2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Fernando Valenzuela

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Though he won the Rookie of the Year award, a Cy Young, and a World Series all in his first full season while beginning a six-year streak of All-Star selections — the first of those as the game’s starter — Fernando Valenzuela wasn’t just a star pitcher. He was an international icon, the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, and a beloved global ambassador who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball while helping to heal the wounds caused by the building of Dodger Stadium, the very ballpark in which he starred.

“Roberto Clemente is ‘The Great One,’ but culturally, Fernando Valenzuela has been more significant in terms of bringing a fan base that didn’t exist in baseball,” José de Jesus Ortiz, the first Latino president of the BBWAA, told author Erik Sherman for Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, a 2023 biography of Valenzuela. Sherman himself described the pitcher as “like a composite of the Beatles — only in Dodger blue. His appeal was universal.”

After excelling in a relief role during a September 1980 cup of coffee with the Dodgers — as a 19-year-old in the heat of a playoff race, no less — Valenzuela took the world by storm the following spring. Pressed into service as the Opening Day starter, he threw a five-hit shutout, then reeled off four more shutouts and six more complete games within his first eight starts, a span during which he posted a 0.50 ERA. Despite speaking barely a word of English, the portly portsider (listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, but generally presumed to be at least 20 pounds heavier) charmed the baseball world with his bashful smile while bedeviling hitters with impeccable command of his screwball, delivered following a high leg kick and a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup.

Within the first two months of that whirlwind season, Valenzuela graced the cover of Sports Illustrated and was a guest at a White House luncheon. Fans flocked to his games in Los Angeles and elsewhere as Fernandomania took hold of baseball. The seven-week players’ strike interrupted some of his momentum, but he nonetheless came up big in time to help the Dodgers win their first World Series championship since 1965. He turned in dominant performances in two elimination games, then gutted out a legendary 147-pitch complete game that turned the World Series around.

Valenzuela spent parts of 17 seasons in the majors, and while he had two other top-three finishes in the Cy Young voting, joined the 20-win club, threw a no-hitter, and helped his teams to three more playoff berths, his performance never quite lived up to that rookie season. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda worked him so hard that he threw more innings from 1981–87, his age-20 to age-26 seasons, than all but one pitcher (Jack Morris, who had one-third of an inning more). Predictably, arm troubles followed, and he spent the back half of his career as a journeyman innings-eater.

As a third-generation Dodgers fan who had watched the team lose the 1977 and ’78 World Series to the Yankees at the dawn of my baseball fandom, I quickly took to Valenzuela as my favorite player. I clipped the box scores from his eight-start run out of the Salt Lake Tribune and taped them into a notebook. I shelled out for the 1981 Topps Traded set just to acquire a rare Valenzuela rookie card, and devoured every scrap of news regarding him that I could get my hands on. I only saw him pitch in person once, during spring training at Vero Beach in 1989, when he was rehabbing from an injury that cost him a chance to pitch in a second World Series. As an adult, I bought a personalized Valenzuela no. 34 jersey, and got to wear it at the Dodgers game where the franchise belatedly retired his number — which hadn’t been worn by any Dodger since his 1991 departure — in 2023.

Thus I’ve spent my entire professional career staring at Valenzuela’s statistics, hoping to find a way to make them add up to a case worthy of Cooperstown. His late-career struggles left him with numbers that don’t really scan as Hall-caliber, as the vast majority of BBWAA voters recognized when he hit the ballot in 2003; he received just 6.3% of the vote, and then 3.8% the following year, not enough to remain eligible. He hadn’t turned up on an Era Committee ballot since then, but his premature death last year due to liver disease — just shy of his 64th birthday and the first Dodgers-Yankees World Series matchup since 1981 — may have led to his placement here. Given that the Era Committee process has focused on players who received at least modest support on the writers’ ballot, I didn’t see this coming.

While I can’t make a case driven primarily by his statistics, I do think that the combination of Valenzuela’s playing career, cultural impact, and two decades as a Spanish-language broadcaster for the Dodgers — serving the very audience he helped to build and expand — is worthy of recognition in the Hall of Fame. Two avenues for doing so come to mind, which I’ll detail below.

