New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - Final Acts

Originally founded by Illinois abolitionists, Knox College has sent three players to the NFL in the league's history. Bob Prout, pride of Knox, was its first player to go to the NFL in 40 years. On October 5, 1975, visiting Emperor Hirohito of Japan and John Roche, my father, looked on from separate locations at Shea Stadium while the Jets played against New England in their earliest home game in seven seasons. Jets safety Bob Prout caught an interception and returned it for 10 yards. The game would be one of the three victories the Jets would manage that season, beating the Patriots in an unusual drubbing, 36-7. Do you think Hirohito returned home to the Imperial Palace and reported to his disinterested servants that he had seen the Jets, the greatest of American football teams, whose greatest defensive player was named Prout? Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan until his death in 1989. Dad gave up his season tickets after the 1976 season. Prout's pickoff was the single statistical highlight of his career. In all, he lasted seven games with the Jets in 1975 and is not visible on subsequent NFL records. Bob Prout wore #25 in 1975.

It has occurred to me only now that I haven't even tried to name the best player to play in each number. Every number should have at least one superstar, don't you think? (photo from the NY Daily News) What amazes me is how few genuine superstars have owned our numbers through time. Fodder for a later entry, obviously. Note to self. In the meantime, Kerry Rhodes is the present day owner of the New York Jets #25, and he is probably the closest thing to a star we will find in #25, which is serendipitous, don't you think (honestly I'm not trying to be like Bob Costas)? Having recently signed a five-year deal, Rhodes is a fixture and an admirable one for the Jets. He is an example of how certain players don't make it to the Pro Bowl if they play for teams that are, well, considered the way the Jets are. It will interest if his play will continue to match the extraordinary PR he accrues through his foundational work, magazine covers (i.e., Essence) and canoodling with A to B list stars, like Jennifer Hudson. His website has been rerouted to his present role on the Arizona Cardinals. I liked Kerry Rhodes despite being disparaged by Rex Ryan. He will have more of his day. I believed he was born to play a greater role with Darrelle Revis. But what half-talented corner does not feel this way? Travel on, Kerry Rhodes. Happy trails.

****

But a replacement player? Behold an exception to the rule. Usually the strike-year replacement player/scab will play on until the strike is over and will then be summarily dropped from the team. Some, occasionally, will be retained. I remember the list of transactions after the 1987 strike reading like the dead list from the Lusitania. One name among a handful stood out, and not just because he's very nearly the winner of Booth Lustig for #25: George Radachowsky. He was retained by the New York Jets, despite having missed all of the 1986 season. Some of the others retained that year by the Jets included future coach Jim Haslett at linebacker, Dennis Bligen who has been discussed quite cleverly on these pages, Tom Flick and Sean Dykes. OK, but here's the issue. The Pro Football Reference lists EVERY TOUCHDOWN EVER SCORED BY GEORGE RADACHOWSKY, and fortunately for us EVERY TOUCHDOWN EVER SCORED BY GEORGE RADACHOWSKY equals one, against Miami, on September 24, 1989. I was watching the game while staying on a friend's couch in Rhode Island, waiting for my chance to go to England, but I may have been hung over from cheap beer and unrealized sexual plans from the night before, or just drunk on more cheap beer. But I do not recall George Radachowsky returning a failed Dolphins placekick for a touchdown in the first quarter - arguably the most exciting play in football - and yet he did. It was his last great act in his last season with both the Jets and pro football.

"Marshall Starks just sort of wandered into the Jets' lineup." This is what the 1964 Yearbook says about our next #25. Just mosied in. Howdy, Marshall. But what do Marshall Starks and George Radachowsky have common, some 23 years apart? I will tell you. Like the younger replacement player, Starks' only score in his football career came while converting a failed opponent's field goal into a touchdown. Yet in his case, there is not even a record of the event in the Pro Football Reference. Such can be the statistical fate of certain final acts. Alone they are judged too superfluous to become data. But in the context of another player with the same number, these coincidences can seem almost mystical.

Reggie Tongue? Winner of Booth Lustig for Funny Name jersey #25. Instead of winning John Lynch in a free agent struggle, the Jets signed Reggie Tongue, who played for one season for us in 2004. His final act was a season with the 2005 Oakland Raiders, which is not something I would have wished on anyone.

OK, when you think of the name Mel West, do you think an actor from early 1960's TV? Well, close. Certainly, for our purposes, "Mel" has to be a player from the 1960's, doesn't he? Mel Renfro. Mel Farr. Mel Gray. Mel Tillis. See how right it all seems now? Yes, #25 Mel West played for the Titans from 1961-62. He scored three touchdowns for the mighty Tites in the space of a single week in December 1961, and these represented every touchdown he ever scored in the AFL or anywhere in pro football.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - The Poets

Because of the brutality of the game, we long to find some gentle eccentricity in a player, some unique sense of consciousness that transcends football's impersonal wrath. Onetime #25 Nick Ferguson is a source of endless fascination for me. For one thing, he is a journeyman, a state of being that is likely to produce the philosopher in any player. Behold his odyssey:

According to his records, he was undrafted. He was a practice squad player for the Bengals, the Bears and the Bills. He played in the Great White North for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1997, then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (what is a Blue Bomber?). Let's not forget that between stints in Winnipeg, he played for the Rhein Fire of NFL Europe. Somehow, in some way, Bill Parcells did that magical thing of locating unrecognized, durable players and brought Nick Ferguson onto the Jets for three seasons in #25, and then he made his greatest mark with the Denver Broncos from 2003-2007. Despite an injury that has left his career in limbo, he is currently listed with the Houston Texans, and yet one can hardly discount the potential of one who spent the best of his years as a practice squad player. He clearly does not know when to say when.

