Fernando Valenzuela, Dodgers Legend and Broadcaster, Dies at 63

Former Major League Baseball pitcher and broadcaster Fernando Valenzuela has died, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced Tuesday night.

He was 63. The Dodgers organization did not provide a cause of death,

When Valenzuela pitched opening day for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1981, he began a storybook season that was dubbed “Fernandomania.” The season resulted in Valenzuela putting up one of the most decorated seasons in baseball history, leading the league in strikeouts and winning the National League Cy Young Award, the Rookie of the Year Award, on top of helping the Dodgers win the World Series.

The Mexican pitcher helped bring scores of Mexican fans to the Dodgers and remained a fan favorite long after his retirement. He also worked as a broadcaster for the team after his 17-year MLB career.

“He is one of the most influential Dodgers ever and belongs on the Mount Rushmore of franchise heroes,” Stan Kasten, president & CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said in a statement. “He galvanized the fan base with the Fernandomania season of 1981 and has remained close to our hearts ever since, not only as a player but also as a broadcaster. He has left us all too soon. Our deepest condolences go out to his wife Linda and his family.”

Valenzuela was born in Etchohuaquila, Mexico, in 1960. He was the youngest of 12 children, and his parents farmed the land to support the family. “My brother Rafael was the first one who told me I could play baseball professionally,” Valenzuela told PEOPLE in 1981. “He had played pro ball himself, so he knew. He gave me confidence.”

He left school as a teenager to focus on baseball, and by age 16, he was playing in Mexico’s minor leagues. “I didn’t get much chance to play,” he remembered in 1981. “I was always told I was too young, and I was very lonesome for home. I wanted to be with my parents and my brothers and sisters, but I said to myself, ‘If you want a baseball career, put up with it.’ ” Two years later, he was spotted by a Dodgers scout who bought his contract.

Valenzuela made his major league debut in the fall of 1980 as a relief pitcher. He played in 10 games and earned 10 wins and a save. When the 1981 season came around, he was named the Dodgers’ starter when veteran pitcher Jerry Reuss was injured 24 hours before the game began. He shut out Dodgers’ rival the Houston Astros and ultimately started the season with eight wins, no losses, five shutouts and an ERA of 0.50.

“No one can continue winning like this,” he told PEOPLE that May. “You have to lose, and not just once.”

The baseball world was impressed. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda told PEOPLE, “Nobody’s ever seen anyone break in with this kind of a bang. I’ve run out of words to describe him.”

Valenzuela’s success was in part because he was one of few pitchers who threw a screwball, which he learned while on the Dodgers’ minor-league team. Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell made the pitch famous, and he told PEOPLE of Valenzuela: “He’s the only pitcher I’ve seen in 40 years who can throw it. He’s got the best screwball since mine.”

The 1981 baseball season was paused by a labor strike but ultimately finished that fall. Valenzuela pitched game 3 of the World Series and helped lift the Dodgers to a victory over the New York Yankees. He also became the first — and still only — player to win Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award, for Major League Baseball’s best American and National League pitchers, in the same season.

PEOPLE named him one of the 25 Most Intriguing People of 1981 that December. “Ever since I started playing baseball, I believed that someday I would play in the big leagues,” Valenzuela told PEOPLE. “I am especially pleased to have done something for the game because it is a sport I have loved. Many people back home have started going to the ballparks and playing baseball because of what happened to me.” 

“It is a responsibility having so many children look up to me,” he continued. “I am afraid they will think only of baseball. I would like them to go to school, because I would like to have had more schooling myself.” 

Valenzuela was a six-time All Star. He was also a strong hitter for a pitcher and won the Silver Slugger Award for the position in 1981 and 1983. He was the National League wins leader in 1986 and also won a Gold Glove, for defensive performance, that year.

Valenzuela was integral to expanding the Dodgers’ and MLB’s fan base to include more Mexican-Americans. “Before Fernando, roughly only 5% of the fans at Dodger Stadium and at ballparks around the country were Mexican American,” baseball writer Erik Sherman, who published 2023’s Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers, told PEOPLE.

“After Fernando’s arrival on the scene, that figure shot up to 50% in L.A., and also substantially higher at stadiums across the country when he pitched. Dodger Stadium became like a Mexican festival, a dynamic that still exists there today. Go to a Dodgers game, and you will see more Valenzuela jerseys than any other current Dodger — mostly worn by young people that never saw him pitch.” 

Sherman said that part of what made him so “relatable” to the Mexican community was his physique — his height was listed at 5′ 11″, short for a pitcher, and he was stocky. “I heard again and again from Chicanos that I interviewed how he reminded them of an older brother or an uncle,” Sherman said. Fans nicknamed him “El Toro” — The Bull.

Beginning in 1988, Valenzuela was plagued by shoulder injuries. However, in 1990 — his last season with the Dodgers — he pitched the only no-hitter of his career; legendary broadcaster Vin Scully told the audience, “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”

Valenzuela pitched for the California Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels) in 1991 after he was cut by the Dodgers after spring training. “It was really strange being with another team, for the first time in my career,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2021. “There was a lot of expectation for what I was going to do.” He ended up starting just two games and was sidelined with a heart condition. 

Still, he told the outlet, he thought his brief tenure with the team was important for setting up the second act of his playing career. “It was like, ‘I still believe in myself. I can still pitch and throw good games,’ ” he said. “That’s the reason I kept going, and I pitched seven more years in my career. That’s not easy, to spend 17 years in the big leagues.”

He ultimately pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals before retiring at the end of the 1997 season. In the 2000s, he took the mound in the Mexican League, pitching his last professional game in 2006.

Sherman said of the pitcher in 2023, “He is on the Mount Rushmore of players that have impacted the game the most. He brought Mexican Americans, long marginalized and in the shadows, out under the bright lights of the ballpark stands throughout America.”

In 2003, Valenzuela began working as a commentator on the Dodgers’ Spanish-language radio broadcasts. He also worked on television broadcasts.

Valenzuela was inducted into the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Mexican Baseball League retired his number, 34, throughout the league in 2019. The Dodgers officially retired his number in 2023; he and Jim Gilliam are the only Dodgers who are not members of the Baseball Hall of Fame who had their numbers retired by the organization.

“To be a part of the group that includes so many legends is a great honor,” Valenzuela said in a statement when the retirement of his number was announced. “But also for the fans — the support they’ve given me as a player and working for the Dodgers, this is also for them.  I’m happy for all the fans and all the people who have followed my career. They’re going to be very excited to know that my No. 34 is being retired.”

Valenzuela married Linda Burgos, a schoolteacher from Mexico, in 1981. They shared four children: Fernando Jr., Ricardo, Maria and Linda. Fernando Jr. followed his dad into baseball and played for the San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox.

The Dodgers announced in October 2024, during the team’s playoff run, that Valenzuela would be stepping away from his broadcasting job “to focus on his health.” “He and his family truly appreciate the love and support of fans as he aims to return for the 2025 season, and they have asked for privacy during this time,” the club’s statement read, per The Athletic.

Valenzuela is survived by his wife and children.