Gossage seeks Hall of Fame save

Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter blazed the trail that Rich “Goose” Gossage hopes to follow today, that rare path that begins in the bullpen and ends in baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Voters have been reluctant to embrace relievers from the 1970s and 1980s because they didn’t rack up the sheer number of saves or have the microscopic earned-run averages of today’s ninth-inning specialists such as Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.

But Fingers’ induction in 1992 and, especially, Sutter’s in 2006 helped validate those who fueled the bullpen’s transformation from “a junk pile for pitchers who couldn’t start anymore,” as Gossage called it, to a dwelling place for some of the game’s brightest stars.

And Gossage, whose career compares very favorably with Sutter’s, hopes to ride that momentum into Cooperstown today when results of the annual Hall of Fame balloting are announced.

If elected, Gossage would become the fourth Hall of Fame member who spent virtually his whole career as a reliever, joining Fingers, Sutter and Hoyt Wilhelm, who pitched from 1952 to 1972.

“I’m getting more nervous as it gets closer,” Gossage said Friday by phone from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. “I don’t want to set myself up for too much disappointment, like I have in the past. It’s out of my hands.”

With no clear-cut first-ballot inductees, as there were last year with Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn, Gossage, in his ninth year on the ballot, is considered the leading candidate for induction.

The intimidating right-hander, who had a 124-107 record with a 3.01 ERA and 310 saves in a distinguished 22-year career, received 71.2% of the vote last year, only 21 votes short of induction.

Former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, who received 63.5% of the vote last year, and former Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson, who received 56.7% of the vote, could push the 75% threshold, as could pitchers Bert Blyleven and Lee Smith and outfielder Tim Raines.

Time is running out for Rice, who is in his 14th year on the ballot; a player may remain on the ballot for a maximum of 15 years.

How Mark McGwire, who hit 583 home runs but is tainted by steroids allegations, fares could be intriguing. If the slugger doesn’t improve much on last year’s 23.5% showing in his first year on the ballot, chances are he will never make it to Cooperstown.

Why Gossage hasn’t been inducted is something of a mystery to him.

“The only thing I can come up with is these current relievers are so dominant in that one-inning role that they’ve blown our numbers out of the water,” Gossage said. “We don’t stack up in terms of saves, saves per year, ERA, because they’re pitching one inning, they’re not coming into jams, they’re not the workhorses we were. It’s comparing apples and oranges to what I used to do.”

The term “closer” was just beginning to circulate when then-Pittsburgh Pirates Manager Chuck Tanner told Gossage before the 1977 season that he would be a full-time reliever.

With a 97-mph fastball that he wasn’t afraid to throw inside, a burly frame and Fu Manchu mustache, and the temperament of a pit bull, Gossage, a nine-time All-Star, seemed perfectly suited for the role.

“I scared myself out there,” Gossage joked. “I hated the four days off between starts. I didn’t like the downtime. I came to love the bullpen, coming to the park every day with an opportunity to pitch, especially in a huge situation with the game on the line.”

A ninth-inning specialist Gossage was not. In fact, he was often a middle man, setup man and closer all in one; he usually entered games in the eighth inning, sometimes in the seventh and occasionally in the sixth.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark combed through box scores and found that Gossage made a remarkable 17 appearances of 10 outs or more in his first season as a closer. During one three-year stretch with the Chicago White Sox, Pirates and New York Yankees, Gossage averaged 26 saves and 136 innings per season.

These days, a reliever who approaches 85 innings is considered overworked. Entering so many games with the score tied or his team down by a run also limited Gossage’s save opportunities.

“The times I started the ninth inning, I felt guilty,” Gossage said. “I thought, ‘This is a piece of cake.’ I came into situations where you couldn’t allow the ball to be put in play -- bases loaded, no outs -- and in the seventh inning sometimes. That’s why I have so many decisions. Had I been used the way closers are today, it’s hard to tell what my numbers would have been.”

--

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com