Fernando Valenzuela was born on November 1, 1960, the youngest of 12 children of parents Avelino and María, farmers who lived in a house with dirt and concrete floors, no electricity and no running water, in the 150-person town of Etchohuaquila, Mexico. “The family is very, very poor. The farm is about half the size of the Dodger Stadium infield, about from shortstop to home plate,” superscout Mike Brito (he of the omnipresent Panama hat and radar gun) told Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf for a March 23, 1981 feature on the rookie. While growing up, Valenzuela and his six older brothers earned additional money working on a nearby ranch in the afternoons.

As a youngster, Fernando played soccer as well as baseball. By age 13, he had joined his brothers on the town team. The oldest, Rafael, marveled at his arm strength, telling Fernando, “You have the arm to be a pitcher.”

In 1976, the 15-year-old Valenzuela signed his first professional contract with the Mayos de Navojoa of the Mexican Pacific League, a winter league. Thus began a tour through various levels of Mexican baseball. The Cuban-born Brito, who had caught in the Washington Senators organization in the mid-1950s, first spotted Valenzuela in 1978 while scouting a shortstop; pitching for the Guanajuato Tuzos of the Mexican Center League, Valenzuela struck out 12. The next year, Brito brought Dodgers general manager Al Campanis to see Valenzuela pitch for the Leones de Yucatán of the Mexican League, for whom he went 10-12 with a 2.49 ERA and 141 strikeouts. After protracted negotiations on July 6, 1979, the Dodgers paid Jaime Avella — whose Puebla team owned Valenzuela’s rights — $120,000, $20,000 of which went to the pitcher. Avella honored a commitment to give the Dodgers first crack at Valenzuela despite the Yankees’ offering $150,000.

In late 1979, following an impressive three-start stateside debut with the Dodgers’ A-level Lodi affiliate, Valenzuela went to the Arizona Instructional League, where he learned to throw a screwball from Bobby Castillo, an infielder-turned-pitcher who dominated the Mexican League in 1976 and ’77 before coming to Brito’s attention and signing with the Dodgers. Castillo had picked up tips both from major league reliever Enrique Romo and the greatest screwballer of all time, Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell, who counseled his protege to throw fast and slow versions of the pitch.

Valenzuela proved a quick study, more than holding his own as a 19-year-old at Double-A San Antonio in 1980. The Dodgers called him up after a stretch in which he’d gone 7-0 with a 0.87 ERA and 78 strikeouts in 62 innings, a Texas League dry run for the coming streak. Even as a virtual unknown, he drew increasingly loud ovations upon entering games, particularly because he was just the fourth native Mexican to play for the Dodgers since their move from Brooklyn (pitchers Vicente Romo and Jose Pena, and catcher Sergio Robles preceded him) — significant given the franchise’s original sin of evicting nearly 2,000 Mexican American families from the Chavez Ravine barrio. That process began in the early 1950s with the city’s plan to build public housing; when that fell apart, the city used the land to lure owner Walter O’Malley, using eminent domain to clear the last of those families before building Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962. According to Jaime Jarrín, the Dodgers’ Ford Frick Award-winning Spanish-language broadcaster from 1959–2022, O’Malley sought “a Mexican Sandy Koufax” to appeal to the the Mexican community in Southern California and bring them to the ballpark.

Valenzuela arrived amid a tight NL West race. The Dodgers had gone 20-5 from August 19 to September 14 but gained just two games on the division-leading Astros. Debuting on September 15 with two innings of relief against the Braves, Valenzuela struck out Jerry Royster but allowed two unearned runs stemming from errors by his infielders. Four days later, he threw three shutout innings against the Reds, striking out Johnny Bench and three others. Quickly gaining the trust of Lasorda, Valenzuela was thrust into high-leverage situations — and he thrived. In 17 2/3 innings, he allowed just eight hits and five walks while striking out 16; he didn’t yield a single earned run. The Dodgers ended the 162-game schedule by beating the Astros in three straight games to tie them atop the standings, at 92-70. While Valenzuela would have been an inspired choice to start the tiebreaker game, he’d worked two innings the day before, so Lasorda instead tabbed Dave Goltz, who got shellacked; the Dodgers trailed 7-1 by the time Valenzuela turned in two shutout innings.

