SUNTORY COLLECTION

Opinion: Fernando Valenzuela will always have a place on my Día de Muertos altar

There once was a lefty from Etchohuaquila Whose screwball dropped better than any tequila His rookie shutouts fanned Fernandomania Conquering L.A. and filling up stadia Dodger, Padre, Angel, O, Card, and Phil The hurler, then broadcaster, was king of the hill Death now has announced El Toro’s final goodbye If you have a sombrero, throw []

Opinion: Fernando Valenzuela will always have a place on my Día de Muertos altar + ' Main Photo'

There once was a lefty from EtchohuaquilaWhose screwball dropped better than any tequilaHis rookie shutouts fanned FernandomaniaConquering L.A. and filling up stadiaDodger, Padre, Angel, O, Card, and PhilThe hurler, then broadcaster, was king of the hillDeath now has announced El Toro’s final goodbyeIf you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky

I became a big fan of Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican pitcher from Sonora state who died of liver cancer Oct. 22, during his phenomenal rookie year in 1981. I also have long been fascinated by Mexico’s folk culture and its representations of people as skeletons along with its humorous calavera literaria poems such as the one above that are published around Nov. 2, the Day of the Dead.

These interests converged after I got to know Marialuisa Vilchis Kaprielian, the owner of the Tesoros de Mexico shop in Old Town San Diego, which carried papier-mâché skeleton figures made by Mexico City artist Joel García. She worked out a deal in 1993 for García, who had studied his craft under the great Pedro Linares, to create a skeleton likeness of Fernando for me.

For me, there is a link between Major League Baseball and Día de los Muertos. There are Padres, Dodgers and Yankees caps, T-shirts and bobbleheads with Day of the Dead themes. After Fernando died, altars for him popped up around Los Angeles. In Hollywood’s Forever Cemetery, Mexican Americans’ graves have long been adorned with Dodgers themes for Día de los Muertos, sometimes with skeletons representing Dodgers greats such as Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, Pedro Guerrero and Fernando.

In 1981, after my sister Nancy moved to Los Angeles, I flew out from the East Coast to see her — and also to watch Fernando pitch at Dodger Stadium. It was not his best game, as he gave up three runs in 4 1/3 innings to the Cincinnati Reds in a no-decision. But I had gotten to see for myself how “Fernandomania” was electrifying the stands, which he filled with incredibly large numbers of Mexican Americans.

I worshipped at the altar of baseball more than ever when he helped lead the Dodgers past the Yankees in the World Series that year, also winning Rookie of the Year, the Cy Young and the Silver Slugger for pitchers. As Dodgers announcer Vin Scully put it, “The 1981 season and Fernandomania bordered on a religious experience.”

In 1990, after Fernando pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals, getting former 1981 teammate Guerrero to hit into a game-ending double play, Scully came up with another great line, “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”

When I was growing up in Florida, there was no major league team anywhere close, and I, as a proponent for equality, became a Dodger fan after reading Jackie Robinson’s biography in the first grade. But I also rooted for the Padres in the 1984 World Series against the victorious Tigers. And after arriving here to work for the San Diego Union in 1985, I was part of a group that held Padres season tickets and was sorely disappointed when the Padres lost the series to the Yankees in 1998.

The year after he came to San Diego, Fernando won the first major league game played in Mexico as the Padres defeated the New York Mets in Monterrey in 1996.

I had hopes that Fernando would autograph my papier-mâché sculpture, but then-Padres vice president for Latino marketing, Enrique Morones, rightly told me that no representation of Valenzuela wearing Dodgers blue would be coming anywhere close to the ballpark on his watch.

After my mother — a big baseball fan — died in 1995, a day before Mickey Mantle, I began a tradition of having my own Day of the Dead altar. The altar later grew to memorialize my father and sister Patsy. This year, Fernando joined the group.

And in his honor, Dodger players wore a patch with his number, 34, which was retired in 2023, during their World Series victory over the Yankees this year.

Fernando, who would have turned 64 Friday, leaves so many memories, not least of which was his glance toward the heavens before heaving the ball to the plate. Now we are looking toward the heavens. Adiós, Fernando. Descansa en paz, and welcome to baseball immortality.

Gaddis Smith is a former foreign editor and Mexico columnist for the San Diego Union. He lives in San Diego.