Before Jalen Brunson arrived in New York two years ago, the most relevant the Knicks had been over the previous 20 years was during “Linsanity,” that brief stretch during the 2012 season when a little-known second-year player came out of nowhere and inexplicably caught fire, shooting and scoring as if he was the second coming of Bernard King. Jeremy Lin was particularly popular among the younger generation of Knicks fans who had no memory of Patrick Ewing or Willis Reed. But what Gen Zers may not have known was that before Linsanity, there was an even greater sports craze called “Fernandomania.” Unlike Linsanity, which, unfortunately for us Knicks fans, didn’t amount to much other than a few weeks of fun and some national media attention, Fernandomania actually led to a championship and the birth of a genuine new sports star who’d grow into a baseball legend. Fernandomania’s titular figure was Fernando Valenzuela, the left-handed Los Angeles Dodgers phenom who burst onto the baseball scene like a bottle rocket and propelled the Dodgers to the 1981 championship.
Valenzuela, who died on Oct. 22 at the age of 63, was not the greatest pitcher in baseball history, or even the greatest lefty in Dodgers history; Sandy Koufax and Clayton Kershaw outrank him in both categories. But, along with Pedro Martinez, Dwight “Doc” Gooden, and pre-injury Kerry Wood, Valenzuela is on the short list of the most exciting pitchers in baseball history. He is on an even shorter list of first-year wonders such as Madison Bumgarner and Adam Wainwright who led their teams to titles in their rookie seasons. And he is also literally on a list of one: He is the only player in the 150-year history of major league baseball to have won the Cy Young award in his rookie season.
Fernando Valenzuela was born on Nov. 1, 1960, in Etchohuaquila, Mexico. When he was 17 and pitching for a Mexican league team in 1978, a Dodgers scout discovered him by chance, and the team signed him to a minor league contract the next year. Valenzuela was called up to the majors in 1980, when he made 10 relief appearances without giving up a run. His official rookie season, and the summer that would launch Fernandomania, came the following year. Valenzuela won his first eight starts, five of which were complete-game shutouts, surrendering runs as rarely as a desert traveler dispenses sips of water from his canteen. Fans flocked to Dodger Stadium in record numbers, captivated by his pitching prowess and fascinated by his unusual windup, which was like nothing any baseball fan had ever seen before. He would corkscrew his body 180 degrees, kick his right leg high up like a cabaret dancer, and cast his eyes to the heavens as if lost in a trance before quickly turning back around and firing one of his five different pitches, among them a virtually unhittable screwball, back toward bewildered batters.
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Despite his career’s brilliant beginning, Valenzuela’s time at the top was short-lived compared to other all-time pitching greats, mostly due to a shoulder injury he suffered in 1988. After the Dodgers released him before the start of the 1991 season, Valenzuela became a baseball vagabond and “learned how hard is the road / going down and then up another man’s stairs,” as Dante is told in The Divine Comedy when his ancestor Cacciaguida warns him about his impending exile in Canto XVII of Paradiso. Valenzuela would go on to pitch for an additional five MLB teams over the next seven seasons and a Mexican League team before retiring in 1997. Still, though, Valenzuela’s passion for the game was not yet spent, and he continued to pitch for Mexican winter league teams well into his 40s.
Valenzuela’s death comes at a poignant time, as the Dodgers prepare to take on the New York Yankees in this year’s World Series. Yankees-Dodgers is the most common World Series matchup in sports history — the baseball equivalent to Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals matchups. But the Yankees and Dodgers haven’t met in the World Series since 1981, the year Valenzuela pitched the Dodgers to the National League pennant. During that ’81 series, the Dodgers dropped the first two games and were facing a likely insurmountable 3-0 hole. LA sent its rookie sensation to the mound in a must-win Game 3. Valenzuela, despite not being nearly as dominant as he had been during the regular season, still won the game, turning around the series, which the Dodgers eventually won in six games — their first World Series victory over their former crosstown New York rivals since 1963. Here’s hoping that Valenzuela’s spirit will be with the Dodgers during this Fall Classic to help them defeat those damn Yankees once again.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.