GOOSE GOSSAGE knows about the bullpen and about the Hall of Fame. So listen to what he had to say yesterday. Gossage believes the Yankees need to put Joba Chamberlain back in the pen and that George Steinbrenner should someday join him in Cooperstown.
“I think he’s more valuable, personally, in the bullpen, to utilize him two or three or four days out of the week is more valuable to a ballclub than starting him,” Gossage said of Chamberlain.
If Joba goes back, who starts in his place?
“The way starters are used today, now it’s getting closer to five innings to being a quality start,” Gossage said. “I think they can get most anybody to be a starter today. With the emphasis on those set-up guys, they’ve really been instrumental. Now you don’t win a world championship without a great, great bullpen. So I think he was more valuable in the bullpen.”
As for the Boss, he said he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
“Absolutely, there isn’t another owner that was better than George Steinbrenner and what he’s done for baseball,” noted Gossage, who will be inducted into the Hall in nine days. “He kind of was the straw that stirred the drink all over. He was very tough in all ways.
There was never a dull moment playing for George that’s for sure. He doesn’t have to take a back seat. He was a leader. He changed the game the way salaries evolved. He wasn’t afraid to go out and spend his last dollar and try to put the best team out there.”
I’m with Goose on the Boss, but I think Chamberlain can be that ace the Yankees need. Gossage was dead-on with this additional point about Steinbrenner.
“I’m not so sure that if anybody else bought the Yankees they would have recognized the value that George recognized in owning the Yankees,” he explained.
“He’s been responsible for keeping the Yankees the Yankees. I believe he is the best owner baseball has ever seen. There’s no one who wants to win more than George Steinbrenner. Playing for him was a tremendous experience. I owe a lot to George playing on this big stage for six years.”
The Veterans Committee next considers executives in December 2010.
Gossage also said it was a “no-brainer” that Mariano Rivera deserved the chance to close the All-Star Game, if the situation had presented itself, because the game was at Yankee Stadium.
“Had it been Fenway it would have been [Jonathan] Papelbon,” he said.
Goose, who was on the field with all those other Hall of Famers, will miss the Stadium.
“It’s a museum, it’s a shrine,” he said. “It’s not going to be the same playing in the new Yankee Stadium as the old one. I don’t care what anyone says. If they had been able to build the new one where home plate is it would have made such a huge, huge difference. It would have basically been the same place. That’s hallowed ground where home plate is. I feel blessed to having played there.”
When the Boss came in on his golf cart to deliver the game balls before the All-Star Game it was a touching scene.
“I just hugged him and he was crying and I started crying, just to see him was very, very emotional for me,” said Gossage, who also had his run-ins with Steinbrenner during his playing days.
There never will be another Goose. Of his 310 saves, 52 were seven or more outs. All-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman owns 541 saves, but only two of that extreme length. Rivera has 466 saves, one of seven or more outs.
“What they do today,” Gossage said, “is easy compared to what we used to do.”
In so many ways it’s a whole new ballgame.