In 1964, St. Stephen's led Landon by one run in the bottom of the last inning with the Interstate Athletic Conference baseball championship at stake. With one out, Landon loaded the bases. The next batter hit a ground ball to third base.
The St. Stephen's third baseman had a choice. Take the easy forceout at home plate or try to start a quick around-the-horn game-ending championship-winning double play. He picked the latter. But, in a split second of haste to get the throw started toward second base, he forgot to catch the ball. The grounder went through his legs untouched. Two runs scored. Landon won.
Reggie Gooch led the Falcons all season until his final play. "I tell the players they'll still remember plays in 20, 30, 40 years," Coach Bob Milloy said.
(Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)
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And we lost. Or rather I lost, since I was the 16-year-old third baseman. It was that rare situation where one person, faced with a routine play, botches it and turns his team's championship into defeat. On the long bus ride back to school, my only goal was not to cry from shame, anger. Not in front of the seniors.
In 40 years, I've remembered that play countless times. But the memory never returned more strongly than when reading about Good Counsel quarterback Reggie Gooch, who turned the wrong way last Sunday and pitched the football to nobody, costing his team an undefeated season and the No. 1 ranking in the Washington area.
One instant, it looked like Gooch's team would score in the last two minutes to beat DeMatha, win its league title and clinch the area's top ranking. At worst, from the four-yard line, Good Counsel could tie it at 30 with a short field goal.
But on second down, as 10 teammates ran to their left, Gooch inexplicably turned right and pitched the ball backward to a teammate who wasn't there. He heard the option play correctly: "19 Lead." But somehow it flipped in his head from left to right.
"I wish we could go back in time," Gooch said yesterday. "I wish my arm was 10 inches longer. I could pull the ball back. I wish [tailback] Jerron [Pearson] had seen me go the wrong way and tackled me."
But time is a one-way street and sometimes a mean one. DeMatha recovered the fumble, ran out some clock, took a safety and won, 30-29. "Things happen," said DeMatha's coach, "that are unexplainable."
"I just thought 'right.' I don't know why," Gooch said. "Wow, I'm supposed to be the smart kid, the leader, the one who understands" the game.
And, though he may doubt it now, he is.
The 5-foot-6 1/2 Gooch is so small and his crouch so exaggerated that, when he takes the snap his face mask sits on his center's butt, he seems to look up at the sky and his own rear end almost touches the ground. In a league of giants, many bound for college powerhouses, he is outweighed by 100 pounds at times. Yet the 18-year-old is a tiny star. Which made his blunder more excruciating.
For those at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, the sight of Gooch after his fumble was more heartbreaking than the play itself. Leaving the field, the slender Gooch, who had thrown two touchdown passes in the game and run 38 yards for another score, collapsed in front of the Good Counsel stands, lying face down in the dirt unmoving for several minutes.
"My body was so in shock. I couldn't even control myself," Gooch said. "I've always been the little guy that people said couldn't do it. And I've always had to prove them wrong."
Adding pressure, though he may not have known it at the time, was the memory of the death of his father a year ago. "Just before that play, I thought, 'Come on, Dad, push us through this,' " Gooch said.