Here's the thing, though. Though there appears no evidence of it that I can see, apparently Nick Ferguson writes poetry. He's Odysseus and Homer all in one, the traveler in search (sometimes in vain) for home, and also the blind scribe documenting it the whole time. Blind? Indeed. Do any of us really know where we'll land?

Or is the poet the man who plays on the practice squad, wearing a #25, yet never plays a pro game outside the preseason for anyone, anywhere? Like Robert Farmer in 1999? The invisible ones?

Or Clifford Hicks? Is it the veteran who plays a decade without much recognition or notoriety? Hicks is one of the very few players we mention in these pages who has actually played in a Super Bowl, which should tell you something about the Jets' rosters through the years. He was on two of four Buffalo Bills squads that went down consecutively against the NFC East in the early 90's. That alone could be the source of great poetry about the frailty of the human condition. Finally, in addition to being a defensive back, he was also a kick returner through much of his career. The Football @ JT-SW.com site offers his information as having scored no touchdowns on returns but, in 1994 with the Jets, having "5" under the category of "fumbles." Now, are these fumbles recovered or turned over? After having spent some time uncovering the names, the names, the endless list of names on these pages, I am compelled to feel such a persistent sympathy for all of these human beings that I hope, for the sake of Clifford Hicks, it is the former of the two kinds.

Well, let's forget art and philosophy for a moment and focus our attention on the nuts and bolts of the dollar, the final note in sports. One of the more interesting ideas for a reality TV show is one that will focus attention the lives of thoroughbred jockeys. Who would have thought that RJ Kors, former safety at #25 for the Jets over two years (and who looks like a pretty boy in his team photo) would ultimately become a successful agent for jockeys? In a recent debate over jockeys wearing promotions at the Kentucky Derby, an older and more successful Kors suggests that allowing jockeys to advertise is not exploitative; it will likely guarantee better salaries and more financial growth for people in a sports profession not known for high salaries. It's also not as known as it should be for its high rate of crippling injury. Who would ever have thought an agent could do such good for unsung athletes?

Other Jets

In his latest book, God Save the Fan, rabid Arizona Cardinals fan (you are reading correctly) Will Leitch, formerly of Deadspin, recounts a conversation with a dog-faced Cleveland Browns fan who claims that being a modern Browns fan is the worst lot there is. No, Leitch counters, not by many miles. The current Browns are worth grieving over to be sure, but Leitch asserts that the Dogpounder's actual team exists over in Baltimore; they are called the Ravens, and, good news for the pounder, they won a Super Bowl over the Giants. So technically (he wanted to say it but didn't) the lost Cleveland fans should consider themselves Ravens fans. You have a team, he says, and you should follow them even after they move.

To further clarify this challenging point, he presents a drastic example from his own experience growing up in Illinois, between Chicago and St. Louis, a divided identity that creates quandaries over sports teams. In Illinois, Leitch picked the Cardinals over the Cubs just to be a contrarian, much the way some Philadelphians love to up the ante of the city's native grouchiness by embracing the Cowboys. The feelings run that deep. But Leitch also gave his loyalty to the St. Louis football Cardinals, Bill Bidwell's team, especially when Terry Metcalf, OJ Anderson and Stump Mitchell ran the concrete carpet floor at Busch Stadium.

But then Bidwell moved the team to Phoenix - a place, as far as I know, uninhabited by actual avian cardinals. No matter. Though he has never set foot in Arizona, Will Leitch says he remains to this day a devout football Cardinals fan, and even if you know a lot about football, you probably still don't know as much about the Arizona Cardinals as does Leitch. But then who could blame you? It is a team that only its mother could love.

I mention all of this as a stunning prelude to discussing a film that I'm glad I saw this evening, My Winnipeg, which, unintentionally, presents a compelling counter to Leitch's argument. The movie is described by its writer and director Guy Maddin as a "docu-fantasia," and I think its trailer gives insight into Maddin's interpretation of memory's subjective and surreal nature.

To Maddin, Winnipeg is a tragic and mythological place, laced with a sense of missed opportunity and loss. Among other things, this relates to his discussion of the departure of the Jets - the Winnipeg WHA hockey team that got incorporated into the NHL in 1979. In 1996, the Jets moved to yes, Phoenix, home of the Cardinals. (image taken from the Canadian Design Resource webpage) Maddin apparently did not stay loyal to the team when they moved to the southern desert. To him, his city and its original team are forever linked. He makes the point that the Jets were merely the latest manifestation of all the big and small hockey clubs that tied together the Winnipeg community over time. To strip away the contemporary incarnation of that hockey tradition just for the sake of the NHL's short-sighted profits and its desire for luxury boxes was a soulless, inhuman thing.

