66. Eric Gagné—Fact or Fiction

If, in the end, The Eric Gagné Story became at least in part a novel, a memoir rooted in more fantasy than we had been led to believe, than what a novel it was.

And if it wasn’t a novel, then...wow. Just wow.

Welcome to the jungle! We got fun ‘n’ games! Electric. Dodgers fans weren’t just swept up by the result, they were taken with the show, a show that evolved into Gagné emerging from the bullpen to piercing sounds of Guns ‘n’ Roses. After beginning his career as a starting pitcher with strikeout potential but inconsistent performance, Gagné was thrust into the role of bullpen closer mainly because no more obvious alternatives existed for the Dodgers in 2002. And just like that, Clark Kent turned into Superman.

With a fastball that approached 100 miles per hour, setting up a changeup that could break your wrists, and a curve that dropped down from heaven, Gagné left hitters like cats flailing at a piece of string. “Oh, yes!” the usually collected Vin Scully exclaimed after one Gagné close-out. “Oh my gosh, what a pitch! That’s amazing! That’s not fair.”

It wasn’t just pitching. We’re talking sensory overload. A rock concert in a bullet train. The first eight innings were the warmup act. Gagné was the main event. And yes, it’s true: Dodgers fans stayed in their seats—or rather stood up in front of them—until the very end of the game to see it.

For three seasons—each of them coincidentally totaling 821/3 innings—Gagné struck out 13.3 batters per nine innings while allowing barely half that many base runners. His ERA those years was 1.79. In 2003, when he won the Cy Young Award, he allowed 12 runs the entire season. He set a major league record with 84 consecutive saves, though that almost makes him sound too robotic. The force was with him.

It was too good to last forever, that much you knew, though it ended all too soon. Starting in 2004, injuries began to sideline him. He pitched 151/3 innings total for two remaining years of his Dodger career. In 2007, he had something of a renaissance with the Texas Rangers, but then fell apart following a trade to Boston.

And then, as some suspected, Gagné was too good to be true, or entirely true, anyway. Following the 2007 season, the Mitchell Report investigating the use of performance-enhancing substances by major league players named Gagné as a recipient of two shipments of human growth hormone. For many fans, this rendered Gagné’s accomplishments null and void, on the theory that they rested on artificial and illegal stimulants. On the other hand, despite the general refrain in the media, several studies have shown that HGH does not help improve an athlete’s performance—and, of course, if Gagné were using HGH, so were some of the batters he was facing.

Different minds will review The Eric Gagné Story in different ways. For those who experienced him, the memories still exist. When you close your eyes, you can still feel them. It’s your choice what you do with them.

 

Mike Marshall

Though he was a pitcher, Mike Marshall practically became an everyday player for the Dodgers in 1974. He went to the mound for a major league record 106 games, averaging nearly two innings per outing. At one point, he appeared in 13 consecutive contests, picking up victories in six of them along with two saves, pitching 262/3 innings in those two weeks with a 1.69 ERA. Marshall finished the season with a 2.42 ERA (141 ERA+) and won the NL Cy Young Award.

Marshall later completed his doctorate in exercise physiology (in fact, he once said that he played professional baseball to pay for his college expenses) and insisted that he had methods that would increase the durability and resiliency of pitchers, but his approach has been found too extreme for the mainstream.