Gossage Has Found a Willing Student

Goose Gossage is not a pretty sight on a pitching mound. His facial expressions vary from grimace to frown, the latter being the most pleasant he is likely to display. His demeanor suggests that batters are mere vermin to be exterminated.

His chore, as a relief pitcher, always has been to get a game over. He always has interpreted this to mean as quickly as possible. Goose would never be found manicuring the mound or rubbing a baseball while gazing absent-mindedly at the clouds. Get the ball and throw it.

Very few have done this more successfully than Richard Michael Gossage has.

Only two relief pitchers have more career saves than Gossage’s 283, and one of them, Bruce Sutter, is only three away. Rollie Fingers is No. 1 with 341.

To get to this plateau, Gossage has spent a career being The Man in whatever bullpen he happens to occupy for a given season. Others could do the mopping up or the setting up, but the eighth and ninth innings were his . . . assuming the game was on the line.

For this reason, it has to be considered a curiosity that Gossage is part of what might be called a tag team with the Padres this season. Manager Larry Bowa has this other fellow named Lance McCullers, who has come to be known as Baby Goose.

This partnership actually sounds like something from the World Wrestling Federation.

Father Goose . . . and Baby Goose.

It might be assumed that Father Goose is grumbling about this whole situation. After all, this gosling isn’t even his own flesh and blood, but rather a talented and opportunistic sort who established himself while Papa was on the disabled list (1985 and 1987) or on suspension (1986). You’d think Papa would come back and tell this interloper to get back to pitching the sixth and seventh innings, where he belonged.

It hasn’t happened that way.

Gossage seems to have adopted McCullers, finding a kinship in heart, soul and mind instead of blood. Of course, Father Goose is 35 now and maybe thinking he should have an heir in mind.

“Hey,” Gossage said, “we’re out of the same mold. He’s a battler, very competitive. He has the type of personality where he wants to come right at you. He doesn’t like to waste any time. I think we complement each other.”

Understand that this mold must be an attitudinal device. It certainly did not stamp out two characters with anything physical in common, except maybe strong right arms.

Gossage, a rough-hewn mountain man from Colorado, stands 6-feet 3-inches and weighs 226 pounds. Some people have gap-toothed grins, but Gossage has a gap-toothed growl.

McCullers, 23, looks more as if he should be selling ice cream from a push cart. His is a sunshine boy from Florida, open-faced and an ever-so-slightly pudgy 6-1 and 218 pounds. He’s either clean-shaven, or he doesn’t have whiskers yet.

This is not an obvious alliance, but a mixing more along the lines of Machine Gun Kelly and Baby Face Nelson.

It works in part because McCullers has earned the respect of Gossage and in part because McCullers wisely defers to the senior partner.

“He’s the stopper,” McCullers said. “I’ll go in when I can and set up Goose. He’s back and he’s healthy. A lot of people made a mistake writing him off last year. Having him back has been a big lift.”

McCullers had been able to assert himself because it was beginning to look if Gossage would never get back to being Gossage again. He had knee surgery in 1985 and missed part of 1986 with a strained groin muscle and another part when suspended for a particularly colorful criticism of owner Joan Kroc and then-club president Ballard Smith. He started the 1987 season on the disabled list with a pulled muscle in his rib cage.

It would seem now that Gossage has regained his stuff, but not his solo role as the star in the bullpen.

“I’m not afraid to go to either one of those guys,” Bowa said. “I don’t consider just one to be my stopper. They’re both stoppers.”

Three games in the middle of the week supported the notion that these guys work quite well together.

On Tuesday night, against the Dodgers, McCullers came on in the sixth and pitched 1 shutout innings with three strikeouts. Gossage followed in the eighth and pitched two shutout innings with four strikeouts. McCullers got the win and Gossage the save.

On Wednesday, again against the Dodgers, Gossage got a rest and McCullers pitched two shutout innings and got a save.

On Thursday, against San Francisco, McCullers got a rest and Gossage pitched two shutout innings and got a save.

Between them, through Thursday’s game, they had pitched 24 consecutive shutout innings.

But then came Friday’s game. McCullers gave up four hits and five runs and took the loss as the Padres fell to the Giants, 7-6, ending their six-game winning streak.

Earliers, McCullers said of his relationship with Gossage:

“We are a lot alike. We like to pitch the same way, and our mental attitude’s the same. Goose has worked with me a lot on the mental part, going from one day to the next and forgetting the past, how to get ready and stay ready, how you have to want the ball.”

And so this Baby Goose comes out of the same--yet different--mold and stands astride the mound just like Father Goose, except that there is simply no way he can look as ferocious. However, the mannerisms are the same, the flailing all-out windup and delivery, the same huffing and puffing and the same get-the-ball-and-throw-it-again approach to getting the game over.

“There’s no use wasting time,” McCullers said. “Everyone knows you’re going to have to throw the ball . . . so I throw it.”

Sounded like something Gossage would have said, and probably did.