealing) and Willie Randolph, then getting George Brett and Dave Winfield to ground out.

Thanks to a six-start, 52-inning stretch that included just seven runs allowed, Valenzuela finished 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA (seventh in the NL). His 25 starts, 11 complete games, 192 1/3 innings, and 180 strikeouts — in about two-thirds of a season, remember — all led the league. Facing the Astros in Houston to start the Division Series, Valenzuela lost the opener, and the Dodgers dropped Game 2 as well. Back in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won Game 3, and Valenzuela returned on three days of rest with a complete-game four-hitter in Game 4; they won the series in five. Against the Expos in the NLCS, the Dodgers won Game 1, but Valenzuela and company lost Game 2, then dropped Game 3 as well. The series extended to five games; snow delayed the rubber match for a day, allowing Valenzuela a rare fourth day of rest. He rose to the occasion, driving in the tying run in the fifth inning and holding the Expos to three hits and one run through eight. Rick Monday’s solo homer off Steve Rogers gave the Dodgers the lead in the ninth, and while Valenzuela could record only two outs in the bottom of the frame, Welch needed just one pitch to sew up the pennant.

In a rematch with the Yankees that featured many of the same stars on both sides as in 1977 and ’78 — the longest-running infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey for the Dodgers, Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles, and Reggie Jackson for the Yankees — the Dodgers fell behind two games to none before returning to L.A. Having thrown 223 regular- and postseason innings to that point, and working on three days of rest for the eighth time that season, Valenzuela wasn’t sharp in Game 3, but he gutted out the start of a lifetime, remaining calm and keeping the Yankees at bay in front of a stadium record 56,236 fans. Cey’s three-run first-inning homer off Dave Righetti, the Yankees’ own rookie lefty, staked Valenzuela to a 3-0 lead, but the Yankees clawed back while he tried to navigate traffic. Rick Cerone’s two-run homer put New York up 4-3 in the third, prompting a mound visit from Lasorda instead of Perranoski. From Jason Turbow’s book on the 1981 Dodgers, They Bled Blue:

Valenzuela figured that he was done for… Lasorda wanted to see for himself just what his pitcher had left. No detail in particular fueled the manager’s decision, but something about Valenzuela’s demeanor convinced him. Instead of yanking Fernando, Lasorda gave him a pep talk. “If you don’t give up another run,” he said in Spanish, according to ESPN, “we’re going to win this ballgame.”

… Valenzuela stared at his manager and responded in English: “Are you sure?”

Further jams ensued, as Valenzuela allowed the next two batters to reach base before striking out Righetti with his 72nd pitch; he wouldn’t throw a clean inning until the seventh. The Dodgers took the lead on a two-run rally in the fifth against relievers George Frazier and Rudy May, and Valenzuela survived a scare in the eighth, getting a double play off the bat of pinch-hitter Bobby Murcer after putting the first two men on base. With his pitch count past 130, he retired the side in order in the ninth, capped by a whiff of Lou Piniella on a fastball.

The victory turned the tide. After winning Games 4 and 5 by one run apiece, the Dodgers blew out the Yankees in the Bronx in Game 6 to claim their first championship since 1965. Instead of throwing Game 7, Valenzuela could rest his arm. A couple of weeks later, he beat out Tim Raines for NL Rookie of the Year honors, and edged Tom Seaver to become the first rookie to win a Cy Young.

The heavy workload that Valenzuela bore in 1981 did not break him. On the contrary, “El Toro” continued to excel, posting a 3.04 ERA (116 ERA+) over the next five seasons while averaging 35 starts and 269 innings, and making the NL All-Star team annually. His 27.1 bWAR from 1981–86 ranked second only to Dave Stieb (33.6). He went 19-13 with a 2.87 ERA (122 ERA+) in 1982, a year the Dodgers were eliminated from contention on the final day of the season; he finished third in the Cy Young voting that year. Prior to the 1983 season, he became the first player awarded $1 million in arbitration. Despite posting a 3.75 ERA (96 ERA+) that season, he helped the Dodgers win the NL West, then delivered an eight-inning one-run performance for what turned out to be their lone NLCS victory against the Phillies. He went 12-17 despite a 3.03 ERA (116 ERA+) and 240 strikeouts in 1984; that season’s highlight may have been his striking out Winfield, Jackson, and Brett — all future Hall of Famers — in the fourth inning of the All-Star Game.