The wait till next year included considerable hype. The Dodgers featured Valenzuela on the back of their 1981 media guide, Fleer issued a standalone rookie card, and SI’s Wulf penned the aforementioned profile, writing, “His ancestry is Mayan Indian, and he speaks just enough English to order a beer. He is a left-handed pitcher, and his body is more reminiscent of former Dodger left-hander Tommy Lasorda than it is of former Dodger left-hander Sandy Koufax. His future is more Koufax, though, than Lasorda.”

Valenzuela won a rotation spot during spring training, then on Opening Day filled in for Jerry Reuss, who suffered a calf strain. Facing the Astros in front of 50,511 fans at Dodger Stadium, he spun a five-hit shutout, striking out five over the course of 106 pitches. He was off to the races, beginning a streak for the ages.

Both Valenzuela’s San Diego and Houston starts were on three days of rest, for some reason; in the latter, he drove in the game’s only run. Within 24 hours, the Dodgers sold out all of the reserved seats for his next start at Dodger Stadium — an unprecedented occurrence, as team vice president Fred Claire told SI. The word “Fernandomania” made its debut in print atop a Scott Ostler column in the April 27 Los Angeles Times; within, Jarrín, who doubled as Valenzuela’s interpreter, said, “I’ve been doing Dodger games for 24 years and I’ve never seen this kind of reaction to a ballplayer.” So many people questioned Valenzuela’s age that the Times printed a copy of his birth certificate.

In front of 49,478 fans for just his second home start, Valenzuela blanked the Giants while going 3-for-4 and again driving in the game’s first run. The streak, which had helped the Dodgers to a sizzling 14-3 start, led SI’s Jim Kaplan to write about “The Epidemic of Fernando Fever” for its May 4 edition:

Delivered with a high-kicking motion that brings to mind Juan Marichal, Valenzuela’s scroogie tails away from right-handed hitters. When righties crowd the plate to get a better shot at it, Valenzuela jams them with an inside fastball he perfected under the tutelage of Pitching Coach Ron Perranoski. But like most outstanding pitchers, Valenzuela relies as much on carefully nurtured skills as raw ability. “He can hit either corner with his fastball, throw the scroogie at two different speeds and come in with a fine curve,” says Perranoski.

The increased media attention led the Dodgers to limit Valenzuela’s availability on the road to one press conference on his first day in town and another after he pitched. It also led Sports Illustrated to put Valenzuela on the cover of its May 18 edition, just as he began his descent into the more typical ups and downs of a 20-year-old pitcher. On June 9, Valenzuela was a guest of President Ronald Reagan for a state luncheon honoring Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo. Two days later, Valenzuela made his final start before the beginning of the strike. The Dodgers were 36-21 when the players walked out, half a game ahead of the Reds in the NL West race. The settlement of the strike included an agreement that the division leaders would be crowned first-half champions and would face the second-half division winners in a best-of-five series, with the winners advancing to the best-of-five League Championship Series. Thus, the Dodgers’ 27-26 second-half record and third-place finish behind the Astros and Reds mattered little, even if Cincinnati finished with a better overall record (66-42 to their 63-47).

Play resumed with the All-Star Game on August 9. Valenzuela got the starting nod and worked a scoreless inning, surrendering singles to Rod Carew (who was soon caught stealing) and Willie Randolph, then getting George Brett and Dave Winfield to ground out.

Thanks to a strong late-season run, Valenzuela finished 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA (seventh in the NL). His 25 starts, 11 complete games, 192 1/3 innings, and 180 strikeouts — in about two-thirds of a season, remember — all led the league. Facing the Astros in Houston for the Division Series opener, he lost, but with the Dodgers facing elimination, he returned on three days of rest with a complete-game four-hitter in Game 4; Los Angeles won the series in five. Against the Expos in the NLCS, the Dodgers won Game 1, but Valenzuela and company lost Game 2. The series extended to five games, and snow delayed the rubber match for a day, allowing Valenzuela a rare fourth day of rest. He rose to the occasion, driving in the tying run in the fifth inning and holding the Expos to three hits and one run through eight. Rick Monday’s solo homer off Steve Rogers gave the Dodgers the lead in the ninth, and while Valenzuela could record only two outs in the bottom of the frame, reliever Bob Welch needed just one pitch to sew up the pennant.

