Fernandomania

Conjunto Michoacan, the veteran Regional Mexican group known for its ranchera and norteño ballads, released “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela,” about the late star Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, in 1981. But the group didn’t do it because everybody was doing it — even though, in the early ’80s, everybody was. “We knew of a few other songs, but were not really inspired by them, because we were focused on what we were doing,” recalls Alejandro Saucedo Garcia, the group’s violinist for 40 years. “He was the king of baseball and everybody in Mexico loved him.” 
“El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela,” the group’s 1981 single, was one of many musical tributes that dominated Mexico and Los Angeles while “El Toro” was racking up hundreds of strikeouts and winning in the World Series. Among the most popular were upbeat salsa-and-disco jam “Go Fernando” by Everardo y Su Flota, a Chicago group whose bandleader died in 2014, and “Cumbia de Fernando Valenzuela,” a more traditional, name-chanting ballad by Los Gatos Negros de Tiberio.

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Conjunto Michoacan, one of the few surviving groups that dipped into Fernandomania at the time, had a songwriter, the late Magdaleno Oliva, who knew Valenzuela well. “They would have conversations about baseball and stuff,” Saucedo Garcia recalls, through a translator, by phone from his home in Taretan, Michoacán, Mexico. “The song was very famous,” he adds. “On the radio all over the place. We toured in Mexico and the U.S. and played the song.”

Valenzuela, who died last week at 63, was born in a small Mexican town, Etchohuaquila, Sonora, before becoming the only baseball pitcher ever to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. He was magnetic and dominant and a sort of folk hero to Latino baseball fans, particularly those with Mexican heritage. Still outraged about Dodger Stadium displacing a heavily Latino Los Angeles community called Chavez Ravine in the ’60s to bring baseball to the city, many local Hispanics plunged into Fernandomania.

“My parents, right away, you know, they started crying. We all cried,” Sergio Juarez, a baseball fan who grew up near Dodger Stadium, recently told NBC Los Angeles. “It was different because Fernando looked like us. Fernando was someone that was humble, and he broke barriers that a lot of people wouldn’t even reach.

“And to see a person that had a Spanish surname, Mexican-American, came from a small town,” he added. “It was very special.”

Corridos represent a 200-year-old tradition of story-songs that frequently deal with David-vs.-Goliath-type battles of lone heroes taking on institutions; they were an adaptable way of saluting Valenzuela in the ’80s. In a Los Angeles Times essay after the Dodgers retired Valenzuela’s No. 34, Michael Jamie-Becerra, a University of California Riverside assistant professor of creative writing, wrote that Conjunto Michoacan’s track “would have you believe that Fernando’s on-field success could be attributed to his having a noble heart, caring for his parents and being an all-around good guy.”

Conjunto Michoacan recorded “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela” for Odeon Records, an imprint owned by major label EMI that is now part of the University of California Los Angeles’ Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings. Although the track has only 1,087 YouTube views and is not available on most streaming services, Conjunto Michoacan has recently played it live throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Its fans include the Guatemalan YouTube commenter who posted that he listened to the group’s music “when I went to herd sheep in the field with my radio with pure rayobac batteries.”

Saucedo Garcia says the group plans to release a new version of “El Corrido de Fernando Valenzuela” with updated lyrics and perform it on upcoming tours. “New things about his achievements and his passing,” he says.

The 65-year-old violinist continues to follow baseball, including the World Series, in which the Dodgers have a 3-0 lead over the New York Yankees. He has a rooting interest: “I would like the winners to be the team of Fernando Valenzuela,” he says.