REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK | Remembering Fernando Valenzuela

Publisher: Fernando Valenzuela, the legendary Mexican-born pitcher who became a cultural icon during his time with the Los Angeles Dodgers, has passed away at 63. Valenzuela died on Tuesday night at a hospital in Los Angeles. The Dodgers announced his death but did not provide details about the cause. Pasadena Now Features Editor Eddie Rivera was a big fan.

He was my first national cover story.

We sat together in the third base dugout at Dodger Stadium, in his first official season, surrounded by scores of international reporters as I stumbled through my broken Spanish to try and interview him.

I had been recruited by then-editor Phil Tracy at the LA Weekly, who had been asked by John Walsh, the editor at Newsweek’s Inside Sports magazine, to find a “Mexican writer who knows baseball.”

I’m not quite sure who recommended me, but I was the closest they could come to one.

In fact, when I was asked to do the assignment, I was told to report to Dodger Stadium the next afternoon at 3 p.m. I was taken aback for a moment. I thought Fernando Valenzuela was a boxer.

So much for me knowing baseball.

There in the dugout, Dodger scout Mike Brito was translating my clumsy Spanish into actual Spanish for Fernando to answer in Spanish back to him, and then Brito would translate that back into English for me. You could train a monkey to do what I was doing.

A few days later, I traveled to his tiny home in the tiny town of Etchohuaquila, Sonora, Mexico to interview his parents. They were even quieter than he was.

A few days after the story came out, I was driving down Sunset Boulevard at North Broadway. Glancing to my left, I  saw Fernando,  alongside me on his way to his apartment on Figueroa Street, with Brito at the wheel. He looked over at me and I saw that quick look of recognition in his eyes.

He gestured to his head to say, “You got a haircut!” And then they drove away.

As the years went by and I covered the Dodgers for a host of publications, I would see Fernando in the press box, either dining with Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin in their private dining room, or chatting in the hallways with Dodger personnel or Mike Brito.

He was friendly, but quiet and unassuming. I was always afraid to say hello to him.

Many years later, when I found copies of the magazine for sale on eBay, I bought all I could find and I brought him two copies.

He came walking towards me in the press box one late afternoon, and I said, “You might not remember me, Fernando, but I interviewed you in your first full season. These are for you.”

He looked at the cover photograph and said “You took this picture?”

“No, Fernando, I wrote that story about you, and I brought you this magazine for you to keep.”

For just a split second, his face broke. He looked at me, and said, “You didn’t have to do that.”

I think he was a little bit embarrassed. But we had a moment.

I just smiled. We shook hands, and then he turned and headed back to the broadcast booth, the magazines under his arm. I’ll never forget that.

So long, Fernando. You were always my favorite Dodger.