Talking with the Goose

Erstwhile Timber Rattler beat writer Brett Christopherson has tracked down one Richard Gossage, a former Appleton Fox pitcher, who just happens to be headed to Cooperstown for induction to the National Baseball Hall of Fame next Sunday.

Here are the results.

Hall of Famer Gossage talks a good game

"I had no idea how good I was," said Gossage, also a member of the Appleton Baseball Hall of Fame and one of just three in that 30-person fraternity — Earl Weaver and Bill Veeck are the others — to also have a spot reserved at Cooperstown.

"I just promised myself when I signed that contract I was going to give it my best shot and never look back. And I never looked back."

Before that is showing how closers were different back in the Age of Goose and Rollie. A Q&A follows. There are a lot of awesome A's to some equally awesome Q's relating to steroids, the Yankees, and Appleton, so I'll just pull one exchange for here:

Q: You went 18-2 and finished with a 1.83 ERA as a starter with the Foxes in 1971, earning Midwest League player of the year honors, and even saw time in the rotation early in your big league career. So how is it that you ditched the starter's role and instead evolved into one of the game's most dominant closers?

A: They didn't groom relievers in the minor leagues at that time. When I came to the big leagues, starting pitching is what you wanted to be. You didn't want to be in the bullpen. The bullpen was a junk pile where old starters went that couldn't start anymore. It wasn't the glamorous role. Starters still prided themselves going nine innings. (Former White Sox manager) Chuck Tanner was the one that put me in the bullpen. Heck, I didn't care. When I came to the big leagues, he immediately put me in the bullpen. He and (pitching coach) Johnny Sain saw me and (fellow pitcher) Terry Forster as being great relief pitchers. When they needed to get out of an inning, they brought us in to get out of that inning. And we could do it because we could throw hard. And we had good command of our fastballs. I didn't want to be in the bullpen, but I would have done anything. I was in the big leagues. I would have cleaned the toilets.

Awesome!

Gossage's career took off in Appleton

It was early in the 1971 Midwest League season when Chicago White Sox general manager Roland Hemond and Sox skipper Chuck Tanner decided to take advantage of an off day by traveling to Cedar Rapids to catch a glimpse at some of their prospects with the Appleton Foxes — then Chicago's Class A affiliate.

As the story goes, Tanner also used the visit to teach the 19-year-old Gossage how to throw a changeup so he had something off-speed in his repertoire to go along with his sizzling upper 90 mph fastball.

"His record was 1-1 at the time," Hemond recalled. "And then he just took off after that."

Took off all the way to Cooperstown.