ETCHOHUAQUILA, Mexico —
It’s no Discipline of Goals, this bumpy patch of sun-baked earth with pale chalk traces, no bleachers, not a blade of grass and a drooping line of wire separating the outfield from homes the place scraggly canines lurk. But that is the place the dream took maintain.
It’s the place Mexico’s personal The Pure honed his abilities, his supply that includes the signature skyward tilt, as if searching for heavenly intervention for his choices from the mound.
“El Zurdo learned to pitch here,” recalled Filiberto Velázquez. “It’s hard to believe, no?”
El Zurdo — “The Lefty” — could be Fernando Valenzuela, the youngest of 12 youngsters from this desert hamlet in northwest Mexico who would corral a mix of ineffable expertise and gritty willpower to impress Southern California and the baseball universe.
A person locations a candle on the base of a statue honoring late former Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela outdoors the Pan-American stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. Valenzuela died the day before today on the age of 63.
(Alfredo Moya/AP)
Although the stadium in Hermosillo, the Sonora state capital, has lengthy been named after Fernando Valenzuela, right here in Etchohuaquila — inhabitants perhaps 500 — there isn’t any public monument to the native son, now greater than 4 many years after the heady summer season of Fernandomania.
The opposite night, a bunch of younger individuals outdoors Etchohuaquila’s solely store appeared perplexed when requested if they’d heard of the area’s most famous citizen. Then one answered.
“Yes, I know who he was — he played baseball with my father,” stated 19-year-old Iván Valenzuela (no relation). “They say he was a great man,” he added, earlier than leaping onto his motorcycle and tooling away.
However, for an older era, Valenzuela stays a vivid presence, each an inspiration and a reminder of youth. Velázquez, a former mayor within the space, is 63, the identical age as Valenzuela when he died. One can hear the surprise nonetheless evident in his voice when he remembers the unbelievable trajectory of the soft-spoken grade-school dropout who left this place behind and have become a baseball icon.
“He was a giant, a legend,” stated Velázquez. “We are so proud that he came from our pueblo.”
Many right here see the present Dodgers-Yankees World Collection matchup as a throwback to the groups’ final postseason showdown — the memorable 1981 duel, throughout peak Fernandomania, by which a gritty Valenzuela led the Dodgers again from a two-game deficit to take out New York.
It’s a welcome diversion in a spot — “town” is just too beneficiant a phrase — that has reverted to arduous instances. Most streets stay unpaved. Years of drought have devastated agriculture and the cattle trade that after offered a residing for Valenzuela’s late father, Avelino, a vaquero who toiled for space ranches, although he might barely afford livestock of his personal.
But his sons all the time had time for baseball, and younger Fernando by no means lacked a companion: He had six older brothers to play with.
Father Avelino and mom Hermenegilda Anguamea de Valenzuela pose with eight of the 12 Valenzuela brothers and sisters in entrance of their household adobe in Etchohuaquila, within the municipality of Navojoa within the state of Sonora, Mexico, on April 27, 1981.
(Jose Galvez/Jose Galvez / Los Angeles Occasions)
“The Valenzuelas were a baseball family. I had the great privilege of knowing them well and being in their home many times,” stated Casimiro Luna Serna, 76, former president of a regional beginner baseball league. “Fernando was raised between the bats and the balls. ”
Early on, he displayed uncanny talent.
“Even as a kid in school, he flashed that talent,” stated Luna, who now runs a household carnitas restaurant alongside the primary freeway. “He had a different level of talent. He was a phenomenon from a young age. But he was always a very reserved person, he didn’t talk much — like everyone in his family.”
Eladio Castelo Gómez, now 73, remembers being on a neighborhood all-star staff with Valenzuela when the phenom, then skinny and shaggy-haired, was solely 16 or 17.
“I was a lot older than he, but I was so impressed,” stated Castelo, who spoke outdoors his residence after his day by day horse-back jaunt by means of the desert. “He was just a boy, but there was that innate ability. He put down 17 batters in a row. And we became friends.”
Throughout Valenzuela’s Nineteen Eighties heyday, this complete space skilled its personal model of Fernandomanía.
“When Fernando became famous, everything here changed,” stated Luna, sitting at a plastic desk at his household’s outside eatery. “When he pitched, everyone was watching on the television, or listening on the radio. People came from all over to see where Fernando was born. He made a lot of people love baseball.”