Maddin talks about the importance of Winnipeg Arena to his family's life (photo from the Manitoban Historical Society website), and he imagines the ghosts of Manitoban hockey legends playing their spectral ice hockey games in the shell of the empty Arena even as it is being demolished. Most especially poignant are his thoughts on the arena's final implosion day (depicted here in a local news report), which did not go as planned. The film's amusing interpretation of this moment is appropriate to Maddin's belief in Winnipeg as a city of ghosts and sleepwalkers.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - Part 1

For most of us, Joe Namath is someone about whom we read in middle school biographies and who never quite leaves the fields of our imagination. For Ray Abruzzese, Namath was a friend - a real, flesh and blood person. Abruzzese was in the right place at the right time. Born in South Philadelphia, he then went - of all places - to the University of Alabama, where, two years into his playing for Coach Bryant, he met the profoundly slick freshman quarterback from Beaver Falls, the future of football, the man who would revolutionize sports culture. From there, he hitched his wagon to Broadway's star. How could he resist? Ask yourself - if you had been a South Philly kid, growing up seeing that for every gangster there was always a retinue of fifty, wouldn't you do the math and assume that your future was to be in a bigger man's entourage?

After a couple of unsuccessful seasons in Buffalo as a pro, Abruzzese was brought over by Sonny Werblin to play in #25 for the New York Jets from 1965-66. (photo from New York Jets All-Time Roster) He is described in the Jets' 1966 Yearbook as a "tough tackler" at defensive back, but he was actually hired by the Jets to play more specific roles for Joe Namath - as familiar Crimson Tide face, as hanger-on, close friend, and self-professed bonus babysitter. Later, after Abruzzese was cut from the team, he became a business associate in Bachelors III and in whatever else those crazy boys were up to. In his Namath, Mark Kriegal suggests that Abruzzese was there for all the phases of Namath's rise and plateauing, sort of like Joe Pesci's Joey LaMotta in Raging Bull. According to script, though, the star eventually rejects the loyal brother-figure who has befriended and helped him. According to Kriegal, Namath rejected Abruzzese for various reasons and never reconnected, and he suggests that this is simply Joe Willie's way. We know Jake Gyllenhaal will play Namath in the biopic, but who will play Ray Abruzzese?

OK, before we go any further, while we're on the topic of the film, I just cannot possibly resist including this link. You know how you're at a cocktail party, and somebody's talking to guests with dead-eyed seriousness, talking louder by the moment, becoming increasingly impolite, inappropriate and downright menacing? Well...he's just acting! It's humor! Wow, Christ, I mean - what talent, huh? Even still, people start to move away toward the CD collection or pretend to look at the books on the living room shelf. This guy suggests (tongue and cheek? I think?) that Joe Namath sounded like a "retarded black guy." Wow! Did he really say that!? Gosh, isn't he shocking! Ah hell, who cares. This guy's Joe Namath sounds a lot like a really retarded stereotype of a normal black person. That kind of humor did work for Andy Kaufmann, I guess. (I guess)

Remember Ed Bell? Well, now we're talking about a different Ed Bell. Actually, he is Ed Bell prototype 1. He is the first #25 in the history of the Jets organization, which also means he was the first Titan to wear the number. He was a pioneer, the AFL's very own version of a Mercury astronaut, yet the New York Jets' All-Time Database says that this Bell had two interceptions in his only season with the Titans. It's not much, I realize. But Ed Bell's story goes further back for us. A link from Virginia Tech suggests that defensive back Ed Bell rubbed it in the face of Jim Crow's ambassadors when he played at University of Pennsylvania. (photo from New York Jets All-Time Database) Though they refused to play visiting black players in Dixie, institutionally racist schools like Georgia had to play against African-American players like Ed Bell when they traveled north to play urban schools, specifically Bell's Penn team in 1952 at Philly's Franklin Field. Such was the age when athletes by virtue of simply walking onto a field and being themselves became something unexpected and transcendent.

Number 25 Scott Dierking was a five foot ten running back, an unusual height for a running back unless you consider #42 Bruce Harper at the more extraordinary 5'8". (Does anyone remember the Jets' backfield in 1979 being called the "No Name Running Game?" I thought not.) Whether in how tall he was, how short he was, or in how many yards he gained year by year, Scott Dierking was always second or third in distinction. Dierking's best season was the injury-ridden year of 1980 when he was the team's leading rusher and had six TD's, but QB Richard Todd was also the fourth best rusher that year, so that'll give you some idea of what following them was like that season. They were supposed to go to the Super Bowl; they went 4-12. Like so many important Jets of that era, Scott Dierking arrived as a rookie with the Jets in 1977 and stayed until the Jets had exhausted their potential for the playoffs in 1982. By the standards of a young Jets fan's experience, there was no more exciting time to be alive than those years. Despite my own present-day capacity for nauseous, self-induced anxiety and terror, I will never feel as intensely crazed and terrified with anticipation as I was on the Sundays of those years. I sat on that furnace-brown rug we had in the living room, in front of a Jets game, waiting for them to live up to their reputation and potential, waiting for my life to change. Waiting.

Read All Of This

Because I am on summer vacation from teaching and because I have an unsettled mind, I find myself writing a great deal here lately. That's in terms of both frequency and volume of entry. As I look at it, as I think about what I am doing, I realize that I am writing long chapters for an infinitely large bottle. Of course that metaphor doesn't work very well because an infinitely large bottle would be visible from land, sea, or air, and its user would almost certainly be rescued from his deserted exile. The old Police song here holds true.

