Fishing boats tied up in Maine s Perkins Cove. Elena Elisseeva/Shutterstock photo
Maine’s Perkins Cove is known for any number of things, bluefin tuna fishing in particular. In the spring, though, when baseball gets under way, I am reminded that this small basin of just a few acres was home port to two fishermen who had played professional ball.
Both were pitchers in the so-called golden age of the game, between 1920 and 1960, and though neither achieved star status at the Major League level, both are in the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame.
It was my good fortune to know them, though I knew them as fishermen before learning they were ballplayers.
April 9, 2021
The mystery pitcher began appearing in my morning box scores during the second half of September 1980. Sometimes he was Valenzuela, others Valenzla, but every time I looked, he had zeroes next to his name. I couldn’t find him in my baseball card set, my
Street & Smith’s Official Yearbook 1980, or my
Complete Handbook of Baseball 1980. All I knew was that suddenly he was one of the Dodgers’ most reliable relievers, a rookie thrown into the fire of a three-way NL West race between the Dodgers, Astros, and Reds.
What I didn’t know was that just over six months later, everybody who was anybody would know the name Fernando Valenzuela and the trail of zeroes he left in his wake. Fernandomania was coming.