My Finest Hour

Hello. This is the internationally acclaimed Weekend Gene Pool, in which I ask you for anecdotes that I will comment on next week, but in return, I will deliver something interesting. Here comes the interesting part.

I think my finest year on Earth was 1978. I know it included my finest hour. I was working as a reporter in the statehouse bureau of the Detroit Free Press. Two of my colleagues were Lou Heldman and Ken Fireman. Both fine guys, but total a-holes to be around because they hated the Yankees, who were, at the time, busy sucking.

On this very week in 1978 — late July — they were ten and a half games behind the Red Sox in the American League East, a seemingly insurmountable deficit this late in the season. The Yankees were deader than a corpse, even deader than that pathetic simile I just wrote. Ken and Lou were riding me about it, which annoyed me, and prompted me to make a preposterous and insupportable prediction: The Yankees would come back to beat the Sox and then win the World Series.

Lou dared me to bet on it, and offered 8-1 odds. I said sure, and gave him a ten-dollar bill, right then and there, since, you know, he had practically won the bet already. My odds of winning $80 were as thin as an undertaker’s smile. (Though I am getting marginally better at similes, even as we talk.)

If you are a baseball fan, you know what happened. The Yankees got hot, stayed hot, and made an unprecedented comeback. They finished the season with the same record as the Sox, meaning the two teams would meet for a winner-take all single elimination game, at Fenway Park, on ….

Ready?

… October 2, 1978, my 27th birthday.

Feeling the willies, yet, punk?

When people hit 27, some do great things — Gagarin went into space, Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises — and yet others, too many others — die. We needn’t revisit the necropsy report. You can Google it.

But if you Google “the greatest baseball game ever played,” well, here ya go.

On my birthday, Ken Fireman and I were watching the game on a tiny TV in our office at The Free Press. Whatever work we had would be sidelines for three hours.

The Yankees were behind by two runs in the seventh inning when their most feeble hitter, a grown man with a child’s name but who will be forevermore known in Beantown as “Bucky Fucking Dent,” put one over the Green Monster with two men on.

Yankees ahead 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth. Two baserunners. Two outs. The Yankees’ closer, Rich “Goose” Gossage, was in trouble, and he was about to face the second greatest hitter in Red Sox history, Carl Yastrzemski. The Goose looked cooked. His pitches were coming as fat as a sumo. The Yankees big-gutted manager, Bob Lemon, trudged out to the mound.

“It’s Sparky time,” Ken Fireman confidently predicted to me. He meant that Lemon was going to yank Gossage and bring in his other closer, Sparky Lyle.

I know Ken never made the connection, at least not then — it was too tense, no one was thinking rationally, but — Sparky Lyle was nicknamed “The Fireman.” Because he put out fires.

This was a contest of baseball knowledge. I wasn’t ceding this moment to Ken Fucking Fireman. This would not be his moment. I held his gaze, and spoke as confidently and commandingly as I knew how.

“Lemon sticks with The Goose,” I said. This was a collision of baseball knowledge.

And Lemon did. Two pitches later The Goose came in high and tight and hard, and Yaz popped it up to third base. Gossage and his catcher, Thurman Munson, embraced at the mound.

The Yankees did win it all in 1978, and Lou Heldman, an honest man, made good on his bet. But he didn’t pay me any money. Instead he used the $90 to buy a display ad in the Detroit Free Press. You can find it in the microfiche. It says “Gene Weingarten was right. The Yankees are the best team in baseball.” Much more satisfying than 90 bucks.

Ten months later, Thurman Munson would die while practicing takeoffs and landings in his Cessna Citation jet. The zeitgeist had imperceptibly realigned. Nothing would ever be quite the same. I own a Thurman Munson jersey. He was number 15. The number has been retired.

So, what does this all have to do with you?

You have to send me stuff. For the first time, this Weekend Gene Pool will be a three-pronged challenge. Choose any prong, or more than one.

Prong one: If you google “Lemon sticks with the Goose,” you will find no other use of it, at least as far as the Internet is aware. (I was worried before trying it, because I know there is a Baltimore culinary delight called “lemon sticks,” and thought someone might have served them with goose, but no.) “Lemon sticks with the Goose” is in fact a Googlenope, a term I invented years ago to indicate a phrase that results in zero hits when entered — between quotes — into Google. Come up with a funny one on your own. It could even be something you once actually said. Here are a few I published over the years, in my column:

“Queen Elizabeth's buttocks.” “Varsity pinochle.” “Caviar 'n' taters.” “Billy Bob Nussbaum.” “Please accept these underpants as collateral ...” “Hey, this tastes like aardvark.” "I'm Stephen Hawking and I'm a Capricorn." “Dogs playing poker and mah-jongg.” “The billionaire manicurist.” And from a Style Invitational about googlenopes, by Chris Doyle: “Your mama’s so fatuous …”. (Don’t bother checking them: Once a Googlenope is identified in print and arrives on the Web, it ceases to become a Googlenope.)

Prong two: Did you ever do anything stupid — like make an unwinnable bet — that worked out great? Tell us about it.

Prong three: When was your best year, and why? Make it funny.

Send your stuff here. Right here:

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