Ironically the weblahg affords such limitless opportunities for self-expression in an era when people read less and less. People write plenty, no one reads it, partially because no one reads anything. Jets fans are sometimes portrayed as, well, "challenged" readers as we like to call them in education; that may not be fair, but one would have gotten that sense from Erik Boland's work covering the Jets for Newsday (replacing Tom Rock). He clearly fed them slabs of meat that the stereotypical Jets fan likes, even things without any relevance to the stories he was writing, including shots of broads in skimpy bikinis on the beach. Fuckin A. "Keep em comin Boland," said one reply. One picture looked a glamor shot of a near-computer-generated Sims girl, complete with vacant eyes, lips like a Uniroyal tire, and blanched skin. I started to wonder if he was pulling the fan's leg.

Now I'm really suspicious. Boland's imaginary letter from Woody Johnson is truly brilliant. He addresses the issue of the Jets' owner discussing the idea of selling ownership of seats in the stadium as PSL's, or Public Seat Licences. In order to help carry the burden of paying for the stadium to be built, season ticket holders would be required to buy from the team the seat itself, which could then be sold as an "asset" (Johnson compares this with taxi drivers selling their medallions). But he imagines Johnson, out of respect for the fans, suddenly changing course and addressing Jets season ticket owners by denouncing the shallow idea of PSL's. It is a fine piece of writing.

But the comments Boland got below the entry amazed me, though maybe they shouldn't have. Granted, there are a couple of stories about Woody Johnson himself which enlighten as to his distance he appears to take from the fans (surprise, surprise). Most agree with Boland, but many, many more than I expected criticized the amount of writing he did in his entry. "Did anyone honestly read all that?" was one comment. You expect me to read all this? Where have I heard that question before? Where...? Ah yes, in my classroom. A student teacher with whom I worked was amazed at how students responded the same way no matter what the content - 300 pages or three. Do you expect me to read all this? Apparently.

I asked her to think of it as an involuntary response, like the student's instinctive hunger for surrender, or a ritual prayer for release that they utter without thinking. Conscious or not, they know that the squeaky wheel gets taken off the frame.

RIP George Carlin

My love of the Jets and of football in general has endured losing seasons, misunderstanding girlfriends, intellectual assaults from huffy colleagues in graduate school, indifferent, hostile cities, and my own neuroses. I know that baseball is the thinking man's sport and that football is the thinking man's whipping post. But screw it. I love football. It's too late to change that now.

However George Carlin offered the most convincing depiction of baseball's superiority to football. Baseball represents the idyllic myth of the small town and the empty field. Football, on the other hand, is a conflict of attrition, an industrial battle for primacy. He was correct, of course. Football is war. How American.

RIP, Mr. Carlin. You were the first person I remember as a child being described as an "iconoclast."

This House is Our Home (I Guess)

Recently I had a chance to drive by the Meadowlands and see the progress on our new stadium. (image from Baseball Fever, ironically enough) Its initial supports are raised, and with no one living within its reaches, there are no chances of urban crane accidents here. Incidentally, it has recently been christened "MetLife Stadium," one of many corporate logos the stadium will have over its first decade of use. Such a plan finally casts aside the illusion of permanence involved in the corporate naming and renaming of stadiums throughout the country. Cut to the chase, in other words: John Mara and Woody Johnson are paid to use these names and by these many names will parts of this house be known. As more than one science fiction writer has predicted, we are not too far off from the time when you can choose to corporately brand yourself, maybe even just so someone finally read your blog.

First, some background. You can gripe about sharing a stadium with the Giants, but as you'll see from this link, there is actually considerable precedent for strange bedfellows and stadium sharing in New York. If you already know the story, you can skip it, of course.

Isn't it a shame, though, that we didn't get our own stadium? Frankly, no. I don't know what we would have done with a midtown stadium, with its million dollar views and its high priced parking and victuals. As evidenced by the knuckle dragging cretinism of the slobs at Gate D, Jets fans don't really belong at an address anywhere near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Speaking as one myself, albeit from a considerable distance, the fans of the Gotham Football Club are falling further and further from the graces of basic civilization. (image taken from the Daily News) This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has also noted the increasing appeal of ultimate fighting. I also know football's not exactly for brain scientists, but the now upscale people living on the Lower West Side are grateful that no one will be asking them to remove their shirts to show us (under pain of being hit by beer bottles) their rack.

And isn't the West Side debacle just grist for the mill? Jets fans have always been a regretful lot by nature. I mean, what would we do without regret? We regret that we traded Bob Talamini to Boston in 1970. We regret letting John Riggins go in 1975. We regret hiring Lou Holtz. We regret not getting Walt Michaels psychiatric help when he needed it. We regret three-fourths of the Sack Exchange crossing the picket lines in 1987. We regret drafting Kenny O'Brien and not Dan Marino. We regret drafting Roger Vick, Johnny Mitchell, and Blair Thomas. We regret drafting Kyle Brady and not Warren Sapp. In fact, Jets fans show up at Radio City for the draft exclusively for the purpose of expressing their disappointment and regret in advance. We regret Dade County pulling up the tarp for a rain storm before the Mud Bowl.

We regret Pat Leahy missing a field goal in 1981. We regret Bill Belichick rejecting us in favor of New England, further compelling us to regret his very origin in this world. We regret Mo Lewis' hit on Drew Bledsoe. We regret Parcells' decision to have the Meadowlands changed back to artificial turf in 1999. We regret Joe Namath ever agreeing to speak with Suze Kolbert. We regret letting James Farrior go to Pittsburgh and Kevin Mawae to Tennessee. We regret drafting Kellen Clemens. We regret leaving Shea in the first place. The West Side Stadium itself is merely the Jets fan's imaginary Fortress of Regretful Solitude. We regret everything. When you don't have much to celebrate, you inundate yourself with the stories of Regret, the Janitor of Fate. Two missed field goals in the 2004 playoffs by Doug Brien still make me nauseous and dizzy, but at least that feeling lets me know I'm still alive. I'm a Jets fan.

