Tony DeMarco

As Rich "Goose" Gossage tells the story, a running joke around the 1992-93 Oakland Athletics involved coach and noted quipster Rene Lachemann calling Gossage "a real reliever" — as in one who sometimes had thrown two or three innings to earn a save.

Always within earshot of Lachemann's words was then A's closer Dennis Eckersley, who was in the midst of mounting Hall of Fame numbers as one of the game’s first one-inning closers.

Different eras, different roles, touche', Lach.

Eckersley shot through to Cooperstown on the first ballot in 2004, and rightfully so, with almost 200 victories — most coming as a starter — before a dominating run that included 390 saves, and an MVP and Cy Young award-winning season.

And on Sunday in Cooperstown, Gossage officially has joined Eckersley as a teammate once again — better late than never.

“We weren’t closers, we were relief pitchers,’’ Gossage said of his heyday. “The word closer wasn’t even coined yet. We should have been paid for two jobs. We should have been paid for what the closers got, and what the setup men got. We should have been compensated for that, I think.’’

Gossage was joking, of course. But with his long-overdue election to the Hall of Fame, there will be no more questions about how to properly evaluate one of the game’s dominant relievers from a different era — before specialization became the rule and save totals skyrocketed.

And there can be no more criticism that Gossage may have marred his credentials by hanging on too long, making six stops in his final six pro seasons, including one in Japan, before hanging it up at age 43.

It took Gossage nine ballots, but he will walk into Cooperstown with a resounding 86 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America. And that wait has made it that much more special to him.

“The first-ballot guys know they’re going in,’’ Gossage said. “I didn’t know if I was going to get elected or not. To get in on my ninth try was an incredible feeling.

“My mom always said things work out for a reason, and my ninth time was a charm. The timing of this was incredible that I would be elected in the last year of Yankee Stadium. The way they introduced all the Hall of Famers (before the All-Star game), and me being a part of that was over the top in terms of timing.’’

His numbers say 310 saves — never more than 33 in a season, a pedestrian number in today’s game. But the numbers also say 52 of those saves took at least seven outs to record, a nine-year stretch where his season ERA never was above 2.90, and a career ERA that climbed just over 3.00 because of three consecutive 4.00-plus seasons in his early 40s. That begs the inevitable question, what would those numbers be like in today’s game?

“I’ve always said what they do today is easy compared to what we used to do,’’ Gossage said. “The numbers that these guys are putting up I think are one reason why it took awhile to figure out where they were going to put relievers (in Hall of Fame voting). They’re so dominant in that one inning that people kind of forgot what we used to do.

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“If I just pitched one inning, it would seem like a piece of cake compared to being used the way we were used. When I would come in a game in the seventh inning with no one out, there were situations that God couldn’t get out of, and I used to get out of them. So it’s really hard telling what my stats would have been (pitching only one inning).’’

Gossage’s 13-year run as a closer ended with the Chicago Cubs in 1988, but his career stretched another six seasons, including those two in Oakland, when he served as one of Eckersley’s setup men. That’s another thing you won’t see today’s Hall of Fame-level closers doing. But Gossage said Chuck Tanner — his first big-league manager — told him to play until they tore the uniform off his back, and that’s exactly what he did.

The two decades that have passed since haven’t dulled the memory of Gossage at his dominating best — intimidating hitters with a scary Fu Manchu mustache, an upper-90s fastball with movement and an all arms-and-legs delivery.

“What you saw is what you got,’’ Gossage said. “With the situations I came into, I had to be at my best. The adrenalin was flowing. I didn’t walk around and slam the ball in my glove to try to psyche myself up. I didn’t need any help; 55,000 people screaming did the trick.’’

No matter how many innings it took.

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