French Flare

The first time Richard Gagne saw his son, Eric, pitch for the Dodgers, a sudden flood of memories brought him to tears.

“It’s not something I can describe,” he said. “I was just thinking of when he was a little kid playing catch, and I saw Eric’s life in baseball before my eyes.

“One thing I remembered was that when Eric was a child, if it rained and he couldn’t play baseball, he would cry because he loved the game so much and he wanted to play. I can still feel the love for the game that Eric had.”

Eric, now a grown-up and burly 26, laughed at the reminder of his long-ago sorrows. But during his childhood in Montreal, where spring and summer can be sweet but brief, a damp day was a catastrophe for a boy who loved baseball as much as hockey.

“We’d only play 30 games a year, at most,” he said, “and if it rained, they don’t do it again. There’s no postponement. They canceled it. You play 29 games instead. We had only 2 1/2 months of summer, if we were lucky.”

Gagne was lucky--and he was good. Although Montreal is better known as a cradle of hockey players than pitchers, Gagne has developed into a mainstay of the Dodger bullpen and one of the National League’s top closers.

Mixing a fastball that reaches the high 90s with a sharp curve and a changeup that freezes batters in their spikes, Gagne has earned 14 saves in 15 opportunities. He has an earned-run average of 1.17 in 21 appearances, with four walks and 29 strikeouts in 23 innings. His success, so unlikely for a kid from hockey-mad Montreal, is a source of delight to his father, a Montreal bus driver. “This is impossible,” Richard Gagne said in his native French. “It’s like winning the lottery.”

Eric has defied the odds all along.

“He thrives on challenges,” Dodger pitching coach Jim Colborn said, “and that was one of the ways we tried to motivate him last year when he was a starter. I’d try to tell him the things he couldn’t do, and if you tell him he can’t do something, that will pretty much make him do it.”

Tell him he’s not likely to become a baseball player because so few come from Montreal--only 10 Canadians were on major league rosters when the season started, none from Quebec. Tell him he can’t make it in the English-speaking world because he speaks only French. Tell him he’s too antsy to be a starter, a fault he readily acknowledges.

No matter the obstacle, Gagne has overcome it.

“He realized his dream,” said his mother, Carole, a waitress in Montreal. “It’s fantastic. The important thing is he is doing what he loves, and for that I am happy.”

Richard Gagne played softball, so it was natural for him to introduce Eric to baseball when the boy was 3. Richard would collect all the kids in the family’s East-end neighborhood and drive them to Expo games at Jarry Park, the bandbox the Expos called home their first eight years in the National League.

“I always loved baseball, but I loved hockey too,” Eric said. “But I was always a better baseball player than hockey player.

“I was a good hockey player, but not great.”

His baseball skills got him into Polyvalente Edouard Monpetit, a Montreal high school that combined studies with sports instruction. His classmates included baseball and hockey players and synchronized swimmers.

He always had a strong and resilient arm and ample energy, but he never expected he’d be able to carve out a career in baseball.

“I always wanted to be an Expo,” he said, “but I never really knew how to do it.... I didn’t even know there was a draft.”

His first step toward a baseball career took him to Seminole (Okla.) Junior College, and it was a jolt. He was reared in a French-speaking home--Richard and Carole speak no English--and he felt adrift in a strange, new world. He had to tape his classes and translate them to grasp the material.

“I hated junior college,” he said. “It was hard. But it was worth it. You’ve got to pay a price somewhere. It was the best thing that happened to me, to go away from home and be in a new environment and learn how to live by myself. You become more mature when you have more responsibilities.”

He was signed by the Dodgers in 1995 and was 7-6 for Class-A Savannah in 1996.

Major elbow surgery idled him the entire 1997 season, but he bounced back to compile a 9-7 record with 144 strikeouts in 139 2/3 innings the next season at Class-A Vero Beach.

Gagne moved to double-A San Antonio in 1999, where he was voted Texas League pitcher of the year for his 12-4 record, 2.63 ERA and 185 strikeouts in 167 2/3 innings. His wife, Valerie, also from Montreal, was living with him then, stabilizing his life.

“Even though you have friends, every year it’s different friends because there’s so much movement in the minor leagues,” Gagne said. “Having her there made it a lot easier.”

But not for her--at least at first.