In a rematch with the Yankees that featured many of the same stars on both sides as in 1977 and ’78 — the longest-running infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey for the Dodgers, and Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles, and Reggie Jackson for the Yankees — the Dodgers fell behind two games to none before returning to L.A. Having thrown 223 regular- and postseason innings to that point, and working on three days of rest for the eighth time that season, Valenzuela wasn’t sharp in Game 3, but he gutted out the start of a lifetime, remaining calm and keeping the Yankees at bay in front of a Dodger Stadium record 56,236 fans. Cey’s three-run first-inning homer off Dave Righetti, the Yankees’ own rookie lefty, staked Valenzuela to a 3-0 lead, but the Yankees clawed back, and took a 4-3 lead via Rick Cerone’s two-run homer in the third, prompting a mound visit from Lasorda. From Jason Turbow’s book on the 1981 Dodgers, They Bled Blue:

Valenzuela figured that he was done for… Lasorda wanted to see for himself just what his pitcher had left. No detail in particular fueled the manager’s decision, but something about Valenzuela’s demeanor convinced him. Instead of yanking Fernando, Lasorda gave him a pep talk. “If you don’t give up another run,” he said in Spanish, according to ESPN, “we’re going to win this ballgame.”

… Valenzuela stared at his manager and responded in English: “Are you sure?”

Valenzuela didn’t throw a clean inning until the seventh, by which point the Dodgers had taken the lead. With his pitch count past 130, he retired the side in order in the ninth, capped by a whiff of Lou Piniella on a fastball.

The victory turned the tide. After winning Games 4 and 5 by one run apiece, the Dodgers blew out the Yankees in the Bronx in Game 6 to clinch the series, allowing Valenzuela to rest his arm instead of starting Game 7. A couple of weeks later, he beat out Tim Raines for NL Rookie of the Year honors, and edged Tom Seaver to become the first rookie to win a Cy Young.

The heavy workload that Valenzuela bore in 1981 did not break him. On the contrary, “El Toro” continued to excel, though not at quite the same level. He posted a 3.19 ERA (113 ERA+) over the next six seasons while averaging 35 starts and 266 innings, and making the NL All-Star team annually through 1986. Including his offense, his 33.6 WAR from 1981–87 ranked second among all pitchers behind only Dave Stieb (35.8). His 1,788 innings trailed only Morris (1,788 1/3), who was also the only pitcher with more complete games in that span (102 to 96). Valenzuela’s 27 shutouts were nine more than the second-ranked Welch, while his 1,448 strikeouts led the majors, 10 ahead of Nolan Ryan.

Valenzuela went 19-13 with a 2.87 ERA (122 ERA+) in 1982, a year the Dodgers were eliminated from contention on the final day of the season; he finished third in the Cy Young voting that year. Prior to the 1983 season, he became the first player awarded $1 million in arbitration. Despite posting a 3.75 ERA (96 ERA+) that season, he helped the Dodgers win the NL West, then delivered an eight-inning one-run performance in their lone NLCS victory against the Phillies. He went 12-17 despite a 3.03 ERA (116 ERA+) and 240 strikeouts in 1984; that season’s highlight may have been his striking out future Hall of Famers Winfield, Jackson, and Brett in the fourth inning of the All-Star Game.

Valenzuela rebounded in 1985, going 17-10 with 208 strikeouts and a 2.45 ERA (141 ERA+) for the division-winning Dodgers. He pitched well in two NLCS starts against the Cardinals, but after leaving a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning of Game 5, he could only watch Ozzie Smith hit a walk-off home run off closer Tom Niedenfuer, the switch-hitting shortstop’s first ever homer while batting left-handed. In February 1986, just ahead of another arbitration hearing, Valenzuela signed a three-year, $5.5 million contract, making him the highest-paid pitcher to that point, and the first to top $2 million in single-season salary (for 1988).

