Till Next Time : Valenzuela Keeps Working Out and Waiting for a Chance He Thought Would Come Sooner

Early in the morning, below an interstate highway thundering with rush-hour traffic, a dented silver van pulls into a parking lot next to a small baseball field.

Out of the van steps a compact man who could be a weekend athlete. He is wearing a black cap emblazoned with the name of an ink company. His sweat pants are baggy and plain. His spikes are split at the toes.

The only clue that he is someone special is written in black marker on the collar of his frayed white shirt with Dodger blue sleeves.

Valenzuela, 34

“So,” Fernando Valenzuela says with a smile. “You find me.”

The former Dodger pitcher grabs a small green bag and hurriedly walks to the deserted field surrounded by empty bleachers. He cannot talk just now because today is the most important day of his week, the day around which his life has revolved since he was a child.

It is his day to pitch.

For 10 years that day occurred in major league stadiums, in a Dodger uniform, before thousands of adoring fans. But when Valenzuela was released by the Dodgers last month, his workplace changed.

Determined to stay ready if a major league team offers him a suitable contract, he pitches every five days in the early-morning seclusion of a city park whose name he wishes to keep secret.

Less than a year after throwing a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals, he pitches on a field where a sprinkler plays center field, an abandoned tractor plays left, and the loud sounds he hears are not applause, but the rumble of trucks on the adjacent freeway.

Officials in the largely Latino city where the park is located leave the stadium gates unlocked for him. It is their way of telling Valenzuela he has not been forgotten.

Two friends who also have not forgotten him make arrangements to meet Valenzuela here after he drops his children off at school. Typical of Valenzuela’s buddies, they are common men with big hearts.

Ruben Castaneda, a shipping and receiving manager at a local ink company, is his catcher. He is here on an early lunch break. He changes clothes in the parking lot.

Alan Harvey, a salesman for another ink company, is the batter. He stands at home plate and waves an aluminum bat but never swings.

Valenzuela warms up with a softball, perhaps because his friends are softball players. Then he stalks to the mound, throws down a blue bath towel that substitutes for a rosin bag and begins to pitch.

For more than an hour, he pitches. He throws about 125 curveballs, screwballs and fastballs. As if pitching in a real game, he takes several short breaks but rarely leaves the mound and never leaves the diamond.

He appears slimmer and stronger than he has been in recent years.

“Ow!” shouts Castaneda after catching one pitch with a glove that is not fully padded. “That hurts!”

Says Valenzuela: “This is my game, now. Until I go back to the major leagues, this is what I must do. When somebody calls me, I want to be able to say, ‘Just give me time to pack my bags.’ ”

Sometimes he pitches wearing glasses, sometimes wearing contact lenses, and sometimes with neither, the way it was during his glory years.

Sometimes Valenzuela talks to himself: “That ball is not moving enough! That is how I get in trouble.”

Sometimes he walks to the plate and asks his friends to draw a line in the dirt, tracking the break of his screwball.

By the end of the session, Castaneda’s catching hand is bruised and swollen; Harvey often feels lucky to be alive.

“He wants me to bat left-handed so he can remember what it is like to face left-handed hitters, but the way that curveball comes right at me, I’m scared to death,” Harvey says. “But I do it anyway. I guess you do those kinds of things for friends.”

After the session, Valenzuela, speaking publicly for the first time since he returned to Los Angeles after his release, says this sudden change in his life has taught him much about friends.

“You find out who cares about you,” he said. “It is good to find this out.”

For example, he said those people who protested his release and called for a boycott of Dodger games are friends, even though he does not completely agree with them.

“I must say that the Dodgers are not biased against Mexicans, that is not why I was released,” he said with a laugh. “If they were biased against Mexicans, do you think I would have pitched for them for 10 years? If they were biased, I wouldn’t even be here.”

But, he added: “What those people did made me happy, because I did not ask them to do it, and I did not take part in it. It’s great because they care about me.”