“I didn’t speak any English,” said Valerie, who has become fluent in the language but speaks French at home with Eric and their 17-month-old daughter, Faye. “The worst thing was when he went on a three-week road trip and I was by myself. All the wives helped me. They were very nice.”

Gagne split the 2000 season between the Dodgers and triple-A Albuquerque. All but one of his 20 Dodger appearances were as a starter, but that balance shifted last season, when he started 24 games and made nine relief appearances.

He was 5-6 with a 4.92 ERA as a starter but 1-1 with a 3.14 ERA as a reliever, a role he began to enjoy because he could pitch every day, instead of stewing between starts.

The Dodgers toyed with restoring him to the rotation this season because they were uncertain how starters Kevin Brown, Andy Ashby and Darren Dreifort would recover from arm surgery. But it was clear early in spring training that Gagne’s stuff made him an ideal closer, and they traded Matt Herges to Montreal to open the spot for Gagne.

He underwent his bullpen baptism April 11 at San Francisco.

With runners on first and third with one out and Jeff Kent and Reggie Sanders due up, Dodger Manager Jim Tracy visited the mound and told Gagne he probably should bring Jesse Orosco in to get the last two outs.

“But he said he was going to let me stay in and battle through it,” Gagne said. “That showed they had belief in me that I can do the job and that I should believe in myself. I think that was the biggest turnaround in my career so far.”

Gagne struck out Kent and got Sanders on a fly ball. Neither Gagne nor the Dodgers have looked back since.

“He’s courageous,” Colborn said. “And the big thing that made him come on this year is his ability to harness all the energy he has and keep the right level of intensity, because there were times last year he’d be overhyped, and the advantage he had would be a disadvantage.”

Gagne acknowledged he’s stronger mentally than he was a year ago.

“My stuff is not any better. I’m more confident, more mature, more experienced,” he said. “I’ve learned so much from being around Brownie, Ashby and Dreifort. Those guys go about their business every day and are so professional, even though they make their money and they don’t have to work the rest of their lives....

“I love being a closer. I love the adrenaline rush. It’s a chance to be in the game every day and it’s so much fun. You don’t have to think so much. You go out and give everything you’ve got. You don’t have to over-think. That was my problem between starts. I was getting myself so mentally tired because I was thinking and over-thinking. I was going through games four, five times in my head and then you come in the games and you’re mentally exhausted, and you haven’t done anything yet.

“It’s something where you’ve got to be more mature. You’ve got to be able to relax.”

Although Gagne is relaxed on the mound, he’s nervous when it comes to his beloved Canadiens, especially during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Distance and his schedule left him reliant on phone calls to his brother Dominic, who provided updates until Montreal was eliminated in the second round by Carolina.

Gagne will never have his name on the Cup. But his parents, though no longer together, are united in their delight over his accomplishments.

“I am very proud of my treasure,” said Carole Gagne, who keeps a scrapbook about her son and safeguards his trophies and awards. “Eric has given me many, many things to be proud of. He has a lot of ambition.”

Said Richard Gagne: “To see him in the World Series would be just the biggest dream, but he is living a dream playing in the big leagues now. To see him play every day, it’s like the World Series to us.”

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*--* Measuring Up Comparing the Dodgers’ Eric Gagne to some of the top closers in baseball: Player IP H ER BB SO W-L SV ERA Gagne 23 10 3 4 29 0-0 14 1.17 Robb Nen 201/3 16 6 5 19 2-0 14 2.66 Mariano Rivera 191/3 14 4 7 19 1-1 13 1.86 Trevor Hoffman 15 13 3 5 21 1-0 12 1.80 Kaz Sasaki 162/3 10 0 3 24 2-0 10 0.00 Troy Percival 102/3 8 4 7 18 2-1 6 3.38

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*--* The L.A. List If Dodger closer Eric Gagne (14 saves) continues at his current pace he will finish the season with 52 saves. A look at the Dodger single-season save leaders: Name Saves Season Todd Worrell 44 1996 Jeff Shaw 43 2001 Todd Worrell 35 1997 Jeff Shaw 34 1999 Todd Worrell 32 1995 Jay Howell 28 1989 Jeff Shaw 27 2000 Jim Gott 25 1993 Jeff Shaw 25 1998

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