The 1986 season turned out to be Valenzuela’s last great one. He went 21-11, reaching the 20-win plateau for the only time while throwing a league-high 20 complete games, striking out a career-high 242 hitters, and posting a 3.14 ERA (110 ERA+). Again he shined in the All-Star Game, this time beginning a stint of three scoreless innings by striking out Don Mattingly, Cal Ripken Jr., Jesse Barfield, Lou Whitaker, and Teddy Higuera. He was the runner-up to Mike Scott in the NL Cy Young voting, and took home his only Gold Glove.

The innings began taking their toll in 1987, when Valenzuela allowed league-high totals of hits and walks while going 14-14 with a 3.98 ERA (101 ERA+); his first win, a strong seven-inning effort against the Giants on April 12, was the 100th of his career. Alas, it was mostly downhill from there. Battling control issues, he struggled to a 4.24 ERA in 142 1/3 innings in 1988, going on the disabled list in early August for the first time of his career due to a stretched anterior capsule, breaking a streak of 255 consecutive starts. Though he returned briefly in September, he was a bystander during the Dodgers’ unlikely championship run, as Orel Hershiser led the way with a record-setting scoreless innings streak and a postseason run for the ages.

Valenzuela spent two more years with the Dodgers, one league average, the other replacement level, but not without a career highlight. On June 29, 1990, he watched former teammate Dave Stewart complete a no-hitter for the A’s against the Blue Jays. As Mike Scioscia recalled in 2017, just before going out to warm up for his start against the Cardinals, “Fernando pokes his head in [to the bullpen]… and says, ‘Hey, you saw one on TV, now you’re going to see one in person.’ And he walks out of the bullpen, and throws a no-hitter.”

“If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!” broadcaster Vin Scully exclaimed after Valenzuela sealed the game by deflecting a Pedro Guerrero comebacker right to perfectly positioned second baseman Juan Samuel, who began a game-ending double play.

The Dodgers made the painful decision to cut Valenzuela loose near the end of a rough spring training in 1991. He signed a minor league deal with the Angels, but was rocked in two starts before being sidelined by a rare condition that restricted the blood flow near his heart. Medication helped alleviate the problem, but he finished the season in the minors, with uninspiring results. He went to spring training with the Tigers in 1992, but didn’t make the team. In June, his contract was sold to the Jalisco Charros of the Mexican League; after opening 0-5, he finished 10-9 with a 3.86 ERA. He returned to the majors with the Orioles in 1993, going 8-10 with a 4.94 ERA (91 ERA+), and after another stint with Jalisco made eight appearances for the Phillies in ’94. His lone win in the strike-shortened season, an eight-inning, three-run start against the Dodgers in Philadelphia on July 17, was the 150th of his career.

After the work stoppage ended in April 1995, Valenzuela signed with the Padres. He wasn’t very good that year, but he enjoyed a renaissance in 1996, going 13-8 with a 3.62 ERA (110 ERA+) — by far his best post-Dodgers season — and helped beat out his old team for the NL West title. On August 16, 1996, he had the honor of starting for the Padres against the Mets in a game played in Monterrey, Mexico, the first regular season major league game played outside the U.S. and Canada. He threw six shutout innings as the Padres built a 15-0 lead, but allowed the first three batters to reach in the seventh, and they all ended up scoring in what turned into a 15-10 mess.

On August 28, 1996, Valenzuela notched his 2,000th career strikeout by fanning the Mets’ Edgardo Alfonzo.

Valenzuela couldn’t muster the same magic in 1997. After going 2-8 with a 4.75 ERA for the Padres, he was traded to the Cardinals as part of a six-player deal on June 13. He went 0-4 in five starts before being released on July 15. At 36 years old, his major league career was done.

Not quite ready to hang up his spikes, Valenzuela spent winters pitching in the Mexican Pacific League, doing well enough that in January 1999, the Dodgers invited him to spring training to audition for a relief role. The Padres expressed interest as well, but he declined to pursue either opportunity; regarding the Dodgers, he was still embittered about his 1991 release, over which he filed a grievance on the grounds it was financially motivated. (It was unsuccessful.) He continued to provide innings for the Aguilas de Mexicali club as late as the 2007-08 season, when he was 46; for the 2006–07 season, he was joined by son Fernando Valenzuela Jr., born in 1982, a former 10th-round pick out of UNLV who spent four years in the affiliated minors with the Padres and White Sox, climbing as high as Double-A, and then continued his career in Mexico.