So I can live with the sharing. But here's where I object. As I understand it, according to what's planned for the stadium, the technology is available and will be used to change the arena's colors and appearance from green to blue from game to game, its decorative holographic touches from Jets to Giants, depending on who is playing that day. (photo taken from Baseball Fever again) At the flick of a switch, you can have a Jets stadium or a Giants stadium. There is cynical truth implied in the stadium's scheduled name changes, and the changes of shades from green to blue belies this. These teams do not belong to the fans, but to Mara and Johnson, and so too does the stadium. The fans swarming into its surrounds are like their mice in the maze, being lead to through the various turns and gates, looking for familiar signs and, ultimately, to the metaphorical cheese, i.e., beer. Recall again what Horace Stoneham of the baseball Giants and Walter O'Malley of the Brooklyn Dodgers taught us 51 years ago. Teams don't belong to their fans. (Except in Green Bay.) I just hope none of the fans going in and out of its doors won't get fooled by the (G)iant-sized images of George Sauer accompanying them to the new Gate D. There's one of Spider Lockhart just behind it at the touch of a button. But imagine if someone pushes the wrong button....

Worthy of the Hall (or Maybe Worthy-ish)

So for once, I will not talk numbers. Today, I wonder aloud (to obviously no one in particular other than myself) as to who among the Jets family deserves to go to the Hall of Fame. Here I mention six candidates total, knowing that one should be considered a lock, another being a good choice that might take time, another who will require a generous but unlikely senior vote, two more that are admittedly debatable choices, and one more who is simply in poor taste. (Note: all images from Ebay)

Exhibit A: Curtis Martin. I have heard some people suggest that Martin's limited playoff experience makes his case a harder one to argue. I have heard people say that the relative brevity of his career disables him from a shoe-in induction. I have heard people from the New England area malign his candidacy because he gave up three big ones with the Pats in favor of a near decade of the Jets' own schizophrenia. Simply put, no matter how history plays out, each of these arguments is essentially wrong-headed and misjudged. As a player, a teammate, a star on teams that have middled their way through time, Curtis Martin is the absolute, consummate sportsman. Yuz all haytuz. Retire his number, forge the bronze.

Exhibit B: Joe Klecko. The Jets are aggressively pursuing his candidacy. His number retired, Klecko was the player chosen to lead the recent Jets rookies on a tour through Canton (this is a yearly NFL trip for all its rookies). Click on "Jets" and check out how goofy he looks in the group picture. He resembles a man who has not been seen by his son in anything other than a business suit for some time, and now the boy realizes his Dad hasn't any sense for comfortable weekend clothes. God help me, the son thinks. Is this my destiny, too? Klecko's also had experience doing the public speaking route, whether he is talking about Catholic values or talking to the Teamsters; often such audiences overlap. He has had his share of personal suffering and has managed to turn his life around by becoming a more virtuous citizen. Though he was less talented than Gastineau in terms of sheer speed and stealth, Klecko was the strongest player of his time, and he went to the Pro Bowl several times on the basis of playing multiple positions at the front line - something which very few players at the defensive front can claim. Put him in, baby. And buy him some comfortable-looking pants.

As every Jets fan who cares about this issue will tell you, a recent discussion between Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated (a voting Hall of Fame member) and Ron Wolf (once a member of Jets management many a moon ago) raised the issue of who deserves a shot at the Hall. They both agreed that two Jets deserved the honor. Both said Klecko deserved a chance, but they also argued for Exhibit C: Winston Hill. At this link, you'll see that Hill's analysis of his own name is humorous. I saw him play in his very last season for the Jets in 1975, but his career spanned back to 1963. Of Winston Hill, the late Matt Snell once said, "So graceful, so light on his feet." And from a bruiser that's a rave. Was Snell being facetious? Was he ever? Such an unlikely characteristic (Hill's lightness, that is; not Snell's humor) for one so large as Hill was not so easy considering that Winston topped the weight class of his time at 270 plus pounds. A three-time AFL All-Star. Three-time Pro Bowler in the rotten 70's. Winston Hill deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Here's the thing though. Historically, the Hall has given preference to players at the scoring or stopping points of the ball, not at the offensive line. The HOF has done its share to try and amend this, but offensive linemen learn as early as high school that they will not get the cheerleader (not that I knew anything about that personally, either; I ran cross country and did theater; these had their own emasculations). This prejudice against tackles and guards was especially true when Winston Hill first became eligible for induction, and, to be honest, his name wasn't even brought up at the time that I can tell. The other indignity about the voting is that once your name has come and gone for a few years, you become forgotten in favor of the newly eligible. People are already talking about the class of 2012 - Favre, Strahan, Sapp, et al. Jonathan Ogden will richly deserve the honor at that time, but it won't be like any of us will expect another offensive lineman to be inducted along with him. Usually one a year is seen as enough. Gary Zimmerman is this year's. By then, Winston will still be waiting in his own late 70's, the 1970's themselves dwindling receding further and further from his memory.

