Goose Gossage: My Dad's Favorite Yankee

My Dad passed his Yankee fandom down to all seven of us kids, in particular the four boys. He didn't rail against the other teams, but I can still hear the hard scuff of his heel across the living room carpet and his quick growl when something went against his beloved team while he was watching on TV. He became a tremendous fan of the team in the mid-forties, not long after making his way north from the Carolinas when the Negro League New York Black Yankees briefly shared Yankee Stadium with the major league team. He'd come for the Saturday double-header—$1.25 to see the Negro League team in a morning game, then leave the ballyard for a quick bite and return with the other half of the stub for bleacher admittance for the big club.

These were the Yankees of DiMaggio, Berra, Bauer, Heinrich, but oddly, my Dad carried a special torch for the closers of that time. Guys like Joe Page and the man who he always sang the praises of—Johnny “The Fireman” Murphy. In the days of Sparky Lyle and “Dirt” Tidrow, Daddy'd go on and on about the way Murphy would simply snuff out late-game opposition rallies. “Little 'five o'clock lightnin' from the boys and then ?Whop! Whop! WHOPPP!!” He'd be done.”

Murphy was Daddy's guy until the Goose came along. Much as he loved Sparky's reliably baffling slider, Goose's monster stride homeward—six feet four of baseball brutality flying at the batter—and that arm buggy-whipping almost out of the third base stands with the ball on top of the plate thisdamnquick...became Daddy's modern-day favorite. “Gas 'em, Goose.” he'd murmur when he got two strikes on some poor unfortunate Patek of the time, and then?

“Bam! Hi-yoooooo! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!”

My favorite baseball memory of all about my Dad? Sitting with him in the old rust-colored Plymouth Satellite wagon, listening to the Yankee game on the radio in the summer of '78. The reception? Awful out on Long Island where we were visiting friends. He didn't dare go watch—the superstition of switching how the game was being consumed when the Yankees were leading late—would hold true. So we sat in the car, sweltering. Sticking to the vinyl seats, and my Dad, pumping his fist with each out...till the ninth. Goose Time. The Danny Meyer-led Mariners loaded the bases with NO ONE OUT, and then...Lem went to The Goose. Yikes!

And I proceeded to listen to The Goose mow down the M's like pretty much no one ever since...maybe not even Mo at his best. Gossage mayhemed the M's, striking out the side on eleven pitches, and even through that craptastic AM reception, we could hear Goose humping that ball up there faster, LOUDER with each pitch. Boom Boom! BOOM!

And my Daddy, sat there in the driver's seat—almost tearing the wheel from the dash from pounding at it with glee on every smash-mouth strike as Frank Messer got amped along with my Dad on every strike call. On that strike three, he shook the wheel so hard that everything in the car quaked, and he hollered “Whooooo-hooooooooo!”, throwing his head back and honking the horn in our friend's driveway. He leaned in with a little boy's almost manic grin, and shook me hard by the shoulder, “Boy! Let's get us a Dairy Queen and celebrate!”. 

And that was a big deal, as he never took just one child out for ice cream. It was all of us or nothing. But he fired up the land barge and rolled out giddily, and we got a couple of sundaes—just the oh-so-rare and cherished me and him, and we ate them in the DQ lot as dusk weighed down and watched the sun sink as a ball of fire.

And he said, “Goose's fastball musta looked just like that today.” He smiled. “Just like that.”