Valenzuela kept his distance from the Dodgers until June 2003, when he rejoined the organization to do color commentary for Spanish-language radio broadcasts alongside Jarrín and Pepe Yñiguez. “We’ve been trying to get him back to the organization for so long,” said vice president for communications Derrick Hall. He credited team chairman/CEO Bob Daly, “who on his first day here said, ‘Get Fernando. Get Fernando.’” Valenzuela spent 22 seasons in the booth, moving to the Dodgers’ Spanish-language television broadcasts on SportsNet LA in 2015.

Beyond broadcasting, Valenzuela also served his home country as the pitching coach for Team Mexico during the 2006, ’09, ’13, and ’17 World Baseball Classics. Mexico didn’t get further than the second round in any of those tournaments, but it wasn’t hard to see the pride Valenzuela took in representing the national team. In 2014, he was elected to the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame, and in 2019, the Mexican League retired his jersey no. 34 on a league-wide basis.

…

Aside from his rookie season, Valenzuela only led his league in major categories a few times: in wins (21) in 1986, and in complete games (20 in 1986, 12 in ’87). Less impressively, due to his high innings counts, he also had years where he led in hits, walks, earned runs, and wild pitches. He did have a significant leaderboard presence, finishing among his league’s top five in strikeouts seven times, in the top 10 in ERA four times, and in the top 10 in pitching WAR five times, including second in 1981 (4.8) and third in ’86 (5.3). Still, his final totals of 173 wins and 2,074 strikeouts aren’t Hall caliber, nor is his 104 ERA+; for all the innings piled on his plate in his early years, he didn’t even reach 3,000 for his career.

Even with his leaderboard appearances and an extra 4.1 WAR added via his offense (he was a .200/.205/.262 hitter with 10 career homers, and a 7-for-19 line as a pinch-hitter), Valenzuela’s 41.4 career WAR ranks just 172nd among starting pitchers, and his 36.6 S-JAWS 173rd; both are ahead of only four of the 65 Hall of Fame starters (Catfish Hunter, Lefty Gomez, Jesse Haines, and Rube Marquard). His adjusted peak score of 31.7 WAR is tied for 158th, ahead of just seven Hall of Famers (Mickey Welch, Eppa Rixey, Pud Galvin, Marquard, Haines, Hunter, and Morris). His stellar body of postseason work (5-1 with a 1.98 ERA in 63 2/3 innings) isn’t enough to make up for his statistical shortfall in other areas.

While the numbers aren’t there, I do see precedent for honoring Valenzuela based upon the combination of his playing career, his cultural impact, and his post-career roles within baseball. In 2022, the Early Baseball Era Committee elected Buck O’Neil, whose 10-year career playing mainly for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League was just one facet of a life in baseball that spanned from 1937 to his death in 2006, and that has continued to resonate. O’Neil also managed the Monarchs as the Negro Leagues were in decline, then served as a pioneering scout who connected Ernie Banks to the Cubs and Elston Howard to the Yankees, signed Lou Brock, and scouted Lee Smith. He was the first Black coach for an AL or NL team, and finally, he was an ambassador for the Negro Leagues, playing an outsized role in raising awareness of Black baseball and in recognizing its greats. He spent 21 years on the Veterans Committee, offering eyewitness testimony on his cohorts, served as subject and narrator in Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary series Baseball, co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and crusaded for Negro Leagues players deserving election to the Hall, though he himself came up short in the 2006 Special Committee on the Negro Leagues election that added 17 deceased honorees to the Hall. It took a reconfiguration of the Era Committee system to make him and his cohorts eligible for election again, and the choice to honor him was an outside-the-box one given the hybrid nature of his career. The Hall classifies him not as a player but as a pioneer/executive.