By then he'll share this trait of short-term memory loss with the NFL itself, who treat their elder players - even those like Mike Webster, who made it to the Hall - like discarded family in the old country, left behind for the land where the streets are paved with gold.

How about some more sentimental long shots? The Conigliaro AFL site leaves Winston Hill out of its AFL All-Time First Team but does put Gerry Philbin on its First Team's defensive line. I would vote for Gerry Philbin because he's a Jet. Whether he deserves it or not is like asking me who deserved to win the 1999 AFC Championship. Philbin had a strong ten year career in the NFL and endured playing one year (or half of one) in Downing Stadium for the WFL New York Stars. Must have made him sentimental for the more innocent days of training along the Hudson River with the fledgling Jets.

I'm happy to see online discussion point out Marvin Powell as an even more likely long shot to go to Canton. Powell was probably the best offensive lineman on the team in those unsteady years of the 70's and early 80's. As a kid, all I remember hearing about him was that he was going to be a lawyer someday. He studied law at USC. There were always pictures in the yearbook of him fitted into badly tailored suits - Marvin Powell, future attorney at law. I have no idea how that turned out. My own law career did not pan out. However, I also did not go to the Pro Bowl fives times - Marvin Powell did. But if Winston Hill has little chance at Canton, does Marvin Powell?

* * *

I find that most online discussions regarding any Hall selection are characterized by two things: 1) needless acrimony 2) that someone hauls out that old bitch of an argument that Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame when "he clearly doesn't deserve it." I see the point, though I cannot agree. Namath changed the game and the course of American sports, and for that he is entitled. Then couldn't the same argument be made for the short, checkered career of...

...Mark Gastineau?

Ha. I know what you're thinking, right? Just put away your extraordinarily large and rotting grapefruit. I'm just arguing that Gastineau's extraordinary athleticism and, oh I don't know, joie de vivre, changed the way the game was played. Lawrence Taylor was infinitely more important, I grant you, yes, but...

Oh, enough. Who am I kidding? Although the Sack Dance is slightly more offensive than the histrionics of Terrell Owens and Ocho Cinco, today Gastineau's nonsense would probably be deemed as punishable Taunting, that cardinal sin of the No Fun League. Actually, that's a bit like the chicken and the egg since it could be said that the Sack Dance was the ur Taunt and that his excess made them take all the the fun out of the game. Mark Gastineau was the class clown/village idiot who ruined it for everybody. "Oh yeah? You kids don't like it? Don't blame me for canceling recess. Blame it on your little smart ass friend Gastineau over there. Now how funny is he?" Great. Nice going, Mark.

But these are the least of all his sins. I still haven't forgiven Mark Gastineau his late hit on Bernie Kosar in the Nightmare of January 1987. I should, God knows, but I've never been a very strong man. I'm not about to start now.

More Thoughts On Numbers

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains...

-Tennyson

One of the things that I've come to appreciate in my continuing efforts to name all persons who have worn the New York Jets uniform, number by number, is just how seemingly meaningless our endeavors are on the popular scale. When we are given our sweet release from this life, we will probably not be known for the good work we did, and for the most part, even if we're lucky, the content of our lives will be whittled down to whatever bare bones, statistical evidence of our existence that the world has on hand.

Take Leander Knight, #20. Here is what the records show: "4YR 1INT." He played for three different teams in four seasons, one of which was the Jets in 1989, and amid all of it he apparently recorded nothing more than one interception. The problem here is not that he was unusual in this sense but that he is commonplace. The game is populated with the best efforts (so one assumes; one is a fan, not an expert) that will never get recognized or appreciated. Just like you and me. You don't have to be a Jets fan to understand that this is true; you need only realize the sheer numbers of people who have played in your team's colors. It's only a matter of time before you start thinking about the infinite, nameless persons through centuries who have walked the deserts of the world, herded sheep on its moors, tilled its soil and heard the wordless beauty of a distant song. It is enough to crush a person existentially sometimes.

So what does a player have to hang onto? As with all forms of human history, only those players who truly stand out (not always for good reasons) have a chance at immortality. Having your number retired is one way for this to happen, but it's no guarantee. Three players have had their numbers retired by the New York Jets - Joe Namath, Don Maynard and Joe Klecko, two of whom are in the Hall. This is a little unusual around the league but not by much. You retire numbers, I think, with an eye toward honoring the players and in hopes of making them appealing to Canton. I don't think it works; Bob Dee's retired #89 for the Boston Patriots doesn't make him any more likely a candidate than Pete Lammons of the Jets whose good but not great career in #87 remains unretired (it's Laverneus Coles' uniform anyway).

The Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs each have a promiscuous seven player numbers retired, whereas the Dolphins retired a more demure three. Most tellingly, the Cowboys and Raiders have retired none, which means they are above such exercises out of sheer uniform preservation. There are only 99 numbers from which to choose, you know. More reasons to hate them, I suppose. Pittsburgh was reckless enough to retire Ernie Stautner's #70.

There's something in this for the New York Jets fan to take home with him. Teams like the Raiders (who may never climb out their current funk so long as Al Davis is alive) and the Cowboys have a history of winning so vast that their fans may feel dwarfed by its timeless legacy. When a Jet's number is retired, it goes into a factory sealed case and is symbolically placed (it looks cartoonish, actually) against the wall along the sideline. It makes the fan feel more like he is a part of the history of his team. The player stands in civilian clothes at a halftime ceremony, microphone in hand, acknowledging the fans' tributes. Now that he is liberated from wearing the very same burdensome number, he has become one of them. As Tennyson's old, retired Ulysses says of immortality, "I am become a name." At least now he belongs to himself; his number belongs to us.

