Saving Face

Ah, merveilleux, this summer of little goggled, goateed miracles.

Surf Internet to www.freetranslation.com.

Click, “French to English.”

Type, “Gagne.”

Click, “FREE Translation.”

Smile.

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It is not about the saves, or the strikeouts, or any of the other outrageous statistics that somehow escaped the sauce-stained screen of a pizza-parlor Nintendo game.

It is about the moment.

You know which moment.

Eric Gagne is so good, Los Angeles gets goose bumps just watching him walk to work.

From the guy who opens the bullpen gate ...

“He walks past me, the music pumping, the crowd going nuts, and every night I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ ” bullpen catcher Rob Flippo said.

To the guy who switches on the Guns N’ Roses song ...

“My hair constantly stands on end,” music director Brad Lilley said.

To the guy who dreamed up the “Game Over” motto that flashes from the scoreboard ...

“It’s like watching a guy in a video game,” graphic designer Ross Yoshida said.

And howling, hopping, fist-pumping Los Angeles can’t keep its hands off the buttons.

The parking lots don’t lie. Folks who used to leave games early now stay later if there is a chance he will pitch.

The groans don’t lie. If the Dodgers are leading by three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, many fans quietly cheer against them so the save situation will remain intact and Gagne will show up.

Part swaggering. Part staggering. All caricature. Baggy clothes, wrinkled cap, scruffy beard, cloudy goggles.

To the orderly diamond, he brings chaos. To an exhausted final lap, he brings a sprint.

Then he throws a pitch, the ball spins, the mitt thwacks, the hitter shakes his skewed helmet, and Los Angeles will not sit down until it is finished.

“Neither do I,” Flippo said. “I hang onto that gate until it’s over with. It’s the greatest show I’ve ever seen.”

It’s 47 saves in 47 tries, the major league record for consecutive saves to start a season.

It’s 55 consecutive saves over two seasons, another major league record.

It’s an 0.38 ERA in save situations -- can that be right? -- with 85 strikeouts and only eight walks during that time.

None of which addresses his most important save, that being the save of a Dodger fan’s sanity.

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So for all this, should Eric Gagne win the Cy Young Award?

I say no. And he agrees with me.

For all this, if the Dodgers make the playoffs, Gagne should be named most valuable player.

“The MVP award is better for a relief pitcher than the Cy Young,” Gagne said in his clipped French accent. “The Cy Young is for pitchers who throw 200 innings, who get 20 wins, that sort of a thing. The MVP is for everyday players, and relievers are like everyday players.”

He is precisely right. The Cy Young, named after a starting pitcher, is about guys who throw every five days. The MVP, won by only three relievers since a separate award was created for pitchers in 1956, is nonetheless about players who work all week.

Barry Bonds has been consistently amazing again in San Francisco, but nobody has been a daily savior like Gagne.

If the Dodgers make the playoffs, they will become one of the worst offensive teams in history to do so. Cy Young couldn’t have rescued this bunch. But Eric Gagne did.

Of course, considering he has outclassed even the likes of Dennis Eckersley, Willie Hernandez and Rollie Fingers in their greatest years, maybe he could emulate them and win the Cy Young and the MVP.

Not that he is thinking about awards right now, not after watching fellow Southern Californian Troy Percival have such fun last October.

“I think about that every single day,” he said. “It would be a great feeling, being the last guy on the mound, pitching the ninth inning of a World Series game.”

He sighed, and smiled.

“But it would probably be on the road, because I blew that save in the All-Star game.”

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Carmen Wisdom, a reader, alerted us cosmopolitan types to the magical Gagne translation. It is just one of many oddities surrounding everyone’s favorite comic-strip hero.

You know why Eric Gagne wears the prescription goggles, right? Yeah, an old hockey injury. And you know why he celebrates by pumping one hand and lifting one leg, right? Probably because that’s how hockey players do it.

Remember who dragged him from a passel of failed starting pitchers to become a reliever two springs ago? Yep, a guy who left the organization this summer because, among other things, his voice wasn’t being heard.

“The more you watched him pitch as a starter, the more you realized that, for four or six outs at a time, he was unhittable,” said Dave Wallace, who left the Dodger front office to become the pitching coach in Boston. “He was dominant in short spurts. He had a hockey mentality. I thought it could work.”

Remember the noble reason Gagne agreed to become a closer? Because he might be out of work if he didn’t.

“I had no job, I didn’t even know where I’d be playing,” he said. “I just wanted to be part of the team, I didn’t care how. I remember getting goose bumps when Jeff Shaw pitched, so when they asked me to relieve, I said sure.”

Then, when the change was announced that spring amid much controversy, remember what one brilliant sort warned about putting in Gagne in the ninth inning of a close game?

