The Other Kind of Gray Goose

Goose Gossage made it to baseball's Valhalla after hearing from the writers nine times "No flagon of ambrosia for you!"

I'm probably mixing my afterlife metaphors here but I don't care. I for one, welcome our new two inning closer/overlord to Cooperstown. It never bothered me that he would get pissed for being passed over time and again or when he'd go on Dan Patrick and argue with a certain dickhead from the Detroit Free Press (or the Cleveland Post un-Intelligencer or some such rag) who swore up and down that he would never cast a Hall of Fame vote for a reliever...

Granted, I was in first grade when he left the SOX so I do not really remember him playing for the South Siders but every baseball fan my age remembers those great Yankee teams of the late 1970's. If you watched any of those legendary victories I bet you remember that it was Rich Gossage on the mound in the 9th inning. The amazing thing about the end of some of those games was the last out was rarely a strike out. I seem to remember him battling Yaz at the end of the Bucky Dent game, fooling the great Carmine and getting him to pop up harmlessly somewhere in the infield.

I think he had more strikeout victims when the Yankees eliminated some of those great Royals teams in the playoffs but I'm not going to break down the numbers and game action for Mr. Gossage. Santi, how many times did Gossage strike out Pete LaCock?

Sorry.

Here at Killing for Sports, if you have an animal nickname we all cheer when you are elected to a hall of fame.

Now if we can only get George the Animal Steele elected to the Wrestling Hall of Fame.