Perhaps Raiders fans wear their own mythological, suggestive outfits to the games at the Coliseum because their team does not belong to them so much as much it inspires them abstractly and creatively. That's not so bad, I guess. It's still better than being Cowboys fan. Those living in the nearby vicinity of Irvine, Texas probably think they will be Raptured anyway, so Earthly immortality means very little to them. Persons bathed in the justifying blood of their Lord are not liable to see one player as distinct from another; all those who play in Cowboy whites are deemed to be Christian soldiers.

My point is that I think that to be a true fan is to follow your team to the bitter end. This is what my Dad told me, and though he is not the Jets fan he once was, I still believe he is correct. These numbers are important to us because they are the history of our team, and that's why I will keep track of them some more. In fact, I'll probably get cracking on #25 a lot sooner than I thought, too. It's a lot of fun; it wastes an amazing amount of time while I should be doing more important, less interesting things.

No-Name Entry

Two great players have now retired from the game this first half of the year, and we are all the worse for wear as a result. No, not Derrick Blaylock. I don't think he's officially retired. I mean Brett Favre and Michael Strahan, the latter I will speak of as a ploy to begin talking about something having to do with the Jets. That's the way it works here. I will do the following: 1) speak very briefly in praise of the retiree in question 2) discuss the Jet whom I cannot think of independent of Michael Strahan 3) (I think you know where I'm going here) speak in promised praise of a front four defensive line and 4) air out favorite football nicknames. Begin.

Either because of his weird near-whine of a voice, the spacious gap between his teeth or its subsequently forming lisp, Michael Strahan is a somewhat humanizing figure in a predatory game. I had a lisp as boy that I kind of taught myself to get rid of by adolescence, but I might also have realized that how you carry it makes a difference, and Strahan's was, in a manner of speaking, attached to a sack machine. Even so, he remains a gentle Giant. The image I have of Strahan remains the television-friendly, "gap-toothed grid standout" who brays, "More meat!" at Subway's "Jared" ("Jarrett?"), a kind of descendant of another telegenic Giant, Rosey Grier.

How appropriate that these two exceptional figures of the game - one offense, one defense - finish the same year. Brett Favre was the willing victim of Strahan's twenty-second and one-half sack, the sack that surpassed Mark Gastineau's 1984 record of 22 sacks in a season, set in Gastineau's prime. I remember seeing Mark Gastineau on the sidelines of the game that day, and it was nice of the Giants to allow him to be there to acknowledge Strahan's moment, especially since he had become anathema to so many people by then - his family, the Players Association, Brigitte Nielsen, Jackie Slater.

Mark Gastineau did not play long enough to figure solidly inside the parameters of the world occupied by Strahan and Favre, and he certainly was never regarded enough of a good citizen within to compare with those two, either. Still, like Gastineau, Strahan was a prima donna at times, although less of a ghoul in doing so, and, like Gastineau, he has had his lion's share of troubles in divorce court. High profile athletes often do. I'm not so sure, however, that that Strahan's progeny will be tripping merrily along the idiot box without a shred of talent and without anything more than an aspiration toward a modeling career. Let's face it; Mark Gastineau has had a strange life. And as much as Strahan will be justly remembered for his great defensive play, he is the half that seemed to have just survived the grinding machine of NFL fame. Gastineau was the half not so lucky.

Or was he? Play along here. Take away the legal troubles, Brigitte Nielsen, the domestic violence, the falls his opponents were allegedly forced to take in his mercifully short boxing career, the drugs, the crossing of the NFL players' picket line in 1987, and you have a young a pioneer of the early-stage mullet who was drafted in 1979 as one of two shattering bookends on the Jets defensive line. The other was Marty Lyons. Together with Joe Klecko and Abdul Salaam (and later Kenny Neil), they became the foursome with (I argue) the best nickname in NFL history, the New York Sack Exchange.

For those who do not know of whom I speak, let me assure you that the New York Sack Exchange, the Jets defensive front four from (at their best) 1981-84 were never the debonair or ebullient kind of athlete that Joe Namath represented. In fact, they were the post-Namath kind of athlete. They were the kind of characters you find populating the background of a bar fight in a Burt Reynolds film from the Carter years. Actually Klecko was in a Cannonball Run movie. Once the door had been opened to any particular kind of personality in a uniform that claimed a commercial right to existence, God only knows what kind of company would be let through the door, and in this case it was a bunch of unlicensed truck drivers. Actually, Klecko was a licensed Teamster. Man, he did everything.

But a Sack Exchange? An exchange of sacks? Among men? Wha? How brilliant! When they visited the actual Stock Exchange way downtown in the early 1980's, trading was temporarily suspended. Imagine the consternation in Paris and Brussels while Messrs. Gastineau, Klecko, Salaam and Lyons stood atop the podium, hearing cries of "Let's Go Jets!" Weird but true. Qu'est qu'il y a la probleme? "Uh, the Jets are on the trading floor." Gicleurs ? Avions ? Vous ne laisseriez pas la terre de Concorde à New York, mais avez-vous laissé des gicleurs dans la bourse des valeurs ? "Uh, yeah."

