Fernando Inherits the Treasures of a Sport Gone Mad

You don’t want to grow resentful because baseball players are earning the immense salaries they are today.

Their pay is so outrageous it makes a mockery of everyday endeavor, but don’t get bitter. Say to yourself:

“Look, if the money doesn’t land in the pants of the players, it will land in the pants of the owners. Why should I care whose pants it lands in?”

Nor do you want to say, when the Dodgers unload $2.55 million on Fernando Valenzuela for winning 13 games:

“If that guy couldn’t play baseball, he would be unpacking crates.”

Always remember that if Pavarotti couldn’t sing, he might be a waiter.

Throwing a baseball is a unique skill. As Tom Lasorda says: “More guys can do heart surgery than win 20 games.

If you want to say that Valenzuela is a lucky individual, living in a day when 13 wins will bring one $2.55 million, feel free to make that judgment.

His earned-run average last year ran 4.59. Of the 33 games he started, he completed but five.

The year before, he won only 10 games. And the year before that, he won the grand total of five.

So, without fear of contradiction, you can conclude it is a player’s market today, as evidenced by the fact the Dodgers are paying Darryl Strawberry $4 million a year--and guys are making even more, beginning with Jose Canseco, to whom Oakland is paying $4.7 million.

All we wish to point out is that the economics of baseball are such that teams can proffer such wages without crashing; we also note that ownerships are paying the price today for their mischief.

Under the commissionership of Peter Ueberroth, they banded together to control wages. They did this by refusing to sign free agents.

Such a course of action is all right if one doesn’t get caught, same as sticking up banks.

But the owners were nailed for collusion. They were penalized heavily and, worse for them, salaries have now spiraled out of control.

“Has the baseball world gone mad?” we ask a Dodger executive.

“If it has,” he answers, “we can’t get off. The market is established. We pay or go out of business.”

Valenzuela, Prince of Sonora, began modestly with the Dodgers in 1981, earning $40,000.

Ten years later, his rise, you can see, is meteoric, based on what is less than his peak time. Catfish Hunter used to say:

“If a guy doesn’t work 280 innings, don’t tell me he’s a starting pitcher.”

Fernando last year worked 204, or eight more than the season before. But he has moved up the corporate ladder dramatically since leaving his village of Etchohuaquila, where, he once told us, life rises and falls on friendly rains, due to the absence of irrigation.

No rain, no crops, no dinero.

Fernando began playing baseball at 12, engaging in semi-pro games in which he was the youngest participant. Those games, he assures you, were serious. All the players bet. A kid makes a mistake, costing his teammates a wager, and they give him a whack.

Fernando’s age today is listed at 30, but Dodger scouts who discovered him submit he may not know exactly how old he is. In the villages of Mexico, especially three decades or so back, vital statistics weren’t recorded impeccably.

Same as Ellis Island at the turn of the century. Asked their age by immigration authorities, many passing through shrugged.

“Take a guess,” they were told.

They offered a number. For purposes of the record, that was close enough.