Valenzuela signed his first skilled contract in 1978 with Los Mayos, a Mexican Pacific League staff within the close by metropolis of Navojoa. The membership is known as after an space Indigenous group to which many space households, together with the Valenzuelas, hint their origins.
“At that time we gave him a bonus of 5,000 pesos and a monthly salary of 3,500 pesos,” recalled Fernando Esquer Peñuñuri, former president of the Navojoa staff. “That was a good salary,” stated Esquer, now 85, seated in his residence workplace, a Dodgers cap on his head and a Dodgers mug and Valenzuela bobble-head on his desk.
In at the moment’s {dollars}, that’s a $1,034 bonus and a month-to-month paycheck of $724.
Fernando Esquer Peñuñuri, former president of Los Mayos, a staff Fernando Valenzuela performed for, remembers Valenzuela’s profession.
(Patrick J. McDonnell / Los Angeles Occasions)
On the wall in Esquer’s workplace is a framed copy of the contract, with Valenzuela’s signature. A bookshelf shows baseballs bearing the signatures of baseball luminaries, together with Valenzuela and Rickey Henderson — the longer term Corridor of Famer who, earlier than his main league debut, led Los Mayos to their first championship in 1978-79.
Valenzuela went on to varied stops throughout the Mexican leagues earlier than being seen by legendary Dodger scout Mike Brito, who helped persuade the staff to signal him. Valenzuela discovered his iconic screwball — a pitch that few can grasp — not in Mexico, however within the Dodger’s’ minor-league system.
Youths right here and elsewhere in Sonora state nonetheless play béisbol —the popular sport throughout a lot of northern Mexico as an alternative of soccer. And, whereas Mexican-born gamers proceed to ascend to the key leagues, none has approached Valenzuela’s degree of feat or fame.
As we speak, the followers who as soon as made the pilgrimage to Etchohuaquila from as far-off as Southern California to view the birthplace of their idol are lengthy gone.
Past the recollections, the one hint of the nice man is La Casa — the rambling, Spanish-style residence with a terracotta roof, stucco partitions and inlaid ceramic tiles that Valenzuela constructed for his household throughout the exhilarating, and financially remunerative, days of Fernandomania. The pitcher employed a well known architect to design the one-story construction, which sits atop an elevated stone basis on the identical property the place Valenzuela and his siblings had been reared in a cramped residence with out working water.
Some right here categorical disappointment that Valenzuela didn’t make investments extra in the neighborhood. Most space baseball diamonds stay derelict. As soon as his dad and mom handed away, the star’s visits residence grew to become much less frequent.
“Fernando wasn’t very dedicated to the people of his barrio — beyond his own family,” stated Luna, the previous league president. “He seemed to distance himself from the community.”
A view of the massive home in 1983 that Fernando Valenzuela constructed for his household in Etchohuaquila, a small city throughout the municipality of Navojoa within the state of Sonora, Mexico.
(Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Tim)
La Casa looms above a largely flat panorama dotted with mesquite bushes. A Los Angeles Occasions account from 1983 referred to the home, tongue in cheek, as “the adobe equivalent of Lincoln’s log cabin,” noting how Fernando fanatics flocked to the positioning, even breaching the wire perimeter to look contained in the home windows.
“Fernando’s house, like Fernando, is public property,” the article stated. “He is everybody’s son, and this is everybody’s house.”
A number of surviving siblings, in-laws and others nonetheless reside at La Casa. They largely prevented the media invasion that ensued upon phrase of Valenzuela’s loss of life. However the household invited relations, neighbors and others to an open-air memorial Mass Thursday night within the patio behind the house.
A flower-bedecked, close to life-sized {photograph} of Valenzuela hurling from the mound in Dodger blue-and white stood to the suitable of the makeshift altar.
“Fernando Valenzuela was always a humble person who, through perseverance and ability, managed to overcome difficult circumstances and become a great star of sports,” stated Father Baudelio Magallanez García. “We are here in the house that he built, a blessing for his family. And he is an inspiration for many young people — who, hopefully, will follow this path and not evil ones.”
His relations, as is their customized, had little to say. Nonetheless lingering, for the household and others, is a permanent thriller: How did Fernando Valenzuela make all of it the way in which to the highest from that bumpy patch of sun-baked earth?
“I don’t know,” stated his brother Gerardo, shaking his head. “All of the brothers in the family played baseball. All of us. But, for some reason, only Fernando could reach such heights.”
Particular correspondent Miguel Valenzuela (no relation to Fernando) in Etchohuaquila and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico Metropolis contributed.
