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Dodgers’ Troncoso living the dream

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Times Staff Writer

Ramon Troncoso asked his mother for two years. If he didn’t see that he had a shot at the big leagues by then, he told her, he would go back to school.

The 25-year-old right-hander, who had never pitched above double A and was invited to his first major league camp this spring, recently laughed as he told the story of that conversation with his mother in the kitchen of their home in the Dominican Republic almost six years ago. He laughed too, recalling how on opening day, he was approached by Dodgers Manager Joe Torre, who told him, “Do you understand English? You made the team.”

“I’m living my dream,” Troncoso said of the expensive hotels, expansive ballparks, and even of his duty of taking the relievers’ porcelain good-luck gnome to the bullpen every day.

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But the dream of playing major league baseball was far from his only dream, as his life story bears little resemblance to the kind of rags-to-riches tales often associated with Dominican ballplayers.

The conversation Troncoso had with his mother that day in 2002 took place in a two-story, seven-bedroom house in San Jose de Ocoa. His father owns several farms in the area and his mother, a college graduate, is a fifth-grade teacher. His three younger siblings are attending or are planning to attend college. And if baseball hadn’t worked out for him, Troncoso probably would be there as well, perhaps studying history or science.

In Troncoso’s mind, he has merely traded one form of education for another. The one in baseball started with him learning the biting sinker that earned him a surprise spot on the Dodgers’ opening-day roster to be a ground-ball specialist out of the bullpen.

He was taught the pitch by Hector Eduardo, a pitching coach for the Santo Domingo Dodgers of the Dominican Summer League who warned him that his fastball didn’t have enough movement.

“It took me three years to learn it,” Troncoso said.

That done, he moved to the United States in 2004, starting his climb up the organizational ladder.

Along the way, he picked up a slider and learned a changeup from Danny Darwin, the pitching coach at Class-A Great Lakes. But it was Charlie Hough, the coach at Inland Empire, who last year stressed to him the importance of his secondary pitches.

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“He told me that my sinker was good enough to get me to double A,” Troncoso said. “But he said that I needed a changeup to pitch in the majors.”

Troncoso was promoted to double-A Jacksonville in May of last year and, by the end of the season, knew he was close to realizing his dream. Late in the season, General Manager Ned Colletti and farm director DeJon Watson watched him pitch, with Watson telling him afterward where he stood.

Dodgers closer Takashi Saito had never heard of Troncoso until this spring, but he immediately noticed his sinker. The same was true of Torre.

But Saito also was struck by the questions Troncoso asked him about how and when he threw his slider. Or how the kid was learning whatever English he could from Hideki Kuroda’s trilingual translator, Kenji Nimura.

Troncoso has already appeared in five games, as his 3 2/3 scoreless innings to start the season have helped the Dodgers’ bullpen post a 3.56 earned-run average that is fourth-best in the National League. He encountered his first bump in the road Tuesday, when he gave up his first four runs of the season in a brutal inning in Arizona.

“The main thing is that he’s been able to hold his poise,” pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said.

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Saito marveled at how cool Troncoso appeared when he left the bullpen to make his major-league debut April 1, entering the game against San Francisco with one out and the bases loaded. Troncoso forced a double play.

“He was calmer than I was,” said Saito, who closed the game.

Troncoso shrugged.

“It was nothing out of this world,” he said.

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dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

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