Sports

Fernandomania No Mas

April 13, 2011

Multiple Pages
Fernandomania No Mas

With the Census Bureau announcing this spring that the number of Hispanics in America has surpassed 50 million—a large majority of them of Mexican background—it’s worth remembering the “Fernandomania” that swept the country 30 years ago.

America held only 15 million Hispanics when Fernando Valenzuela, a 20-year-old rookie Los Angeles Dodgers baseball pitcher from Mexico, started the 1981 season with eight straight wins, five of them shutouts. (In contrast, the 2010 Dodgers chalked up only four shutouts over 162 games.) Whenever Fernando pitched, attendance would soar as Latinos and others rushed to the ballpark to cheer on the uniquely charismatic phenom.

To young fans who only know Valenzuela from his statistics, it’s hard to understand his fame. Even in his 1981-1986 prime before his arm wore out from too many screwballs, Fernando’s stats were good but not great.

That he couldn’t (or, at least initially, wouldn’t) speak English only added to his mystique. His pudgy physique increased his Everyman appeal. Pitching never came easy to him. He labored on the mound. His elaborate windup, in which his eyes rolled back like a Baroque martyr offering up a last prayer, was designed to put the maximum possible torque on his screwball. Constantly behind in the count with men on base, he pitched himself out of innumerable jams. His World Series-saving win over the New York Yankees in 1981 was as melodramatic as any telenovela. Starting on short rest, Valenzuela allowed 16 baserunners but still somehow went all the way to triumph.

“In an American celebrity culture with so many yapping, who counts the quiet?”


I recount this ancient history because it illuminates the curious question of why there are so few Mexican superstars today in any branch of American popular culture other than boxing. Sure, there are stars—actress Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives, third baseman Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays, and others of similar wattage—but why so few superstars, especially in contrast to African-Americans?

The conventional wisdom’s response to this query is fourfold. First (and most common): Failure to notice. As Sherlock Holmes observed in “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” it’s hard to discern the dog that doesn’t bark. In an American celebrity culture with so many yapping, who counts the quiet?

Second: Deny the possibility of a Mexican-American shortfall based on first principles. Because it’s axiomatic that a young, growing population injects vibrancy into our culture, it’s simply inconceivable.

Third: Blame discrimination. Prejudice is the only admissible explanation for why Mexicans don’t get their fair share of superstardom. Yet Fernandomania happened. It wasn’t even unplanned. The Dodgers’ late owner Walter O’Malley had long searched for “a Mexican Sandy Koufax,” an East LA counterpart to the superb Brooklyn-born southpaw who electrified West LA’s huge Jewish community by averaging over 24 wins per season in 1963-1966. (Dodger scouts subsequently canvassed Mexico for decades looking in vain for the second coming of Fernando.) Further, everybody in 1981 loved Fernando. Attendance at Dodger road games averaged nine thousand higher when Valenzuela pitched, even in cities with a negligible Latino presence.

Fourth: Attribute the lack of Mexican superstars to insufficient role models. This popular rationalization is a variation on Zeno’s paradoxes, those ancient reductiones ad absurdum. Just as Achilles can never catch the tortoise, how can a Mexican-American become, say, a tennis superstar without a Mexican role model? Yet Pancho Gonzales, an ex-juvenile delinquent from East LA, was perhaps America’s most famous tennis player from the late 1940s to the early 70s. Similarly, Nancy Lopez became the most popular woman golfer ever (as measured in consumer packaged-goods endorsements) by winning five straight tournaments as a 21-year-old rookie in 1978.

In the 1970s, Lee Trevino ranked right behind Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in golf fame. In retelling, his career sounds like a mash-up of a half-dozen implausible made-for-TV movies. At age five, Trevino missed school to pick cotton. He dropped out at 14 to caddy, joined the Marines, and then became a driving-range pro and golf hustler. He’d take your money using just a shovel and a Dr. Pepper bottle for a club.

Blessed and cursed with a standup comic’s personality, the Merry Mexican privately battled the comedian’s demon of depression. Then, at the 1975 Western Open, Trevino was struck by lightning. He laboriously overcame spinal injuries to finally win another major championship in 1984 at age 44. Instead of being made into a movie, Trevino’s career is now mostly as obscure as the reasons Mexican-Americans have faded in the struggle for fame.

But at his peak Lee Trevino was “Supermex,” defeating the mighty Nicklaus in major championships while cracking nonstop jokes with his adoring gallery, Lee’s Fleas: “You can call me a Spaniard now, because who ever heard of a rich Mexican?”

 

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