I really kind of wish I was at Dodger Stadium Friday night for Game 1 of the World Series. Not because I’m a Dodger fan (I’m not) and not because I’m a Yankee fan (eww, gross, like mayo on an Italian hoagie). Nope. It’s because I’m sure there will be a moment of silence and a celebration for the life of Fernando Valenzuela, who passed away at the age of 63 Tuesday. Valenzuela was on the Dodgers Spanish-language broadcast team, was a 17-year Major League veteran, and, to my 9-year-old eyes, some combination of Superman, Batman, and Spiderman. See, I wasn’t big into the superhero stuff as a kid. Wasn’t a comic book guy. Sure, I knew who these caped crusaders and such were, but it didn’t move my needle. Baseball did. My dad took me to my first game in the summer of 1979, Mets-Braves (Mets lost, naturally). From that moment on, I was all-in on the game. For the 1980 season, I was a big fan. And by the time the 1981 season came along, I was ready to be a big league general manager. For real. I knew everything about Major League Baseball. And then along came Fernando Valenzuela. He didn’t look like a baseball player — he was “stout,” to be diplomatic. He didn’t speak English. His pitching motion — including looking up at the sky and shutting his eyes — did not engender confidence. And he was the greatest thing to happen in baseball, and thus, to me. Again: I lived, breathed, slept, baseball. It was all I cared about. There was no one like Fernando. He came out of nowhere. His first five games? Five complete games, four shutouts. To put this in comic book perspective: It’s Superman saving Lois Lane and Metropolis, you know? And it didn’t stop. His next three starts yielded two more complete games and a shutout. He was a bit up and down after that, and then … the 1981 baseball strike. I cried. Legitimately. Cried. I couldn’t grasp why the baseball players went on strike. How could they do that to me? Of course, they came back two months later, and Valenzuela notched three more shutouts. Then, October, World Series, Dodgers vs. Yankees. Game 3, Valenzuela goes the distance and guts out the win, and the Dodgers go on to beat the Yankees in six games. By 1986, with my fandom at an all-time high, my beloved Mets won the World Series. By 1987, I had discovered beer and women, and that dominated my life for the next 15 or so years (I was wildly successful with one of those hobbies.) My childhood obsession with baseball had ended. But … After this late season Mets run — ya gotta believe! — followed by the news of Valenzuela’s passing, it brought me back to the pre-beer, pre-women portion of my life, where all I cared about was baseball. To be that young, that wide-eyed, that in love with the game — and to have Fernandomania happen as I pushed all-in on the sport — honestly, it’s something that still feels alive to me today. He was a phenomenon, and I was lucky enough to witness it with the most innocent of eyes. Ah, baseball. Nothing like it.