Valenzuela rebounded in 1985, going 17-10 with 208 strikeouts and a 2.45 ERA (141 ERA+) for the division-winning Dodgers. He pitched well in two NLCS starts against the Cardinals, but after leaving a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning of Game 5, he could only watch Ozzie Smith hit a walk-off homer off closer Tom Niedenfuer, the switch-hitting shortstop’s first ever while batting left-handed. In February 1986, just ahead of another arbitration hearing, he signed a three-year, $5.5 million contract, making him the highest-paid pitcher to that point, and the first to top $2 million in single-season salary (for 1988).

The 1986 season turned out to be Valenzuela’s last great one. He went 21-11, reaching the 20-win plateau for the only time while throwing a league-high 20 compete games, striking out a career-high 242 hitters, and posting a 3.14 ERA (110 ERA+). Again he shined in the All-Star Game, this time beginning a stint of three scoreless innings by striking out Don Mattingly, Cal Ripken Jr., Jesse Barfield, Lou Whitaker, and Teddy Higuera. He was the runner-up to Mike Scott in the NL Cy Young voting, and took home his only Gold Glove.

The innings began taking their toll in 1987, when Valenzuela allowed league-high totals of hits and walks while going 14-14 with a 3.98 ERA (101 ERA+); his first win, a strong seven-inning effort against the Giants on April 12, was the 100th of his career. Battling control issues, he struggled to a 4.24 ERA in 1988, going on the disabled list in early August for the first time due to a stretched anterior capsule, breaking a streak of 255 consecutive starts. Though he returned briefly in September, he was a bystander during the Dodgers’ unlikely championship run, as Orel Hershiser led the way with a record-setting scoreless innings streak and a postseason run for the ages.

Valenzuela spent two more years with the Dodgers, one league average, the other replacement level, but not without a career highlight. On June 29, 1990, he watched former teammate Dave Stewart complete a no-hitter for the A’s against the Blue Jays. As Mike Scioscia recalled in 2017, just before going out to warm up for his start against the Cardinals, “Fernando pokes his head in [to the bullpen]… and says, ‘Hey, you saw one on TV, now you’re going to see one in person.’ And he walks out of the bullpen, and throws a no-hitter.”

“If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!” broadcaster Vin Scully exclaimed after Valenzuela sealed the game by deflecting a Pedro Guerrero comebacker right to perfectly positioned second baseman Juan Samuel, who began a game-ending double play.

While Valenzuela admitted that he had only been kidding about his prediction, the day remains the only one in major league history to feature multiple no-hitters.

The Dodgers made the painful decision to cut Valenzuela loose near the end of a rough spring training in 1991. The late-March timing caused a rift. Had the Dodgers waited another week, they would have owed the entirety of his arbitration-determined $2.55 million salary; by releasing him when they did, they only had to pay him one-quarter of that amount. “It’s very tough to swallow… There’s no doubt he can still pitch. I don’t understand it,” said Scioscia. Valenzuela, agent Dick Moss, and MLBPA counsel Gene Orza soon filed an unsuccessful grievance asserting that the release was financially motivated. Lasorda took the team’s side, asserting his belief that the decision was performance-based, and that the pitcher’s major league career was over. The hurt would linger for over a decade.

Valenzuela signed a minor league deal with the Angels, but was rocked in two starts before being sidelined by a rare condition that restricted the blood flow near his heart. Medication helped alleviate the problem, but he finished the season in the minors, with uninspiring results. He went to spring training with the Tigers in 1992, but didn’t make the team. In June, his contract was sold to the Jalisco Charros of the Mexican League; after opening 0-5, he finished 10-9 with a 3.86 ERA. He returned to the majors with the Orioles in 1993, going 8-10 with a 4.94 ERA (91 ERA+), and after another stint with Jalisco made eight appearances for the Phillies in ’94. His lone win in the strike-shortened season, an eight-inning, three-run start against the Dodgers in Philadelphia on July 17, was the 150th of his career.

