Old and New

These videos may have originally appeared around the time that the West Side Stadium was still an issue, but there's still resonance here for those of us who remember seeing the Jets at Shea Stadium, the now ex-ballpark seeing its last gradual disintegration in Flushing Meadow-Corona.

First, former middle linebacker Greg Buttle talks about the feeling of intimacy that Shea unwittingly afforded to fans of football, particularly at the first and second levels. He talks about it as "a big-market stadium with a small market mentality." The franchise and the stadium as one, so to speak (even if the stadium didn't actually belong to the Jets).

Then Wesley Walker - one of my all-time favorites - speaks similarly about Shea. But he also says that though the players did not want to leave Shea, "we weren't allowed to really talk about it." Finally, there's a great shot of one of his touchdowns against the Dolphins at the 1978 opener at Shea, which I saw with my Dad and brother. It was the Sunday before the start of school. I drew a picture of that touchdown when I was asked to draw "what I did on my summer vacation," which drove my Mom crazy on back-to-school night.

Finally, more present problems: who's going to coach our team? I for one am glad Bill Romanowski is not interested in coaching us the way he is with the Broncos. Still, how many people do we need to interview? Caroline Kennedy? Don Maynard? The defensive coordinator of every team? Anthony Fucilli's conversation with ESPN's Larry Hardesty evokes our frustration. I appreciate Hardesty's bemusement at the Browns hiring Mangini when they could have hired Jim Fassel.

And further, returning to Wesley Walker again, this is an article that made me ashamed to be a football fan. He says that if he had known the pain football would bring him in his 50's, he would never have played.

Death By Pennington

When he was first drafted by the Jets in 2000, Chad Pennington was praised by none other than Randy Moss, who said that Chad, with whom he played at Marshall, was the best quarterback he had ever seen. Up until that point, that appraisal had included Brad Johnson and Randall Cunningham. Since then, it's hardly possible that Moss would put Pennington up against Tom Brady, but not even Randy Moss could possibly have predicted Chad's success in Miami. Perhaps Chad could have, just as Bill Parcells and Tony Sparano perhaps did. Even then, I didn't.



(Image from Fox. Remember when it wasn't imbued with stupid, ridiculous irony?)



This week was spent in and around New York Jets football with recriminations about Brett Favre's work in a Jets uniform. The tone of discussion has either identified Favre as a snake oil salesman coming to town with a miracle aid for an incurable malady or as a mismatched, delusional idealist whose glory heretofore could not prepare him for the fatal trap, like the one Che Guevara found in Bolivia. Either way, the movie originally written for an old man's last great ride has turned out to be about about an underachieving nice guy who rises to the occasion with his old team's nemesis and wins the whole thing. One presumes that the "whole thing" in this case is the AFC East, but then it's been a strange year, so who can really say where the story will all end up?

Well, I can. I believe it's called Death by Pennington. It's a helpless home team that runs the ball through the middle and throws dinky passes into dead ends when playing a defense that is designed to handle just such an approach. This week, in the spirit of wondering what went wrong in advance, many writers who were originally ebullient about Favre's arrival in New York have lately been pointing out disappointed Favre probably is by his experiment, and some even wonder if he'll return to Green Bay, as if nothing had ever happened. Enter the Prodigal Son.

Let me not point fingers or dissemble. Instead, I would like to track my own reactions to the dawning of Brett Favre in the Tri-State area. Written here are the basic human desires for doubt and faith, to believe and to be transcended.

I first conjured the idea of Favre playing for the Jets on March 18 of this year when I discussed a #18 in our past, Sanjay Beach, an absolutely unknown person in NFL history except that he was Brett Favre's first completed pass recipient. (The first person to whom Brett Favre actually threw a pass was himself. No joke.) Here I spoke as a fan of a team that might have drafted Brett Favre back in 1991 but did not. I wasn't drafted out of college by anyone in 1991 either.

"Would that Brett Favre had been with us, too."

