NY Jets #53 - Part 4

(We thought the rest of the season would be like this.)

Cody Spencer #53 was a linebacker for the Jets from 2006-08. He comes from Texas where I suspect a lot of guys are named Cody. He went to North Texas University and had a decent year in 2008, which was the Brett Favre season. He seems not to have an NFL career after his 2009 season with the Detroit Lions. I confess I don't remember much of his playing but I do recall that 2008 season, and I remember thinking how strange the world seemed, what with the hometown Phillies winning the World Series and Barack Obama becoming President-elect, and Brett Favre leading the Jets to an 8-3 start. At the far right of this picture you see Cody Spencer celebrating the away victory over the Patriots that year.  Things seemed just great.

The world seems like it is spinning back into more familiar territory now. The Phillies can't win the World Series without regular hitting, Obama is on borrowed time as President, and the Jets are as distant a memory to Brett Favre as he is to us. Sports and politics are the easiest way to gauge history simplistically.

But Cody Spencer is special because research on him produces one of those Wikipedia moments that is priceless. Recently I saw Jimmy Wales interviewed by Stephen Fry, and Wales talked about the extraordinary, simple beauty of Wikipedia as an information organization checked by volunteers. He said that it was remarkably American because it was started and maintained by ordinary people. This is all true, and though I tell my students not to rely on Wikipedia for their research, I do tell them that it's a great place to start. If I had been able to access it as a kid, I would have either done better research because I would have known where to begin, or I would fallen down the endless rabbit hole of links that Wikipedia often enables. Either way, I would have been happier. The world would have been more open to me.

But nothing - certainly not Wikipedia - is foolproof. Cody Spencer's Wikipedia page includes the following:

Spencer attended Grapevine High School in Grapevine, Texas where he taught Tommy France all about the hot boudin. As a junior, he helped lead his team to the Division I Class 4A State Championship.

There two bits of information here, but which is the more valuable? Which do you think - the bit about Tommy France, or the throwaway thing about Grapevine High School?  What are the essential qualities of a person? I don't know if someone should notify a Wikipedia volunteer, but then why bother? Isn't it important for readers to know that he taught Tommy France about the hot boudin? And what is the hot boudin? Is that a euphemism for something? Did Tommy put that there in Wikipedia, or did Cody? The Encyclopedia Britannica never allowed, however temporarily, for inside jokes, and maybe that's a shame. In real life, the hot boudin is spicy sausage indigenous to Cajun country. (And how did I find that out? You guessed it.) Is that all the hot boudin is to Cody Spencer and Tommy France? The world may never know, but if the world visits Spencer's Wikipedia page, where he exists in terms of two kinds of information juxtaposed together, they'll be presented with a complex picture of a person, at least until the Wikipedia volunteer edits out the most interesting part.

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Jim Sweeney #53 came from Pittsburgh, he went to Pitt, then he ended up retiring with the Steelers in 1999. Today he apparently coaches high school football in the Pittsburgh area.  But he was a center for the Jets for a long time.  

What is it about centers?  The center has the opportunity for a long career, but with very little recognition.  The center never talks smack. He never taunts. He is, according to tradition, the guy who touches the ball first, the keynote and the keystone.  
Jim Sweeney is right up there with seasoned NFL offensive linemen. Draw a through line from Jets centers like #'s 52 MIke Hudock (1960-65), John Schmitt (1966-73), #65 Joe Fields (1975-1987) and you reach Jim Sweeney, who became the regular center for the Jets after Fields left, starting from 1984 to 1994. For better or for worse, that's a pretty remarkable record of stability at one position for such unstable Jets teams. 


Obviously there were other guys at center during the years 1960-84, like Wayne Mulligan and Warren Koegel, but the center is often the steady influence, the rock in the stream. Everybody could use a center, a person on whom you can rely to snap the ball with unerring regularity. He returns to the huddle with you, seeing you shake your head. What was I thinking? you ask yourself. Am I really as untalented as they say? Are they really saying that, or is that just in my head? 

No.  Get out of your head you say. I keep telling myself not to care about what anyone else thinks, but it just gets in there and drives me nuts. The center just stares at you and knows he's got to pull left or right or get in and push forward. He isn't plagued by your doubts; he has mastered the art of not listening to the constant trash talk from defenses come and gone, trying to distract him. He looks at you and simply waits for you to call out the next play. Get out of your head, he seems to say to you. You're not doing any good there. Between 1984 and 1994, amid adolescence and the unsteady transition to adulthood, like a quarterback drafted early on with great expectations, I could surely have used a Jim Sweeney. In that time, he snapped the ball to Ken O'Brien, Pat Ryan, Tony Eason, Browning Nagle, Boomer Esiason, Kyle Mackey, Mark Malone, and Jack Trudeau. That's a lot of disparate personalities struggling at the most public spot on predominantly losing squads.


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How bad is it?

Linebacker Bill Zapalac #53 is also known as Willie Zapalac, Jr, the son of longtime NCAA and NFL assistant and coach Willie Zapalac, Sr. The Zapalac name may have been unknown to most Jets fans between 1971-73 when Zapalac the younger played for us, but in Texas, the Zapalacs are/were a football family. The elder attended Texas A&M, was a coach there and at the University of Texas, which is a little like coaching for the Jets and the Patriots (which, as we know, people have done). Willie Sr. built offensive lines at those schools, but Willie Jr. played defense at Texas while his father was assisting under Darryl Royal, which must have been interesting. Did he prefer defense just so that he wouldn't have to play under his Dad? Was he "Willie Jr." at Texas, or "Bill?"

