Mike Marshall.

No, not that Mike Marshall, underachieving Dodgers outfielder of the 1980s, perhaps best known for the club’s explanation why he was sitting out another game: “General soreness.”

The other Mike Marshall. Or the original Mike Marshall. “Iron Mike” Marshall. Who was, pretty much, an original, in that what he did for the Dodgers in 1974 may never be replicated as long as baseball is played.

Marshall set MLB records (which still stand) for most games pitched (106) and most games finished (83) and threw 208.1 innings — yes, out of the bullpen.

He probably was the most valuable player on the winningest Dodgers team since the franchise moved to Los Angeles; that 1974 team went 102-60, and to beat that we have to go back to the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers, who were 105-49.

He certainly got the attention of journalists of the era: He was the easy winner of the National League’s 1974 Cy Young Award, the first relief pitcher so honored. He was third in MVP voting, behind Steve Garvey and Lou Brock.

And yet … we don’t think much about Mike Marshall. Mention “Dodgers, 1974” and even many older fans, who lived through that season, will say: “Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey …”

Say “Dodgers reliever” and you might get Perranoski, Brewer, Worrell, Gagne …

Why, then, does the Mike Marshall of Dodgers bullpen fame seem nearly forgotten?

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It always is perilous to pick an argument with statistics wonks.

They have the “truth” of numbers in their tool kit and failing to acknowledge their intellectual superiority … well, just admit up front you are a Luddite.

But sometimes I wonder …

The latest trend in baseball is the notion of “leveraging” your best relief pitchers by using them at critical moments in a game — and not saving that ace reliever for the ninth.

The notion of a “closer” throwing the final inning, only, has been around for a couple of decades, but increasingly that tactic is considered hoary and is under attack.

Buck Showalter was practically fitted for a dunce cap when he failed to use closer Zach Britton in an 11-inning, wild-card game last October in Toronto, one his Orioles lost as Britton went unused.

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The NBA is a fairly big attraction, in France, a nation which also has produced the greatest number of foreign players in the league, about a dozen.

The New York Times today has drawn a link between a Franco-American wannabe baller — who did heavily accented commentary for French television for much of two decades — and the sport’s popularity here.

As I read the piece, it finally dawned on me where George Eddy may have drawn his inspiration:

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Perhaps you have been following the great debates over who should win the Most Valuable Player race in the NBA.

The 2016-17 competition is about as hot as it gets.

People of intelligence and good will can make a case for at least four players, and that is leaving Stephen Curry, the two-time defending MVP winner, out of the discussion.

The four? Russell Westbrook, James Harden, LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard.

The announcement of the winner, previously made during the second round of the playoffs, this year will be revealed in a televised awards ceremony on June 26 — more than two months after the completion of the regular season this week.

The electorate is 100 professional journalists, none of whom were identified by the NBA.

But journalists being journalists, various sites are attempting to figure out who has a ballot, and how he or she has voted.

Bleacher Report is reporting that Westbrook is the clear leader from 54 known choices for the top position in the MVP ballot.

According to the website, Westbrook has 34 first-place votes to Harden’s 15. Leonard has 3 and James 2.

Westbrook is in very good position to win, clearly.

What I wish could happen? With two guys separated from the rest of the pack?

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While slogging through the hills of northern Spain, it was easy to lose track of stories he or she thought were important, before.

And after.

Top of the list on the sports side, for me … is the Lakers’ ridiculous five-game winning streak that cost them a chance to have the second-best position in the NBA draft lottery.

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We completed the five-day Camino de Santiago pilgrimage yesterday, and celebrated by having dinner twice in about five hours.

Walking 13 or 14 miles a day is enough to work up an appetite that can be acknowledged without fear of gaining weight. So there is that.

Thinking back, I failed to mention, over the past five blog posts, several concepts I found interesting, and this is where I will get around to several of them.

Like the issue of luck.

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*By “triumphal” we mean stumbling past the sign that read “Santiago”.

So, Day 5 of the Camino de Santiago, the condensed, 73-mile version of a pilgrimage that can be 10 times as long, for the minority who start walking in distant lands, and often is about six times as long when starting just north of the France-Spain border.

Actually, we hardly paid any heed to the “Santiago” sign because all it meant was we were still on the edges of a fairly big city (100,000 or so) and were still hurrying to make the “peregrino mass” scheduled for noon in the Santiago cathedral, and perhaps — perhaps — the “swinging-of-the-botafumeiro” conclusion.

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The Camino de Santiago is a public event that passes through some of the most remote parts of Spain.

The miracle is that the pilgrimage is so little touched by crime, especially given the surge in participation over the past 20 years, crossing the 275,000 mark in 2016, with women making up almost half of the peregrinos — as pilgrims are known, in Spanish.

Over the past four days we have walked along paths hidden from much of the world, even on a heavily traveled portion of the trail, and given crime nary a thought.

And then this: Word this very day on the 23-year prison sentence given to a Spanish man for murdering a 41-year-old American pilgrim in 2015  in a remote part of the popular Camino Frances.

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Pain. Did we mention that, the pain?

Traveling the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrim is often not a pleasurable experience, in the physical sense.

Heat, cold, rain, difficult terrain, average daily hikes of 26 kilometers (16 miles) — for the whole of a month, if you follow the popular route from the France-Spain border to the Spanish cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela, which covers nearly 480 miles.

Today, we battled through one of the more taxing legs in the final stages of the camino: From Palas de Rei to Arzua, which checks in at a daunting (for civilians) 30km — or 18.6 miles.

We needed no less than nine hours on the road to complete the trip, and one of us was close to collapse the final couple of miles.

This sort of thing happens all the time in Europe’s most famous pilgrimage. And those who wonder … “why do they do it?” … well, that is a fair question.

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If Day 1 of our Camino de Santiago was about getting to the other end, Day 2 was about getting comfortable among the other pilgrims.

It is a diverse group.

Statistics compiled by church officials in Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain, suggest half the pilgrims are not Spanish … that Germans are the biggest chunk of foreign pilgrims (at 20 percent, last month), followed by Portuguese (15 percent) Italians (9), Americans (8), the Irish (7), Koreans (4), the French (3) and the rest of the world (34).

So, it is a multicultural group trooping toward the relics of Saint James in Santiago, and you plan accordingly.

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