Might this suggest immortality? Veteran sportswriter Mark Whicker, in an early October edition of his regular The Morning After posts that address various developments in the sports world, cited a memorably bizarre last-minute event in a 1978 NFL game that he said “became known as “Moby Fumble….”
Hey! That’s what I labeled it back then. It lives on?!
Whicker was comparing a recent case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory—Miami University’s turnover with 24 seconds to play earlier this season that gifted Georgia Tech the decisive score—to the enormous blunder, 45 years earlier, by the New York Giants. In ’78, the Giants—ahead by five points with ball possession, no time outs remaining, the clock running down from 20 seconds—chose not to have their quarterback take a knee and bollixed a handoff that instantly resulted in a Philadelphia Eagles return for the winning score.
A whale of an error. So: Moby Fumble.
It was a thing of such enormous negligence, so thoroughly illogical, and Whicker noted that it “hadn’t been seen again” until the ghastly Miami-Georgia Tech finish. He resurrected my appellation from my days as Giants’ beat writer for Long Island’s Newsday. (Well, he also noted that, in Philadelphia, the positive spin on such an unlikely turn had been “The Miracle of the Meadowlands”—that’s where the game was played).
It is not common for some lowly wordsmith to coin a phrase—much less one that endures. The fleeting impact of a journalist’s wordplay is such that Norm Miller, a colleague on the Giants beat with the Daily News at the time, often reminded of newspapers’ day-after use: Fishwrappers. Perfect for keeping your fish-and-chips warm and absorbing grease.
Not that that truth stopped us scribblers in our Ahab-like maniacal quest to hunt down illusive word pictures.
Because the apparent doofus-ness of the Giants’ play selection on that long-ago day, to attempt a handoff—when they literally could have sat out the final seconds—my original description of the moment was “The Most Incredible Play Call (And Fumble).” Not so catchy and far too wordy, but none of the Giants players—certainly not quarterback Joe Pisarcik—had agreed with such a lulu of a strategy, and the assistant who called the play that Sunday, Bob Gibson, was fired on Monday.
That same day, I was perusing my book shelf, stalled in preparing to file a follow-up report, and stumbled onto Herman Melville’s acclaimed novel. Nothing to do with football, but an example, certainly, of the futility of the human struggle in a senseless world. Thus the first draft to appear in Newsday: “Moby Fumble (Thar the Giants blow it!).”
From that game’s theatre-of-the-absurd conclusion, the far-reaching repercussions meant another title had to be conjured to encapsulate what the one play had wrought. A week after the assistant coach’s quick dismissal, the team debuted what has come to be known as the “victory formation,” wherein three players are positioned tightly around the quarterback, circling the wagons for a static hike-and-kneel-down motion. Too late for those Giants. Both the head coach, John McVay, and the general manager, old Giants playing hero Andy Robustelli, were gone at the end of the season. The entire organization, leveled by a single blow, had to be rebuilt.
I felt compelled to offer some other allusions of the fumble’s affect as the gathering storm played out: “The Archduke’s Assassination.” “The Big Ooops.” “The Great Stumblebum Play.” But to get right to the point, just: Moby Fumble.
Everlasting? Destined to live in perpetuity? Doubtful. And I was just Ishmael, the narrator. But call me grateful for Mark Whicker’s little recollection.