Pirates Doubted His Arm, Gott Says : Baseball: Injured pitcher attracted to Dodgers because they were ‘positive all the way down the line.’

Jim Gott said he left the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign with the Dodgers because he didn’t “need to be around negative people.”

Gott, who had 34 saves in 1988, said the Pirates’ management made little effort to re-sign him and is skeptical he will recover from an elbow injury that forced him to miss all but one game last season.

“I loved the time I spent in Pittsburgh. I loved the city. I loved the team, I loved playing there,” he said. “ . . . But the (team’s) attitude was, ‘We’ve made you an offer. It’s not going to change. Take it or leave it.’

“After all the good experiences we’d had in Pittsburgh, that hurt.”

Gott told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat that the Dodgers, acting on the advice of arm specialist Dr. Frank Jobe, expressed confidence he can return in 1990.

“That confidence was important to me,” Gott said. “In Pittsburgh, they were expressing a lot of doubt. A guy with two major injuries like I’ve had doesn’t need to be around negative people. The Dodgers have been positive all the way down the line.”

Manager Tom Lasorda said that he will use Gott, Jay Howell and Alejandro Pena to close out games and that Gott’s attitude was a major reason why the Dodgers signed him.

“Tommy said they’d gotten away from having fun in the clubhouse last year, that they weren’t loose enough,” Gott said. “And he’s depending on me to help do something about that.”

Gott will make $300,000 with the Dodgers and can earn an additional $700,000 if he is not on the disabled list 21 days after the season starts. The Pirates offered him $300,000 in base salary and $800,000 in incentives, but, Gott said, “some of the incentives were unrealistic.”