“You might pick half a dozen Dodgers to pitch in that situation, including outfielder Shawn Green, before you would pick Gagne,” I wrote, sometime after I had declared this to be a UCLA football town.

Finally, remember whose harsh, on-field challenge led Gagne to accept the closer’s role for good?

Yep. Gentleman Jim Tracy.

With Bonds and Jeff Kent coming to bat and the tying run on first base in San Francisco in April 2002, Tracy jogged to the mound and told Gagne that if he wanted to be the closer, he needed to toughen up and prove it right there.

“He really challenged Eric, and I give Jim a lot of credit for that,” said Wallace, who remembers how Gagne escaped the inning with a 4-3 victory while saving everything but the ball.

Gagne threw all 52 save balls into the stands that year, not realizing they might be keepsakes.

Not anymore. His wife persuaded him to save this year’s souvenirs. But he felt so bad about it after setting the consecutive-saves record the other night, he threw another ball into the stands instead.

A perfect gesture for the man with the perfect name, with one Web site translating Gagne as “win.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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(Begin Text of Infobox)

Honor Roll

Relievers who have won Cy Young and/or MVP awards in same season:

*--* Dennis Eckersley, 1992 Athletics 7-1 record, 80 innings, 51 saves Willie Hernandez, 1984 Tigers 9-3 record, 140 1/3 innings, 32 saves Rollie Fingers, 1981 Brewers 6-3 record, 78 innings, 28 saves Jim Konstanty*, 1950 Phillies 16-7 record, 152 innings, 22 saves

*--*

MVP only. Cy Young not awarded until 1956.

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What a Relief

How Eric Gagne’s statistics this season compare to relievers who have won the Cy Young Award and/or were a league most valuable player (denoted by *):

*--* Year Pitcher Team G IP H ER BB SO W-L SV ERA 2003 ERIC GAGNE Dodgers 67 70 2/3 32 11 17 122 2-3 47 1.40 1992 *DENNIS Oakland 69 80 62 17 11 93 7-1 51 1.91 ECKERSLEY 1989 MARK DAVIS San Diego 70 92 2/3 66 19 31 92 4-3 44 1.85 1987 STEVE Philadelp 65 89 79 28 28 74 5-3 40 2.83 BEDROSIAN hia 1984 *WILLIE Detroit 80 140 1/3 96 30 36 112 9-3 32 1.92 HERNANDEZ 1981 *ROLLIE Milwaukee 47 78 55 9 13 61 6-3 28 1.04 FINGERS 1979 BRUCE Chicago 62 101 1/3 67 25 32 110 6-6 37 2.22 SUTTER Cubs 1977 SPARKY LYLE New York 72 137 131 33 33 68 13-5 26 2.17 Yankees 1974 MIKE Dodgers 106 208 1/3 191 56 56 143 15-12 21 2.42 MARSHALL 1950 *JIM Phila. 74 152 108 45 50 56 16-7 22 2.66 KONSTANTY Phillies

*--*

Note -- There was no Cy Young Award in 1950 when Konstanty was named NL MVP.

*--* TEAM VALUE Where reliev ers who won Cy Young and/or most valuab le player awards finish ed in MVP voting and how their teams finish ed in those season s: Pitcher Year MVP Voting How Team Finished ECKERS 1992 First Oakland lost in AL champ. series to Toronto LEY DAVIS 1989 Sixth San Diego was second in NL West BEDROS 1987 16th Philadelphia was fifth in NL East IAN HERNAN 1984 First Detroit won World Series DEZ FINGERS 1981 First Milwaukee lost AL div. series to New York SUTTER 1979 Seventh Chicago Cubs were fifth in NL East LYLE 1977 Sixth Yankees won World Series MARSHA 1974 Third Dodgers lost in World Series LL KONSTA 1950 First Phillies lost in World Series NTY

*--*

*--* IN CLOSING The above relievers’ win-loss and save totals, and ERAs for their seasons after winning the Cy Young and/or MVP awards: Closer Seasons Pitched After W-L Saves ERA ECKERSLEY 1993-98 16-26 151 4.15 DAVIS 1990-94, 1997 11-19 11 5.37 BEDROSIAN 1988-95 29-31 74 3.65 HERNANDEZ 1985-89 27-28 88 3.41 FINGERS 1982, 1984-85 7-14 69 3.18 SUTTER 1980-86, 1988 41-49 195 3.14 LYLE 1978-82 29-22 37 3.88 MARSHALL 1975-81 42-52 82 3.34 KONSTANTY 1951-56 34-31 43 3.85

*--*

Compiled by HOUSTON MITCHELL