fernand the bull

if you lived in southern california in 1981, like i did, you believed that the 1981 fleer fernando valenzuela rookie card was a valuable error card.  that's because fleer spelled his first name as 'fernand'.

i believed, along with all of my friends, that this was the west coast answer to the craig/graig nettles cards and that we were the lucky owners of the 'fernand' variation.  alas, we were not, as fleer did not issue any cards with the correct spelling of el toro's first name.

then, when i watched espn's 30 on 30 film about fernando and the ensuing fernando-mania, i noticed that they included a corrected version of the card.  it looked like this

finally!  i should note that the documentary also included a 1982 donruss card with the donruss logo removed.

here's to you fernand!  and to you, too, fernando!