I suppose. But I was just imagining something altogether immaterial. It was just another side in a game of What if... I've been playing for nearly more than 30 years. Even Brett himself has suggested that had he been drafted by the Jets in 1991, the harsh mistress of New York might have killed a country boy from deep below the Mason-Dixon.

Exhibit two: On July 11, while examining the life and work of a seemingly imponderable number of Rob Carpenters in and around the Jets and the NFL in general, I explained to myself my own confusion with the following:

"I'm sorry. I realize this is confusing, but work with me here. (Silence) Actually, I guess maybe I'm having ridiculous fantasies about Brett Favre being snapped up by the Jets."

"Oh. I see. Well, that is ridiculous."

"I know, I know....it's what happens when you have a quarterback problem."

Ah, but was there a quarterback problem? Was there really the risk of Laos and Thailand and Australia falling to Communism if Vietnam did? Sometimes it seemed so, yes. But as for Brett Favre, I took to the words of advice from Angel Navedo, the metaphorical George Ball in this argument. Just before preseason, I did feel Favre's value was overstated. Exhibit three - as late as August 6, I said:

"Though I am neither a fan of Mangini nor of the cynical leadership of Woody Johnson, I still prefer the sentiments of Angel Navedo, my personal favorite in the world of Jets (blogs). He has helped me to believe in my own my gut feeling from the beginning that, for better or for worse, we don't need Brett Favre. Damned be my own science fiction and pipe dreams to the contrary.

"Pennington at QB. Clemens at QB. Ainge somewhere in the hazy background. Time to move into our modern era. God help us. J-E-T-S."

Two days later, Brett Favre was a Jet. And like the trained fan, I already wondered about some catch in the deal. We all secretly wondered. Favre himself questioned what have I gotten myself into? One presumes that he has the answer to that question now. But regardless, even then we wondered, was Favre going to leave the Jets as quickly as he came? On August 8, I wondered:

"Brett is here to stay. To stay. Right? Right?

"Maybe."

And in preparation for week one, I offered a tribute to Chad Pennington's past experiences in a green uniform, a poetic ode meant to praise and not bury - although that didn't convince a Marshall fan who commented on my epic ode.

"And now we meet you on opening day;
I will root against you, though I must say
We owe you at least this grateful adieu -
We will likely fare no better than you."

But I didn't really believe it. Surely the Jets would do better than the Dolphins. That seemed certain. I did figure that the Jets would drop one game to Miami, but I didn't think they wouldn't lose a spot to the Fish in the division. And now, provided Favre's Jets can play a little bit better than Pennington's Dolphins tomorrow, the final couplet in my ode may yet turn out to be correct. Prescience is a bitch, though. Not even I, a Jets fan, could have believed it would be this ironic.

Jets 47 Rams 3

When I came into this game, I fully expected something reminiscent of the Jets' loss to Oakland a few weeks ago, a game that left me silent, troubled and withdrawn. Well, I'm always a little troubled, but that's an issue more appropriate to discuss with my mental heath care professional. No, I expected the Jets to let me down as they have done, historically, week by crushing week, year after year. But for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes into the hype of being a Jets fan, most of it occurs when the Jets win.

I've said this before - it's actually more stressful when the Jets win because winning raises the stakes of hope. Last season had its dismal sides, but after a while most of it had to do with my job. Things at the Meadowlands went quickly from bad to worse and didn't really get better in 2007. I got used it, I accepted it (I've had plenty of experience) and felt...well, not comfortable, but at peace with it, just as one must always finally accept the prevailing limitations of human existence, living as we do with free will and subjective powers of abstract consciousness. On the other hand, though, some bad shit was going on last year at work, and I had to really fucking deal with it. And deal with it I did, and with much better aplomb than the Jets did with Brian Schottenheimer's offense scheme.

