Hiatus history lesson: Improbable Opening Day shutout launches Fernandomania

With baseball on hiatus, it's a good time to look back at great moments from the game's past. Today, we're remembering Fernando Valenzuela's remarkable first start in the big leagues, an improbable Opening Day shutout that marked the beginning of a cultural phenomenon.

Tommy Lasorda had no choice.

Jerry Reuss, the National League Cy Young Award runner-up in 1980, was the Dodgers manager's preferred Opening Day starter, but he was unavailable because of a pulled calf muscle days earlier. So, too, were Burt Hooton, who was still recovering from a procedure to remove an ingrown toenail, and Bob Welch, incapacitated by a bone spur in his elbow. His back-end starters couldn't go, either, having just closed out the spring schedule.

It was out of necessity, then, that the Dodgers began the 1981 campaign with a rookie on the mound for the first time in their almost century-long existence. Lasorda entrusted the Opening Day start to a pudgy, screwball-throwing, left-hander from Mexico named Fernando Valenzuela.

Valenzuela, then 20, hadn't yet started a game in big leagues. As a late-season call-up the year prior, Valenzuela - who had his Mexican League contract bought out by the Dodgers for $120,000 in 1979 - pitched exclusively in relief. He dominated out of the bullpen down the stretch following his call-up from Double-A San Antonio, holding opponents to a .136 batting average while fanning 16 batters over 17 2/3 scoreless innings, thoroughly impressing his manager in the process.

"We threw him in the thick of the battle, and he was relaxed," Lasorda told the New York Times. "When you strike out Cesar Cedeno with runners on first and third and one out, you have it." As promising as those 10 nascent relief appearances were, though, handing Valenzuela the Opening Day assignment was still a worst-case scenario for the Dodgers, who were to open their season against Houston. The Astros had crushed the Dodgers' World Series hopes in 1980, beating Los Angeles in a one-game playoff for the National League West title.

Few worst-case scenarios have ever worked out better.

Valenzuela, who described the Opening Day gig as pedazo de pastel ("a piece of cake"), devoured the Astros, allowing only five hits - four of them singles - while walking only two over nine scoreless innings and propelling the Dodgers to a 2-0 victory before a bustling crowd of 50,511 at Chavez Ravine. Never before had a pitcher so young thrown a shutout on Opening Day. It hasn't happened in the three decades since, either.

And so began one of the most compelling stretches of pitching in baseball history, a deliciously entertaining run of dominance that captivated the nation and elevated Valenzuela from an obscure rookie into a cultural phenomenon. From that auspicious Opening Day start onward, Valenzuela was virtually untouchable into the middle of May, tossing complete games in each of his next seven starts, four of which were shutouts. Their sputtering offense notwithstanding, the Dodgers won each of those games. During that run, as "Fernandomania" enraptured baseball fans everywhere, Valenzuela allowed a total of four earned runs, and never more than two in a single start.

"He is one of the most impressive young pitchers I have ever seen," Lasorda told the Times after Valenzuela's third shutout. "I can't compare his statistics or his repertoire to anybody. He has accomplished more in a short time than anybody I can think of."

When Valenzuela took the mound May 18 at Dodger Stadium for his series-opening start against the Philadelphia Phillies, the newfound celebrity boasted a sterling 0.50 ERA and 0.83 WHIP, having recorded 68 strikeouts while allowing only two home runs in his first 72 innings. That night, for the first time that season, Valenzuela failed to complete nine innings, lasting only seven while allowing four runs - all of them earned - in a 4-0 loss, the Dodgers' first with "El Toro" on the mound.

Over the ensuing three weeks, Valenzuela looked mortal, recording only one complete game while pitching to a 6.39 ERA across his next five outings before a players' strike halted his superb rookie season. The two-month hiatus, however, seemingly rejuvenated Valenzeula, who crafted a 2.51 ERA over his final 11 starts, a dazzling stretch run that included another three shutouts and a 10-inning, one-run masterpiece against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

By season's end, Valenzuela had set a new modern-era record for shutouts by a rookie (eight), and finished second in the majors in fWAR (4.9) among pitchers. He had a 2.48 ERA and a league-leading 180 strikeouts, easily earning him the National League Rookie of the Year Award and narrowly earning him the Cy Young Award, as well. Valenzuela remains the only pitcher to win both in the same season.

His dominance wasn't confined to the regular season, either. Just as he did all summer, Lasorda leaned heavily on Valenzuela in October, and the youngster continued to deliver for the Dodgers, who earned a spot in the postseason - rejigged due to the strike - by virtue of winning their division in the first "half" of 1981. In his two league division series starts against - wait for it - the Astros, Valenzuela allowed just one run in each, memorably turning in a complete-game gem in a must-win Game 4.

His performance lagged some in his first start against the Montreal Expos in the best-of-five championship series - a six-inning, three-run ho-hummer - but with the Dodgers' season on the line again in a do-or-die Game 5, Valenzuela shined, stymieing the Expos over 8 2/3 innings at Olympic Stadium in a 2-1 win that secured a pennant for Los Angeles - a heroic effort obscured by Rick Monday's go-ahead homer in the top of the ninth.

The Dodgers were almost as desperate for a win when Valenzuela made his first and only start in the World Series, already down 2-0 in the series to the New York Yankees. Though he stumbled early, squandering an early lead by allowing two runs in the second and third innings, he was nevertheless able to go the distance without allowing another run in an eventual 5-4 victory that turned the series for the Dodgers. They wouldn't lose another game.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.