The 2022 Early Baseball Committee could have elected another candidate along those same lines, namely Lefty O’Doul, who similarly had an impact that extended well beyond his playing career and left a mark on an entire country. O’Doul starred in the majors as an outfielder in the late 1920s and early ’30s after arm troubles curtailed his pitching career; he won two NL batting titles (1929 and ’32), but his greater impact on the game was as a pioneer of Japanese baseball. He organized tours of Japan by American stars, taught the fundamentals of the game to Japanese players both before and after World War II, and helped to found the Japanese Baseball League, a forerunner of today’s Nippon Professional Baseball. Building on research into the Veterans Committee by Graham Womack, O’Doul has been considered for election by committees at least 13 times, but in 2022 he once again fell short (five votes out of 16).

The case for Valenzuela rests upon his status as a trailblazer and ambassador on top of his years of stardom — a modern-day pioneer, not just a player. “A strong argument can be made that he introduced baseball to more people around the world than any ballplayer who has ever lived,” wrote Sherman in Daybreak. “In the years since [his arrival], nobody has transformed baseball’s landscape more than Valenzuela, whose presence was as sport-altering as Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson were in their day.”

While I’m not quite convinced Valenzuela belongs at the level of Ruth and Robinson, his impact upon Los Angeles and throughout Latin America was huge. His arrival and subsequent success helped to unite L.A., a racially divided city not only scarred by the Battle of Chavez Ravine, but also by the ensuing decades of mistreatment and prejudice against Mexican Americans. Circa 1959, when the Dodgers played at the Los Angeles Coliseum as Dodger Stadium was being built, only eight percent of the crowds were Latino, according to Jarrín. By 2019, that figure was up around 46 percent, the legacy of the inroads made by Valenzuela’s run with the team.

“He inspired so many kids throughout Latin America that might have had doubts about themselves,” José Mota, one of Valenzuela’s broadcasting colleagues (and the son of former pinch-hitting specialist Manny Mota) told Sherman. “What people noticed was this humble kid that didn’t look like a baseball specimen, so they believed if he could succeed, they could too. In Mexico, if they have enough talent, they’ll be given a chance now because of Fernando. The same holds true not just in my country, the Dominican Republic… but also in other places, like Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. Fernando was not Mexican for us — he was just a Latino guy. He had a plethora of countries that identified with him and considered him as one of [their own].”

“Fernando’s baseball fingerprints are all over the place today,” said Richard Santillan, a founding member of the Latino Baseball History Project at California State University, San Bernardino in 2021. “From Mexican music being played on the PA system to Mexican food being sold at stadiums, the accent marks on the back of jerseys with Spanish-speaking surnames, almost every Major League Baseball team broadcasting games in Spanish and the dramatic shift in demographics of the fan base not only here in L.A., but throughout baseball.”

Asking an Era Committee to weigh one candidate’s cultural impact against the statistical merits of other candidates may be a tall order, particularly given the extent to which historians and media members have been squeezed by the Hall’s own choice of panelists. The 2023 Contemporary committee included just three media members/historians, and while last year’s Classic Baseball committee included five, two were experts on Black baseball to help account for the candidacies of a pair of Negro Leagues stars, manager Vic Harris and pitcher John Donaldson, though neither was elected.

The other means by which the Hall could honor Valenzuela would be via the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, which was established in 2008 and which is “presented by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors not more than once every three years to honor an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.” The award practically sounds as though it were created for Valenzuela, who checks those boxes like few other figures in baseball history. It may not be a bronze plaque, but it is a high-level recognition for long and meritorious service to the game in ways that aren’t necessarily easy to quantify or pigeonhole.

While I think that award might be the more likely outcome for Valenzuela — if not in 2026, then sometime down the road — so long as he’s on the Era Committee ballot, I think it’s worth pushing the envelope. Hall voters sorely need the flexibility to recognize figures whose careers don’t neatly fit into one box, and whether or not Valenzuela gets in on this ballot, I think it’s important to press for the elections of candidates such as O’Doul and seven-time Gold Glove winner Curt Flood, who sacrificed his career to challenge the Reserve Clause. With some of this ballot’s reheated candidacies, the Hall seems desperate to find wholesome alternatives to PED-linked players with big numbers. In Valenzuela, they have one, and he’s a genuine hero to a sizable chunk of baseball’s fan base.