Never a Dull Moment in This Bullpen : Dodgers: Relievers have various ways to deal with boredom, but they also have seven victories and 10 saves.

They wile away half of the baseball season sitting in a concrete-floor box at Dodger Stadium that looks like a storage shed and smells like a sewer.

There is no air conditioning, no television monitor, no soda machine.

Not even a door.

“It’s not a condo, it’s a bullpen,” said Rick Trlicek, one of six Dodger relievers who collectively own a 2.54 earned-run average, lowest in the National League.

The luxuries in this left-field bunker include a heater, a fan, a window to watch the game through and a phone connected to the dugout. When it rings, these happy-go-lucky players become infused with the mentality of race-car drivers.

“These guys have ice water in their veins,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “They can’t get scared, can’t get tight. It’s like a field-goal kicker knowing the entire game could depend upon him.”

Even Jim Gott, whose favorite hobby--besides karate--is talking, shuts up.

“From about the sixth inning on, he puts his game face on and doesn’t say a word,” said Mark Cresse, who is in his 17th season as the bullpen coach.

“But for the first six innings, we call him the mayor, because he talks to everybody and his brother. Anybody he can find.”

The players either sit in the box or outside in the bullpen. Pedro Martinez likes to sit outside to talk with the fans. Omar Daal spends time working on his English with Martinez, who speaks the language well enough that reporters often use him as a translator.

Roger McDowell can be found about anywhere, appearing out of nowhere with water balloons, paint guns or one of the many tricks from one of two full boxes he keeps in his locker.

“The other day, we are sitting down there, and there is a lizard that all of a sudden shows up, coming from the sewer, which is down under us,” Gott said. “There are always nasty smells, but we don’t know it because we are all immune to it.

“So this lizard comes over by my foot, and it’s as big as my shoe--and I have a Size-14 shoe--and I panic. I leave. So we called Kevin Gross up on the bullpen phone and told him to come down because he loves lizards and has a place for them at his house. KG goes and traps this thing and starts playing with it, and Beach (Cresse) and I were kind of scared, well, not scared, but we really didn’t want any part of it.

“So Kevin leaves, but the rest of the game Roger kept playing with Beach as though Kevin had come back with the lizard. Roger would touch his leg from behind him and creep up on him. It was funny.”

For McDowell, it could be something as simple as a dangling foot. Earlier this season, Steve Wilson was leaning over the bullpen fence with one foot on the ground and the other dangling behind him. An innocent enough pose, but one too tempting for McDowell, who quietly grabbed a match and lit Wilson’s shoelaces.

“Before he knew it, he had a hot foot,” Cresse said.

Between innings, Cresse said a starting pitcher may visit. Or when position players don’t start, they may spend an inning there.

“Tommy’s motto is always that a contented cow gives better milk--that’s how he feels about his players, and that’s how I feel about the bullpen,” Cresse said. “If you control it like an army and the guys are tense the whole time, they won’t be relaxed and function as well as they do. We are serious when we have to be serious, but we have a good time.”

Trlicek, along with the other relievers, gives the credit to Cresse. “He is so relaxed that we feed off of that. He allows each of us to get ready in our own way and helps us with everything.”

In every National League stadium except for Houston and Cincinnati, the bullpen is well away from the dugout. But even when it’s not, these players huddle together at the end of the bench.

“Most of the time we are extradited out to Siberia,” Cresse said. “We go over the scouting reports and the signs and do everything we are supposed to do, but there is still so much time you start talking with the guys about their families and everything else, and they become your family.”

When the bullpen got the news after Wednesday night’s victory that Wilson was being sent down to the minors make room on the roster for Todd Worrell, it hit them hard. Wilson, who has been with the team for two seasons, is the team’s biggest cheerleader. In a game in Chicago recently, he got so excited when Jody Reed made a great play that he ran out to the foul line to yell at him.

“It’s like losing one of our family,” said Todd Maulding, who assists Cresse in the bullpen.

Wilson patiently answered questions after the game. But when somebody asked him about how he felt about earning the victory, his first, he passed it along to the bullpen.

“This is a win for them, for all of us,” he said.

The bullpen is an area where the Dodgers were supposed to be weak, but it has been anything but. It has seven victories, six losses and 10 saves. There have only been four games in which the bullpen hasn’t been used.

“Everybody thought this was going to be the Todd Worrell show and that was the bullpen,” Cresse said. “But this group, starting with Jim and Roger and Trlicek, the new guy, and Pedro and the two left-handers, everybody has pitched in and done their job. “

Their save opportunities haven’t been high, but the bullpen hadn’t blown a save in 10 until May 25. That tied the Dodgers for the sixth-best start in the league by a bullpen since baseball started keeping the statistic in 1988.

“This group is very close, they take care of each other, pull for each other, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lasorda said.

“They are like a union, they have their own fraternity.”