They retain a folk status among fans around the hibachi in the Meadowlands lot (and probably Gate D) as a group of individual renegades, like a Magnificent Seven minus three, each with his unique persona. Lyons the cleanest of the cuts as the cuts went, Salaam even more reserved (for a period of time the Jets and the football public did not know where he was living in retirement), Klecko the workingman's bouncer, and Gastineau the troubled star of sorts, preening, gesticulating, and, above all dancing. To see a Gastineau Sack Dance was to watch one man's interpretation of the flurry of activity one sees in two house cats fighting. He seemed a blur of arms and a gyrating head, a man set on fire desperately dancing for his life. It was an offensive defense, showy, full of brass, more trouble than it could possibly be worth after a while, embodying the spirit of Wahoo McDaniel and all the aspects of show biz that the Jets were originally looking for way back in in the 1960's in order to fill the seats at Shea. But while the Jets were fashioning a public image as the team with an erratic Sack Exchange, the Giants in the 80's were fashioning a championship defense that even made the one Strahan took to Arizona for the Super Bowl last January seem paltry. I still like being a Jets fan better, although God only knows why it had to be that way.

Which brings me to my last point, about nicknames. While looking around, I saw to my disappointment football has yielded very few good nicknames. Here's a pretty weak example of what I'm talking about, but the point can be made elsewhere, too. The Sack Exchange is a great nickname for the way it honors the important economic landmark of New York, but it also clarifies the foursome in terms of their status in history. They single-handedly made the sack an event worth keeping track of such that Strahan had Gastineau's original number of sacks to break for the record. Other such nicknames through time seem to fit the stereotype of the No Fun League. The "Crunch Bunch?" According to the link, "In the early '80s, Mario Sestito of Troy, New York is credited with coining the name after A NY Giants newsletter at the time called 'Inside Football' held a contest to name this offensive line." At least Jets fans needed no contest off the field for a nickname. I may sound like a bitter City fan to a better United in Manchester, but I'll take what I can get.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 23 - Which Kevin Williams Was That Again?

For the secondary of any franchise there is usually little to no public recognition. The receivers that the secondary covers get so much more profile. Currently Pacman Jones is maintaining an attention and focus normally elusive to DB's and safeties because he has an impressive criminal record. Otherwise, these folks travel a great deal, toil in anonymity, and show up on replays and game shots as the guys that got beat on the big pass play. One case is like many: making his way on the trail of the Mississippi from Minnesota down to New Orleans, Mike Mayes made a year's stop due east in the New York Jets uniform of #23. It was here, with us, in a 1990 game against the then-pathetic New England Patriots that he forced a fumble and caught an interception. There you are man, the gods said. Today your day has come. It was the only interception of his three-year NFL career.

Even in the the 1968 championship season, Bill Rademacher #23 remains one of those tertiary names of the season's significance, but he's one of those rare and versatile fellows who, after being a casualty of Weeb's post-Super Bowl purge, then became a running back for the Boston Patriots, scoring four touchdowns in 1969. Take a look at the rosters of the 1969 and '70 Patriots and you will find several key Jets, disgruntled by Weeb's pecuniary proclivities.

Shafer Suggs played five seasons in New York, with a mysterious journey to Cincinnati and back. But really, all I need to say is found in a back entry, "Dreams and Numbers."

No, this isn't Marcus Turner, the famous New Zealand folksinger. (I think.) Defensive backs and safeties have a shelf life that averages out to about five years. But what if you never get to play for a good team in all that time? Fresh from UCLA, Turner played from 1989 to '91 for the Phoenix Cardinals (which is almost as funny a name as "Utah Jazz") and then for the Jets, from 1992 to the hard and cruel season of 1995. The 1993 Jets played poorly to an 8-8 record, but that was the best record of any squad for which Turner played. With that kind of luck, even the money you make must smack of misfortune.

Though he started in #31, Hank Poteat was cut by the Jets in summer 2008 and then was re-signed during the ensuing season wearing #23. What else do you need to know? That he is the third male of his family to be named "Henry Major Poteat?" That his nickname was "Sweet Feet?" That he earned a Super Bowl ring with Those of Whom We Do Not Speak? I include here a 2007 NYT article on him because it's one of their characteristic special interest articles that isolates a hard-working player, usually on defense, who learned from his daddy and takes humiliation like a man. Specifically, in 2007 Hank got the first interception of a long career in transit from one club to another. Now that Hank is out and back again this season, we might as well point out that he also dislodged a fumble in the game against Cincinnati in week 6. I am officially rooting for Sweet Feet this year. Hells yes.

Let's not neglect Kevin Williams, #23 from 1998 to 2000, who suffered a serious throat infection that endangered his career, if not his life. He bounced back to play a few games each season for Miami and Houston until 2002. He is not - repeat not to be confused with the Kevin Williams, webmaster for the site that discusses near-death experience entitled "There Is Nothing Better Than Being Dead." I hate when my suspicions are so blithely confirmed. This Kevin Williams quotes a Dr. Diane Morrissey, who says, "If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing." Well, Jets fans can certainly testify to that.

Though Donnie Walker played for the Jets in #23 for an indeterminate number of games, the Jets database puts his only notable statistics with his playing days on the Buffalo Bills in 1973. Not much I'm going to say about that. Then, #23 Eric Zomalt played a single season in 1996, the Jets' worst. Emotionally, it must have been his least satisfying. How could it be otherwise? "Sure, we were 1-15. Ah, but those were good times. Good times." God almighty.