In the regular season finale, Gyasi Zardes scored a goal in the 11th minute en route to hat trick in a 3-2 win over Minnesota United. After Zardes scored, I turned to Mike Urso and said, “To give you a scary idea of how my brain works, Gyasi just scored in the 11th minute and he wears number 11. Now I want to know how many times a Crew player has scored in his jersey minute. I know I’m going to go home and end up looking through over two decades of box scores to figure it out. This is what it’s like to be me.”

Mike, in that droll Urso fashion, paused and then said, “I mean, it’s an interesting factoid, I guess, but next thing you know it’s Wednesday.”

That’s actually a pretty accurate description of what historian/researcher mode does to me. I need to know something and then the hours fly by as I dig to figure it out.

Anyway, I did all this research in early November right before things went haywire with the kidney stone, and then I forgot to circle back to publish it. But while doing some other research today, it jogged my memory, so here is the super important list of all the times a Crew player has scored a goal in the same minute as his jersey number.

Notes:

* It has happened 14 times, via ten men, via six jersey numbers.

* 11 is the most popular number with four instances (by three different players), followed by 10 with three instances.

* Brian McBride (20), Federico Higuain (10), Justin Meram (9), and Ola Kamara (11) have done it twice.

* The Crew are 6-5-3 when a player scores in his jersey minute.

* The Zardes goal was only the fourth time it has been done at home, and only the third at MAPFRE Stadium. The other ten times were on the road. Until Zardes did it in the season finale, Crew players had done it just as many times at Yankees Stadium in the Bronx and Toyota Stadium in Frisco TX as they had in 20 seasons at MAPFRE Stadium!

* Goalkeeper William Hesmer wore #1, but only scored at the very end of games, not the very beginning.

Anyway, there you go, Mike. I wasn’t kidding when I told you my brain would need to know the answer to this factoid.

*****

Email: sirk65@yahoo.com
Twitter: @stevesirk
If you wish to support my writing, please consider becoming a patron at my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SteveSirk

A MASSIVE SEASON is now available as an ebook!