Baseball's ills blur Gossage's spotlight

By Helene Elliott

Jan. 9, 2008 12 AM PT

It would have been fun to hear Rich “Goose” Gossage tell stories about the craziness of his years with the New York Yankees, when George Steinbrenner was firing Billy Martin every other day and Reggie Jackson was the straw that stirred a very strange brew in the clubhouse.

It would have been entertaining, after Gossage shook off the daze of his overdue election to baseball’s Hall of Fame, if he had explained his motivation for adopting a bushy mustache and intimidating demeanor on the mound.

Didn’t happen that way.

Gossage’s conference call Tuesday with members of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America frequently turned to talk about steroid use in baseball and repeatedly looped back there to discuss his thoughts on the Mitchell Report (good), Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame candidacy (glad he doesn’t have to vote) and Roger Clemens’ alleged use of steroids (he thinks it’s “weird” that Clemens and Barry Bonds improved so dramatically as they aged).

In between condemnations of performance-enhancing drugs, Gossage had a chance to thank Chuck Tanner, the manager who saw that his crackling fastball and restless energy made him more suited for relieving than starting.

“I can’t fathom having nearly the career that I had if I’d been a starting pitcher. I just can’t imagine,” Gossage said from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo.

That he will share the stage in Cooperstown on July 27 with Dick Williams, who managed him in San Diego and was elected in the last Veterans Committee voting, was also a great source of joy.

“I’ve waited a while and there isn’t anybody I’d rather go in with than Dick Williams,” said Gossage, who was elected in his ninth year of eligibility.

“He was a great, great manager and I really enjoyed playing for him.”

But inevitably the conversation came back to the damage that performance-enhancing drugs have inflicted upon baseball, and that stinks.

That’s where we are, dividing everything into the time before steroids entered our vocabulary and the time after clubhouse attendants began selling human growth hormone out of their gym bags.

Almost in passing, someone slotted Gossage -- who made his major league debut in 1972 and finished in 1994 -- in the pre-steroids era, whose records are considered above taint.

Those who didn’t see him in his prime may sum him up as only that, a pre-steroids pitcher whose raw numbers -- 310 saves, 124-107 record, 3.01 earned-run average and 1,502 strikeouts in 1,809 innings -- don’t seem overwhelming at a casual glance.

They should know he was a ferocious and durable competitor, a significant link in the evolution of relievers from “a junk pile where old starters went who couldn’t start anymore,” as he described it, to specialists who face a batter or two and retire to ice their delicate elbows.

“To come to the ballpark with the opportunity to pitch that night, it was so exciting. It made a lot of difference in the way I approached the game,” he said.

“I would throw as hard as I could for as long as I could and the jams that I came into were always so exciting. I always felt the more difficult the situation, the better I was.”

Usually, he was.

Everyone should also know that among his 310 saves are 52 in which he got seven outs or more. That in 1980, when he recorded a career-best 33 saves, he pitched two innings or more in 14 of those saves. That in his 30-save season in 1982, he pitched two innings or more in 13 of those saves.

The Yankees’ Mariano Rivera, considered the best reliever of his generation, has exactly one save in which he recorded seven outs or more.

Gossage doesn’t begrudge current relievers their glory. “I think today is the way they should be used,” he said, predicting that setup men may someday win election to the hall because their role has become so vital.

“That’s the only point I’ve always tried to make: Please don’t compare me to these modern-day relievers. It’s apples and oranges. It’s not the same game,” he added.

The way we look at baseball has changed too. Once, we thought of an outfielder as a power hitter, then as a $30-million player. Now we wonder if he’s clean or dirty.

Gossage is as unforgiving toward cheaters as he was to hitters.

“If they find that they did do performance-enhancing drugs and stimulants or whatever, the HGH, then I think it needs to be dealt with,” he said.

“There’s too much at stake with the great players and history of the game, of all the great players that played the game before them were on a level playing field. And I can’t say this is a level playing field. . . . I think that these guys, if you did it, the best thing to do is come clean, ‘fess up and life will go on.”

Gossage noted that pitcher Andy Pettitte admitted to twice using HGH.

“And there are other guys that have said they did it,” Gossage said. “Life is going to go on. If you did do performance-enhancing drugs you need to come clean and put an end to this because of the history of the game and because how great baseball has been over such a long period of time.”

Gossage makes the Hall of Fame better for his presence. Too bad he had to spend so much of his election day discussing those who shouldn’t be admitted unless they pay $14.50.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Worth the wait

Players who were elected in their ninth year on the ballot or later:

Dazzy Vance

Red Ruffing

Rabbit Maranville

Bill Terry

Ralph Kiner

Bruce Sutter

Gabby Hartnett