He graduated from the Texas School of Applied Architecture and apparently helps run a construction company in Austin. Though there are no defensive statistics kept from his years in the NFL, other than starts at linebacker and defensive end, we can consult his 1974 card and consider the expression on his face. Is he wondering skeptically about the impending electrical wiring and concrete support system problems at Shea Stadium? Somebody would need to, eventually.

NY Jets #44 - Part 3

When John Riggins left the New York Jets as free agent at the end of the 1975 season, there was no one really left on the team who possessed his qualities of speed and power at running back. Clark Gaines was speedy, certainly, and had several good seasons with the Jets. No one else would come close again until Freeman McNeil was drafted in 1982. Before then, at the very least, Tom Newton replaced John Riggins in uniform #44, from 1977-82.

I remember him most vividly from the 1978-79 teams, and I wasn't sure why until I looked at his statistics from 1979. He gained 145 total yards rushing but scored six touchdowns, which must mean he was regularly brought in for short yardage situations close to the goal line. As the Jets' talented backfield coach, the late Bob Ledbetter put it in the Jets' 1980 Yearbook, Tom Newton had "that old knack of smelling the money at the end of the line," which, really, sounds like a line from a pulp novel. It obviously meant he was also a regular blocker, too.

It's hard to recall these things clearly, but I must be thinking of him fondly, as I sit here, writing. Pavlov would obviously see the combination of elements at work here. Newton scored touchdowns in three of the eight precious wins the injury-ridden, confused squad had in 1979. And he scored a 51 yard touchdown in one of the worst losses I remember from that season, the 46-31 loss in Buffalo, a game that revealed that we were much worse that we thought and that Buffalo was much better; they would ultimately win the division. For years Buffalo had been a reliable win for us, even through the 9-33 seasons from 1975-77.

But the worm turned at the halftime of that game. In the first half, Tom Newton took a breakaway touchdown, and then followed it with a one-yard run, giving us a 17-6 lead. Anything seemed possible. Yes, this most definitely must have left its mark somewhere in the abandoned rooms of my childhood museum. And he wore #44. How can I not feel instinctively good about Tom Newton?

But then the Jets buckled in the second half, and Tom Newton and the Jets became human again. Perhaps as the understandably human inheritor of the #44 - the number that had previously belonged to a peerless, grunting mass of offensive power - Tom Newton embodies the pain that comes when the belief that our illusions will live on forever finally dies.

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That's right: Bert Rechichar #44. The first of his number, playing for the New York Titans in 1961.

Here he is in his glory days, looking as if he's steadying himself against a possible tremor. Back when men were men and they drank Ballantine because it's made with Brewer's Gold. Actually, until Tom Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal with half a foot in 1970, Bert Rechichar set the record with 56 yards for the longest placekick in 1953 while with the Baltimore Colts. Kicking was obviously an imperfect science back then, even with all of one foot, usually requiring a simple head-on doink to the ball. There was probably more to it than that, but it became so much more complicated with the arrival of Pete Gogolak and Jan Stenarud, and men named Raul. Doink was all that was required. Linemen could be kickers, running backs could be kickers. Men were men, women were women, but anyone could be a kicker. It was the 50's one public allowance for promiscuity.

Moving on, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, I would like to congratulate Bert Rechichar with having a last name that's funny for sounding like something you should never do.

But we're also fortunate to have this testimony by way of Alex Hawkins, a 1950's and 60's Baltimore Colt of impeccably eccentric character with his assessment of Bert Rechichar:

Bert carried all his money with him, leading the other players to call him the "First National Bank of Rechichar." No one knew where he lived. When Coach Weeb Ewbank finally released him, Bert asked Hawkins to give him a lift to pick up his belongings. Alex jumped at the chance to finally learn where Bert lived. Instead, Rechichar directed him to half a dozen back alleys and side streets where he picked up a pair of pants in this building, a jacket in that one, a couple of shirts here, a pair of shoes there. After an hour of this, Bert said, "O.K., that's it." Hawkins concludes: "Would you say that Bert Rechichar was a totally sane man?"

No. But is that a problem? Again, no. The New York Titans had him for one season. Obviously, it seemed like a role he had been waiting to play all his life. A man who keeps his pants in odd places should play for a man like Harry Wismer who couldn't cover his checks.

Finally, there's Lonnie Young, the Grover Cleveland of #44. He played for Bruce Coslet from 1991 to 1993 and then returned to the Jets again for the Kotite years of 1995-96. What on earth did he do to deserve that? His better years with the Jets were in #31 when he recorded 102 tackles in 1992, but when he returned, he was given #44 and recorded 32 total tackles over two seasons, with one interception. I won't even bother to find out where and when it happened. Do any of us really want to relive 1996, and I mean for any reason? Think about it. Honestly.

But here again, I must turn to the wild and the wacky. I confess I know nothing about video games, and it seems as though this Wikipedia entry is talking about something older than dirt in the gaming world, but it makes for great reading anyway. Here goes:

Lonnie Young appears on the Phoenix Cardinals roster in Tecmo Super Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nobody knows exactly why, but he has the highest running speed attribute of any player. Robo Lonnie Young is an Ultra Beast.^{[citation needed]} Some believe his elite starting speed is due to a programming error or glitch. It has been a mystery to Tecmo fans since 1991, when the game was originally released.

All of us should be so lucky as to have our best abilities, even in the simulated world, be as a result of a glitch. My glitch is depression. So what's the deal? Why did the Glitch Fates pick Robo Lonnie Young to be so fast? Why was he made an Ultra Beast? Why can't I be an Ultra Beast?