After the lockout ended in April 1995, Valenzuela signed with the Padres. While he wasn’t very good that year, he enjoyed a renaissance in 1996, going 13-8 with a 3.62 ERA (110 ERA+) — by far his best post-Dodgers season — and helped beat out his old team for the NL West title. On August 28, 1996, he notched his 2,000th career strikeout by fanning the Mets’ Edgardo Alfonzo.

Valenzuela couldn’t muster the same magic in 1997. After going 2-8 with a 4.75 ERA for the Padres, he was traded to the Cardinals as part of a six-player deal on June 13. He went 0-4 in five starts before being released on July 15. At 36 years old, his major league career was done.

Not quite ready to hang up his spikes, Valenzuela spent winters pitching in the Mexican Pacific League, doing well enough that in January 1999, the Dodgers invited him to spring training to audition for a relief role. The Padres expressed interest as well, but he declined to pursue either opportunity, still embittered about the end of his tenure in Los Angeles. He continued to provide innings for the Aguilas de Mexicali club as late as the 2007-08 season, when he was 46.

At Mexicali during the winter of 2006–07, Valenzuela was joined by son Fernando Valenzuela Jr. (b. 1982), a former 10th-round pick out of UNLV who spent four years in the affiliated minors with the Padres and White Sox, climbing as high as Double-A. The younger Valenzuela continued to play in independent leagues, the Mexican League, and the Mexican Pacific League until the 2016–17 season. In February 2017, the elder Valenzuela bought into the Mexican League’s Quintana Roo Tigres. Fernando Jr. became team president, while another son, Ricky, served as GM.

Valenzuela kept his distance from the Dodgers until June 2003, when he rejoined the organization to do color commentary for Spanish-language radio broadcasts alongside Jarrín and Pepe Yñiguez. “We’ve been trying to get him back to the organization for so long,” said vice president for communications Derrick Hall. He credited team chairman/CEO Bob Daly, “who on his first day here said, ‘Get Fernando. Get Fernando.’”

Because the soft-spoken Valenzuela was somewhat uncomfortable with criticizing players, Jarrín hit on a strategy of interviewing him throughout the game, inviting him to offer his own perspective. In 2015, Valenzuela joined Yñiguez and former teammate Manny Mota for Spanish television broadcasts on SportsNet; later Jarrín and José Mota (Manny’s son) would work alongside him in that capacity.

Valenzuela served on the coaching staff of Team Mexico for the 2006, ’09, ’13, and ’17 World Baseball Classics. In 2014, he was elected to the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2019, the Mexican League retired his jersey no. 34 leaguewide.

First eligible for election to the Hall of Fame in 2003, Valenzuela received just 6.2% on the BBWAA ballot, then fell off after slipping to 3.8% in ’04. Based on his statistics, including 41.5 career WAR and 36.6 S-JAWS (172nd all-time), it was the right call. While there’s a case to be made when considering his role as a broadcaster and ambassador, Era Committee voters have shown little inclination to recognize such hybrid candidacies, most notably bypassing pitcher-turned-outfielder Lefty O’Doul, who won batting titles in 1929 and ’32 before his pioneering work spreading baseball to Japan before and after World War II.

As I told Sherman for Daybreak, Valenzuela’s accomplishments and meritorious service may be a better fit for the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, which is “presented by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors not more than once every three years to honor an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”

Few figures in baseball history have checked those boxes in the manner of Valenzuela. With typical humility, he dodged the tag of “hero,” but beyond his considerable on-field accomplishments, his impact in expanding baseball’s reach, and in serving as “a beacon of hope, inspiration and pride” for Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and other Latinos, is undeniable.

Editor’s Note, 2:45 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to provide additional context about the eviction of Mexican Americans from the Chavez Ravine barrio, a process that began prior to the construction of Dodger Stadium as part of a City of Los Angeles public housing program that ultimately failed to materialize.