What Valenzuela learned about the Dodgers, however, was different. When asked if he is working so hard so he can return to Dodger Stadium and beat them, he smiled.

“That would really be nice, huh?” he said.

When he was released, Valenzuela claimed he was not surprised. But in the last few weeks, he has grown less accepting.

“The more I think about what happened to me, the more I do not understand it,” he said. “I think back to what (Dodger catcher) Mike Scioscia said to me a couple of weeks into training camp. He said that my arm had never looked better. And I had never felt better.”

Valenzuela shook his head.

“I had a bad spring, but they know I always have a bad spring,” he said. “They knew I was healthy. I had pitched well for them for 10 years, so they knew I had the experience to win. They knew I knew what I was doing. But yet . . .

“Like I said, baseball is a business.”

Valenzuela was alluding to the Dodgers’ saving nearly $2 million by releasing him when they did, since they were required to pay him only $630,494 of his $2.55-million contract.

He sighed and said: “I don’t want to say anything about the pitchers who are starting for the Dodgers right now. But the Dodgers could use me. . . . Anybody could use me.”

With every passing day, though, Valenzuela and his former team grow further apart.

Valenzuela said he turned down an invitation from Dodger owner Peter O’Malley to watch a game at Dodger Stadium.

“I told them no. I am still a player. I cannot sit in the stands.”

Valenzuela has not even been to Dodger Stadium to collect his belongings. Friends did it for him.

And Valenzuela has spoken with only one teammate, close friend and fellow pitcher Mike Morgan, who filled Valenzuela’s spot in the rotation and has pitched well.

“I miss the game very badly,” Valenzuela said. “But I do not miss the team.”

Just when, or if, Valenzuela will join another team is anybody’s guess. He said he has received no substantial offers except from teams in the Mexican League, but he is not ready to pitch in Mexico.

He also scoffed at reports that he might be interested in pitching in Japan.

“Japan? I never even thought of Japan,” he said. “And I like Mexico, but not right now. I can still pitch in the major leagues, and that is what I will wait for.”

He said he will play for any team, but not for any money, only for what he feels he is worth, which is at least $1 million.

“Because the Dodgers taught me it is a business, that is how I look at it now,” he said. “You do so much in your career, you should be paid for it. I am sure somebody out there will take me. I will just wait.”

The wait, he acknowledged, has been longer than he’d figured on. When he was released he joked that if teams waited until June to call him, he would not be interested. But now he has changed his mind. He says he would even make a couple of starts in the minor leagues, if necessary.

“When I gave that quote about not playing if I don’t get signed by June, I thought I would be pitching someplace else right away,” he said. “But I guess that has changed.”

The problem, according to agent Tony DeMarco and other baseball sources, is timing.

“Everybody knows that the timing of his release was not good,” DeMarco said. “Every team had their roster filled. Now teams want to see what will happen to their players, and make decisions after that.

“Unfortunately, we have been forced to be patient. But one of these days, sooner or later, he will be pitching somewhere. We just hope it is sooner.”

So does Valenzuela, although he said he has enjoyed spending more time with his four children.

“They had spring break, and I got to spend a whole week with them for the first time in many seasons,” he said. “It was really nice.”

Valenzuela also has enjoyed being away from the public eye. He has made only one appearance, accepting an award at a downtown festival last week. He said his second appearance will be this week, when he speaks to some school children.

“Somebody calls from the school and says they remember me and want to see me and I think, that is nice,” Valenzuela said. “So why not?”

The interview is over now and Valenzuela is leaving the practice field. He notices a woman and three children watching him from behind the chain-link fence.

He walks around the fence, signs autographs, bends over to shake the children’s hands and smiles at them. Then he walks to the parking lot, dusty and sweaty and carrying only that tiny green gym bag.

When he reaches his van, he apologizes but says he has to run. Who knows, the phone may be ringing.