In this way, the losing Jets are the dulling reminder, the momento mori of human existence. Things suck, don't they? You can get that message from a lot of places, too. From the local or international news, perhaps, or maybe even just by looking outside, like in Walt Whitman's "I Sit and Look Out." Or from Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell." This Rams team appeared ominously tidal coming in; one of the reasons why I was doubtful about the game was because the Jets were exactly the kind of team that the Rams would find appealing for a rebound matchup from a previous loss. But this was a win so effective that the Jets' starters got a rest for Thursday night's game. And when the Jets win, they tend to conjure the ubiquitous refrain of "Yes, We Can!" over and over, a cry so encompassing that it becomes the truth in one's mind, the way most political slogans do. The Jets won by 44 points, a franchise record. (Yes, we can.) Thomas Jones ran for 149 yards and three touchdowns. (Yes, we can). Brett Favre didn't throw any interceptions. (No, he didn't! Yes, we can). Jay Feely hit one from 55 yards away, another franchise record! (Yes, we can). Eric Barton had another great game. (Yes, we can).

But hold on there, little dawgie. There's Thursday. Then there's the unbeaten Titans (I wish we could wear our Titans unis for that). This is only the flush of excitement before the wash of gloom. There's still a crumbling economy, a plummeting stock market, a vanishing workforce, a lost sense of international respect. What about that stuff? Can we handle that? There's no other way to frame it. Right? Big wins like this one always raise questions, like how big? If the Jets managed this kind of domination of a team like Those of Whom We Do Not Speak, then it would be different, wouldn't it? Ah, the crushing spectre of hope again. Against the Rams, the Jets' front line was scarily effective, opening up enormous holes for Thomas Jones. In the image above (photo taken from New York Times) you see the lyrical poetry of an offensive line performing their job. Click on it and it suddenly seems as if you are looking at a work of art, a neo-classical painting, complete with the master's sure eye for symmetry, depicting the tableau of some ancient combat. Even D'Brickshaw Ferguson lying on the ground to the lower far right seems an intentional touch. With such an inspirational image, there's no way we can't keep hope alive. Surely now there is a means for opening the holes up the middle for Jones that were missing in week 2.

Ugh. God help us.

Anyway, regarding my earlier, strained metaphor above between economics and football, it seems as if the Jets' financial prospects are in good shape, especially after successfully selling their PSL's at inflated prices for next year's opening. One guesses that most of their seat buyers weren't CEO's for companies recently bailed out by the Federal Government, but were probably regular folks of a variety of backgrounds and incomes likely hurt by this economy. Go team, huh? Yeesh. Woody Johnson invested his money in Alan Faneca, Damien Woody, and Brett Favre, so apparently the Jets are a much more appealing expenditure for fans who mortgage their livelihoods for PSL's. King Woody's investments have yielded rather a merciless profit for the company. Next time take note, General Motors.

Jesse Chatman Positive for Diuretic

It's bizarre, this ridiculous world. We share our lives with one another in ways that defy the basic codes of privacy and personal space. But that's the way it is. I write a blog that is almost exclusively read by myself, but even still I can't pretend that there isn't an enormous world out there gaping at its own senselessness, wondering at times at how stupefying is the scope of human life, how bloated the need for human domination of the natural world, how awful the infinite dimensions of the universe by comparison. You can believe you are alone, but every thought, every word and deed has already had a precedent somewhere out there. Even if you don't believe in the Almighty, you are not alone in the universe.

I will now offer the crudest possible story to illustrate my point. One afternoon last year at work, I experienced a particularly uncomfortable churning sensation in my lower intestine that I instinctively recognized - experienced man of 38 that I was - as my body's signal to unburden itself of solid waste. The sensation was more dire than usual, so I made quickly for the restroom. The event itself requires no description. We have literally all been there before. In situations such as these, I often seek a facility removed from the more traveled restrooms on the first floor. The fact that these washrooms are marked "Faculty Men" is only a slight relief. As a boy, I lived in horror of using public restrooms. This neurosis grew into a cathartic meltdown when I needed to similarly act without hesitation in the toilet of the boys' locker room as a high school freshman after a particularly grueling cross country practice. The olfactory remnant of this event was greeted by the suddenly incoming varsity football team with horrific blasphemies and genuine promises to violently end my life. I was so mortified that I would have submitted had they caught me before I ran out of the locker room.

