Gordie

 Gordon Johncock died yesterday in the full measure of 90 years, and there goes another piece of IndyCar's golden years. There was Gordie and A.J. and Mario and J.R. and Bobby and Al and luckless Lloyd Ruby, and don't forget  McCluskey and McElreath and Donohue and Dallenbach, too.

Those were the days, as someone once said. That was the cast that sucked in a skinny kid with Coke bottle glasses, and holds him fast to this day.

That kid was me, of course, who became an Indianapolis 500 nerd because of Gordie 'n' them, and remains one here in late autumn of my years. It is ridiculous, how cluttered my brain is with geeky morsels from that race and that time. And so I can tell you a few things about Gordon Johncock, gone now to his reward.

I can tell you he was the quiet one from the rookie class of 1965 at Indy, the one that contained Mario and Al and Joe Leonard and sports car star Masten Gregory, and six other rookies. Gordie was driving one of only three front-engine roadsters that year, as the rear-engine revolution reached flood tide. But he finished fifth, behind Jim Clark in his rear-engine Lotus Ford and Parnelli Jones in his rear-engine Kuzma-Lotus Ford and Mario in his rear-engine Brawner Ford and Al Miller in his rear-engine Lotus Ford.

The next year, Gordie was wheeling a rear-engine car, too, on his way to a 26-year career that would see him win 25 champ car races and the 1976 champ car title. Along the way, eight years after '65, he had the bad luck to win the 500 no one wants to remember.

That was the 57th running in 1973, which took three days to run because of rain, killed crewman Armando Teran and driver Swede Savage, and was finally put out of its misery by more rain after 133 laps. It was a pinnacle moment Johncock likely couldn't properly celebrate, because no one did. Everyone was just glad it was over.

Which makes 1982 a redemption of sorts for the little guy from Hastings, Mich., 35 miles northeast of Kalamazoo.

See, Gordie won the 500 that year, too, and this time it was memorable for all the right reasons. Who could forget the last 10 laps, when Rick Mears kept getting closer and closer while Gordie used every bit of his considerable skill to stay in front of him?

By the last lap, Mears was on him like white on rice, but somehow Gordie held him off. Took the checkers 0.16 seconds in front, the closest finish ever to that point.

I was there that day, weirdly, as a civilian, because usually I was there as a member of the working press. Across four decades, it was one of only two 500s I didn't cover for one newspaper or another.

What I remember, hazily, are those last ten laps, and how that distinctive Indy 500 surf-sound of the crowd got louder and louder with every one. Made me fall in love with Indy and the month of May all over again.

So thanks for that, Gordie. And for everything else of which you were a part.