He Saves the Best for His Family

The Most Valuable Dodger didn’t make the all-star team this year, and good thing.

He was able to play in a pro-am at Golf N’ Stuff.

“A great day,” Jeff Shaw said.

Shaw shot seven over par.

His 9-year-old son, Travis, shot five over par.

His 4-year-old daughter, Molli, won the event by shooting par, hitting every windmill in regulation.

“Molli always shoots par,” Shaw said. “Because whatever she shoots, that’s par.”

The Most Valuable Dodger should not be confused with the most exciting Dodger, or contemporary Dodger, or newsworthy Dodger.

He has a wife of 12 years, and three children, and everything else is background noise.

He comes from small-town Ohio, his rental house is in small-town Southern California, and his life is conducted in a bubble of antique values and heirloom traditions.

During this season of Dodger hell, perhaps it is worth spending a moment with Jeff Shaw in Pleasantville.

“When I leave baseball, I’m going to have many nice memories, but they’ll only be memories,” he said. “My family will be around the rest of my life. They come first.”

His is a land where the father feeds the baby every morning at 6:30, flops into the shallow end of the pool with the little girl in the afternoon, and brings the snacks to the little boy’s baseball game at night.

His is a land where the father sometimes travels to faraway places and works on TV in front of millions. But exactly one hour after every road game, that father is calling home.

“I can count on it,” his wife, Julie, said. “I turn off the TV and look at the clock and know when the phone will ring.”

He not only calls from the road, he calls from the Dodger Stadium clubhouse. In the early innings of nights when his daughter is having a recital, or when his son is having an important game.

“He calls me in the audience of a gymnastics program to see how Molli is doing,” Julie said. “He calls me two or three times during Travis’ baseball games.”

Shaw has a unique way of cutting down on his phone bill. When in doubt, he just brings his family with him.

You can find Julie and the children outside the clubhouse after virtually every game at Dodger Stadium, waiting for Shaw to walk with them to the car, Shaw’s precious right arm carrying the baby.

The troupe also has traveled to six cities this year, with Shaw receiving permission to miss team flights and flying commercial with them.

“Have you ever seen a mom trying to fly with three kids? Do you know how hard that is?” Shaw said. “I don’t want her to go through that by herself.”

And when he can’t be with them on the phone or in person?

Jeff Shaw has his family in his head, sometimes listening to their calming voices when he is on the mound as a relief pitcher in the ninth inning, saving games for a team that has unfortunately needed him about as much as a bum needs a banker.

“Once in Cincinnati, when I was facing Manny Ramirez [of the Cleveland Indians], I stepped off the mound to think for a second . . . and who do I hear but Travis,” Shaw recalled. “I hear his voice from a couple of weeks earlier, when he was getting on me for giving up an opposite-field home run to [Ramirez]. I made the pitch, got a groundout, and thought, ‘OK, Travis, what are you going to say now?’ ”

Before Saturday, Shaw had blown only one of 21 save opportunities. In 38 appearances, he was holding opposing batters to a .205 average.

On a team that operates with the consistency of an old car, he is the only part that starts every time.

Yet when his teammates speak to him with amazement, it has nothing to do with pitching.

“They say, ‘Man, you really love your wife and kids!’ ” Shaw said. “I tell them, ‘Well, uh, yeah.’ ”

*

He was in Tacoma, Wash., with his minor league team.

She was in Washington Court House, Ohio, with their first unborn child.

She went into labor, he got a red-eye flight, landed in Ohio the next morning, drove like mad to the hospital, and . . . walked into a room to find his wife holding a little boy.

It was Travis. Shaw missed the birth by one hour.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I wasn’t here for them,’ ” he recalled. “I started just shaking and crying.”

And deciding.

Shaw and his wife had each grown up in that small town with two parents who had seemingly always been there. It was a legacy he was determined not to break.

“That really shook him up,” Julie said. “It was like he realized, he wasn’t going to miss anything else.”

From that moment in 1990, Shaw’s long and winding career--he spent 11 years in obscurity before finally striking stardom--has been a family deal.

“Sometimes before a big pitch, I’m out there thinking, ‘This one is for the kids,’ ” he said.

This, and many others.

When he attends his son’s baseball games, he stands right behind the batting screen with a big camera and a smile, a famous father turned corny father.

He is so intent on attending his daughter’s school programs, he once showered and dressed during an afternoon rain delay in Cincinnati, figuring he could speed to the gym as soon as the game was called.

“Luckily, it was called, and I made it just in time,” he said.

If you don’t believe any of this, just look for yourself. After every save, Shaw looks up in the stands for his family. If they are there, he waves his left pinky at them.

“It’s our sign for, ‘I love you,’ ” Shaw said.

It was this love that frightened the Dodgers into thinking they would lose him this winter. He could demand a trade after being sent here last season in the middle of a long-term contract with the Reds, and it would only make sense.

Back in Cincinnati, he lived in his quiet hometown, just an hour’s drive north.

He and his wife, living in two hotel rooms near Dodger Stadium, couldn’t find much Pleasantville in Los Angeles.

“At first, we weren’t going to stay, it was just too far from home,” Julie said.

But then the Dodgers started talking about a new contract. He would be guaranteed $16.5 million over the next three years.

For a guy who was working construction just three years ago, this sudden big money gave him an idea.

“I figured, with this contract, I can take care of us, my kids, and their kids, for as long as they lived,” Shaw said. “And as long as our family was together, we could live here just fine.”

The Dodgers realized they had signed somebody very different this spring, when he missed the first 17 days of camp because he didn’t want to leave Julie before she went into labor with their third child.

He finally flew to Vero Beach, Fla., for one day to show Davey Johnson he was in shape . . . and Julie gave birth to Griffin while Shaw was hustling back to the hospital.

He was an hour late. Again.

“I was crying again,” Shaw said. “But I knew I had done my best.”

A couple of weeks later, the entire family was in Vero Beach. Together again. Working those pinkies.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.