Back at work, after completing the necessary task, I left the Faculty Men's in a similarly condemned state. However, I quickly realized to my horror that a trusted, respected colleague was about to enter with his own intentions, not knowing what aromatic horror awaited him. We locked eyes, and, coward that I am, I was unable to communicate the truth that I had made the Faculty Men's Room an uninhabitable place of business. There are euphemistic phrases like those employed even in this very entry. But my own sense of shame, combined with my feelings of failure at being to keep this mortification to myself, left me without the ability to speak. I smiled wanly, pathetically, and walked on.

Naturally he found me later. I was sitting in the faculty lounge, grading. I could feel his eyes on me. There was nothing I could do but look up and say what needed to be said.

"I don't really know what to say," I said. "I really have no excuse. I'm sorry."

"Not at all," he said compassionately. He opened up the newspaper. "Although I do feel like I have a window into your soul."

* * *

What was I saying? Did I have a point here?

My wife asked me about the Jets' injury status in preseason and I answered, "We're fine. We're great. Pity the Giants, really." It was then that I immediately got word of Jesse Chatman being suspended for violation of the NFL's substance abuse policy. The story on him was that he has a weight problem that disappeared while with Miami last year, hence giving him a second chance at a career. When you lose 60 pounds, how do you gain it back in all the right places? I myself suggest a diet of SSRI's and donuts. I don't know what Jesse did. His agent has pointed out that Chatman's positive test was from last December, not from a recent test.

But what's interesting is that the actual results only showed the presence of a diuretic often used to mask the presence of a steroid. It's probably not Ex-Lax. (Does Ex-Lax still exist)? Neither was it very likely coffee, oatmeal, McDonald's fries, cauliflower, watermelon, broccoli, Granny Smith apples, cigarettes, or any of the other things I find efficacious to my spastic colon on any given workday. I realize that the very thing that brings shame to a grown fallen-away Catholic man - the business of taking what a college roommate and fellow Jets fan once called a "Mark Duper" - is also essential to the maintenance of an athlete's weight and his masking of the rules of fair play.

But is the business surrounding this offensive diuretic also a window into Eric Mangini's secretive, isolating soul? After all, Chatman is being suspended for only four games. A friend of mine laughed off Chatman's suspension when I mentoned it to him - a natural response in an age when football players are shot, shot at and changing their names to "Ocho Cinco." It's only the four-game kind of suspension. Sort of like what the kids who've done hard time say when they react to a three-day suspension from school.

But did Mangini know the results of Chatman's December tests when he brought him on? Chatman did have an awesome game against the Eagles, but will he be similarly talented five weeks from now? Will he be flabby or thin? Does the coach know something we don't? If anything, maybe now among all three - Washington, Jones and the potentially modified Chatman - might equal one good running back.

I really haven't got any further cohesive theme to tie together this entry. I'm waiting on the final cuts of the preseason. I confess that the brief, stalwart performance Jesse Chatman put in against the Eagles threw me into sensations of hope for our backfield, and I feel like the news of his positive test left me in a catharsis that might yet spaz my colon a little more than Sumatra coffee. The volume of unrealized expectation and hope has built up so profoundly, that if it doesn't put me back into the crapper, it might yet make me bear the contents of my soul to my colleagues. It's what being a fan is all about. You cannot exist alone, harboring hopes and dreams, rooting for a team that plays in a division that also houses a club that could easily roll off another 18-1 season. It's no use hiding it. You have to perform your manly task and run the risk of exposing yourself to a world that will know the putrid truth. I am a Jets fan, though in exile. The very same colleague (and Eagles fan) who became the unfortunate witness to my intestinal ruin that sad day last year heard me complain yesterday about Chatman's failed diuretic test.

