Brilliant, both of them. And he was an NY killer!

2 personal favorite Gomez memories:

1. Drunk off my ass on the eastern shore, the only toast I could come up with was to drink to Christian Gomez. United hadn’t even played that day. Didn’t matter. We were kings of MLS and Gomez was the man most responsible at the time. I could have toasted my friends, the ridiculously cheap booze ($3 shots of anything, even the good stuff), or the massive cache of fireworks we had been lighting all weekend. All fine things, but Gomez was that big a deal at the time.

2. So I have this habit, when United is in a truly big game, of running off or jumping over rows of seats when we score crucial goals. It has been this way for a long time. It’s a bit like Will Ferrell blacking out in Old School: I take off, and like 4 seconds later I come to in new surroundings.

Anyway, it’s the 2004 Eastern Conference final (see the 1:51 mark of the above video to get more of a picture). My friend Troy was sitting in…331? 332? After each DC goal, he had run down to my seats in 234 as a sort of imitation of my general big-goal antics. Gomez lofts this wildly difficult header back across goal, over Reis, and in. Predictably, I take off. Troy didn’t get to the aisle before I was already gone, ending up near that metal area reserved for handicapped seating (which is like 3 full sections over).

It’s such a shame that his last 3 years involved the trade, a frustrating 2009 (capped with the multiple pre-halftime subs), and now this. I wish there was a way to keep him on as a super-sub, but the cap prevents it (and it looks like Moreno is going to be that guy for long stretches of this season).