By Ken Peters
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Plopped down in rural America, unable to speak or understand English, the 18-year-old pitcher felt so lonely and isolated that he desperately wanted to return home to Montreal.

Fortunately for him - and the Los Angeles Dodgers - Eric Gagne stuck it out.

"It was the toughest thing I've experienced in my life. I was away from my family really for the first time, in a different culture, and it's a lot harder when you don't speak the language," Gagne recalled.

Those were the early days for Gagne at Seminole State College in Oklahoma, long before he became a Cy Young Award-winning closer. He picked the school because several other Canadians had gone there.

"I just wanted to go home. I was crying and asking myself, What am I doing here?' "

That's difficult to picture, now that the burly, bearded and be-goggled former youth hockey player from Quebec has become baseball's most intimidating closer.

The 28-year-old Gagne has a remarkable save string going, a major league record streak of 70 in a row dating back to Aug. 28, 2002.

He's 7-for-7 on save chances this season, with a 1-0 record and 2.31 ERA in 10 games.

In 77 appearances and 82 1-3 innings last year, Gagne had a 1.20 ERA and struck out 137.

He was perfect in 55 save chances - the one he blew in the All-Star game does not officially count.

Gagne became the first pitcher to record two 50-save seasons, reached the 100-save mark faster than anyone in big league history, and was the ninth reliever to win the Cy Young Award.

Gagne considers his year in Seminole a turning point.

"I think that made me who I am. I learned a lot about myself," he said. "That's the thing that told me, Hey, I really want to be a baseball player because I'm going to make every sacrifice.' I knew then that I loved the game so much, I was going to fight for it, keep trying to get better at it - and better at English."

Dodgers manager Jim Tracy knows of the challenges Gagne faced when he arrived from Montreal.

"I know those were tough times for him, and I believe that's when Eric's real character began to show, the strong character that we see in him now," Tracy said.

Lloyd Simmons, the longtime coach at Seminole who now manages the Kansas City Royals' rookie team in Arizona, distinctly remembers Gagne's early days in Oklahoma.

"When I first saw the ball come out of his hand, I told an assistant coach, 'This guy's special,"' Simmons said.

He saw Gagne as sort of a jewel in the round.

"Eric was a short, fat, soft-bodied guy obviously out of shape," Simmons said by telephone from Arizona. "I think what I did was to help him get in shape, and to realize just how good he was.

"I hold really hard workouts, push them to the limit, and he didn't like it. But he learned to, and now I know he really works hard at it. I knew he had that tenacity about him, and when he competes, he's got that fire coming out of his eyes. He wanted the ball and he wanted to be great."

Gagne also learned English in a hurry because his French wasn't of much use in Seminole.

"I could communicate some in two or three months. When you can't speak a word of English, you're going to pick it up pretty quickly. It's a survival skill," said Gagne, who speaks English now as if he grew up in the Midwest.

"People say, Hey, you don't have a French-Canadian accent.' I tell them, 'That's because I didn't learn English in Canada; I learned it in Oklahoma,"' he said.