LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fernando Valenzuela, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching ace who helped the team win the 1981 World Series, died of septic shock last month, according to his death certificate.
TMZ Sports obtained the document on Tuesday. Valenzuela died on Oct. 22 at age 63, a few weeks after stepping away from his job on the Dodgers' Spanish-language television broadcast and days before the Dodgers began their run to the team's eighth World Series championship. No cause of death was provided at the time.
The Los Angeles County death certificate listed septic shock as the immediate cause of death. It is a life-threatening condition that occurs when organs malfunction, leading to dangerously low blood pressure. Each year, at least 350,000 people in the U.S. die of the condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The certificate listed decompensated alcoholic cirrhosis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis cirrhosis as underlying causes. Also listed as a significant condition contributing to Valenzuela's death was “probable” Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rapidly progressive brain disorder.
The document also shows Valenzuela was cremated. A public Mass was held last week at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles.
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Fernando Valenzuela's sons, Fernando Valenzuela Jr., left, and Ricardo Valenzuela, far right, help guide Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela's casket into the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels for a public funeral mass in Los Angeles Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024.(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Democrat Janelle Bynum has flipped Oregon’s 5th Congressional District and will become the state’s first Black member of Congress.
Bynum, a state representative who was backed and funded by national Democrats, ousted freshman GOP U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Republicans lost a seat that they flipped red for the first time in roughly 25 years during the 2022 midterms.
“It’s not lost on me that I am one generation removed from segregation. It’s not lost on me that we’re making history. And I am proud to be the first, but not the last, Black member of Congress in Oregon,” Bynum said at a press conference last Friday. “But it took all of us working together to flip this seat, and we delivered a win for Oregon. We believed in a vision and we didn’t take our feet off the gas until we accomplished our goals.”
Chavez-DeRemer conceded the race Thursday, the day that The Associated Press declared Bynum the winner.
“I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity I had to serve as Oregonians’ voice in Congress,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement posted on her social media. “Although this isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, I’m proud of what we accomplished together."
The contest was seen as a GOP toss up by the Cook Political Report, meaning either party had a good chance of winning.
Bynum had previously defeated Chavez-DeRemer when they faced off in state legislative elections.
Chavez-DeRemer narrowly won the seat in 2022, which was the first election held in the district after its boundaries were significantly redrawn following the 2020 census.
The district now encompasses disparate regions spanning metro Portland and its wealthy and working-class suburbs, as well as rural agricultural and mountain communities and the fast-growing central Oregon city of Bend on the other side of the Cascade Range. Registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by about 25,000 in the district, but unaffiliated voters represent the largest constituency.
A small part of the district is in Multnomah County, where a ballot box just outside the county elections office in Portland was set on fire by an incendiary device about a week before the election, damaging three ballots. Authorities said that enough material from the incendiary device was recovered to show that the Portland fire was also connected to two other ballot drop box fires in neighboring Vancouver, Washington, one of which occurred on the same day as the Portland fire and damaged hundreds of ballots.
FILE - Janelle Bynum, the Democratic candidate running to represent Oregon's 5th Congressional District, poses for a photo on Sunday, July 21, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
