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Burbank, California In 1985 Armen Keteyian and I were hired by Viking Penguin to write a hitting book with baseball superstar Rod Carew. The book was titled Rod Carew's Art & Science of Hitting. You can still find it on eBay. We had decided that we would try to start each chapter, if possible, with a quote from a notable baseball figure relative to the topic at hand. Don Mattingly spoke about how Rod influenced him as a situational hitter. Billy Martin talked about Rod's disciplined approach to practice. Star after star couldn't be more gracious. It occurred to me that it might be nice to get a quote from Rich Gossage about what it was like to face Carew with the game on the line in the ninth inning. Gossage was then a member of the San Diego Padres. His best years were in the recent past, but he would still an effective enough closer to log 26 saves during that 1985 season. I was living in Los Angeles trying to launch a career as a TV producer, but my big break on Head of The Class was still a year away, so my $10,000 payday for this book would generate about half of my income for the year. I was all over it. I waited for the Padres to come to Dodger Stadium, procured a media pass and found my way into the visitors' locker room. There I found Gossage sitting along side another New York expatriate, Graig Nettles, who like Gossage, had traded his pinstripes to wear the mustard and brown of the Padres. It was that perfect time of the day to speak to players. The Padres had already taken BP, the Dodgers now had the field, and the visitors had time to relax.  A member of baseball's class of 2008, Goose Gossage is classless, writes Frank Pace. I immediately got a bad feeling when I approached Gossage, but I had gotten that same feeling one month earlier when I approached Billy Martin . However, when I told Billy I was working with Rod, Martin's icy glare melted, and he treated me as a friend. That was not to be the case with "Goose." I don't know if he had a problem with Rod, or if he had a problem with me, but he definitely had a problem. When I made my pitch, Gossage looked at Nettles, and the two started laughing. "So you want a quote? Gossage said, " I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you that quote. This is what I want you to do. Go as far down the right field line as you can go. Find the foul pole. Sit behind it, and wait for me. If I'm not there in 30 minutes, keep waiting. I'll give you your quote." And the two little bitches Gossage and Nettles laughed their asses off. I debated if I should tell Rod or not. To this day if Rod is nothing else, he is serious, loyal and intense. At the time Rod was approaching his 3000th hit, and the Angels were in the thick of a pennant race, so even though we spoke often by phone, I didn't tell him of my conversation with Gossage. When the season was over, we were at Rod's 40th birthday party and I told him. Maybe the timing still wasn't right because Carew never changed expression, never acknowledged what I told him, and when one of his daughters came up to us the topic was quickly changed. Remember now, this was October 1985. Flash forward to Spring Training 1992. My phone rings. It's Rod who is in his first year as hitting instructor for the Angels calling from Arizona. The summer before, Rod had become only the 22nd player in baseball history to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility and selected on almost 91 percent of the ballots. "Guess who I saw today?" Rod asked. "Goose Gossage." By now, Gossage is so far over the hill he can't even see it any more. He was desperately trying to win a spot as the last man on the Oakland A's roster after a sparkling one save season the year before with Texas. "What did he want? I asked. "He said he wanted to talk to me, that he needed my advice. You know what I told him? he asked, his voice rising in pitch in boyish glee. "I told him sure, no problem. I told him to go as far down the right field line as he could, find the foul pole, sit behind it and wait for me. If I'm not there in 30 minutes keep waiting. Then I turned and jogged of." That's Rodney. When I had told him years earlier of my encounter with Gossage, he appeared not to have heard me. But he not only had heard those words, but they seared themselves into his memory banks. He carried them around for seven years, but when the time was right he turned them around on Gossage word for word. What goes around does come around. I love Rod Carew for many reasons. That's just one.
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