He smiled, obligingly. "Well," he said. "Tough shit, I guess."

Commemoratives

This is what fans of other teams with bigger stars go through. No sooner did the second week of preseason come to a close than offers for expensive merchandise came knocking at our door. Yesterday my wife received an offer from the Danbury Mint - a lesser version of the Franklin Mint, I would gather - to purchase a commemorative plaque depicting Brett Favre in his debut for the New York Jets. We see a picture of Favre throwing one of his six passing attempts in his first Jets game, the preseason match against Washington. "Two 24kt gold-plated medallions and a replica ticket to the Jets' 2008 home opener" accompany the photograph. One medallion depicts Favre without eyeballs, making him look a little like he's been commemorated upon his death. No word on whether these medallions can be traded for food or whether they possess any particular healing qualities.

Also not available for bartering is a "replica ticket" that depicts a decidedly grumpy, almost disconsolate Eric Mangini. He looks as if he has been asked to look at the camera for a picture specifically to be used on a replica ticket.

Total for this commemoration is $129, plus $10 shipping and handling, payable in three easy installments of $46.30. My satisfaction is as completely guaranteed as Super Bowl III, but I will pass.

I can't be too critical of a bad purchase when I have personally contemplated the purchase of plenty of Jets crap. But when I buy crap, it is done so to commemorate things that are only important to great moments in The Martin Roche Experience. This is the essence of the fan's life. If the game did not actually have an impact on our daily lives, then we wouldn't spend our time so morbidly fascinated by it all year. For example, the 1975 Welch's jelly glasses I bought on Ebay commemorate all of the orange juice and milk (orange juice in the NFC glass, milk in the AFC glass) I consumed while staring at the conference helmets, twirling them round and round and round, memorizing every nuance, finding coherence in the disordered universe of a neurotic childhood. Gently hand wash, please.




And I don't even know what the New York Jets light switch cover commemorates, other than a wish I did not even know existed.

Brett Favre's Jets Debut and Whatnot

A friend advised me the other day to write entries that are more about my life and less about the statistical and historical content of the New York Jets By the Numbers. Nevertheless, the NYJBTN is a pet project, a hobby, a model ship in a giant bottle whose ongoing construction will be renewed when the 2008 season is done. In the meantime, the parallels between art and life come easy, for to be a lifetime fan is to experience new things that are, in many ways, simply repetitions of the old. Like love, we say. Seasons come and go, and with them come the perennial sense of disappointment and grief. Before the late 1990's, grief is all the fans of the New England Patriots felt (minus 1985, under Raymond Berry). How will a current seven year-old react when his beloved Pats start careening downwards somewhere over the next five years? It will happen. Like death, we say. That child has no schema for it. Enough. Never mind.

When I first started following games as a kid, the home games that I couldn't go and see at Shea with Dad I had to follow on the radio. No TV. The Jets didn't sell out games back then, and NFL rules prohibited locally televised presentation of home games for non-sellouts. You got used to the idea that you were responsible for your own misery by rooting for a team that wasn't even good enough to sell out a home game. With only the radio broadcast, you were left to the devices of your own obsessive imagination, and with one loss after another, it was a little like leaving a kid unattended with an aerosol can. There was a 43-0 loss to Miami or a 37-6 loss to the Cardinals of St. Louis, both in 1975. You became accustomed to picturing the awe-striking ineptitude of your newfound team solely within your mind.

Well, you had a little help. Each game, announced by Marty Glickman on WOR, was its own psychological saga. Dad couldn't stand Glickman's penchant for drama, but I loved it. As I've said before, Glickman's broadcasts were like listening to a salad bar's offerings being described while the entire restaurant was on fire. Glickman's original claim to fame was as a championship track star who was excluded from running alongside Jesse Owens with the US team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics out of respect for the racial sensibilities of Germany's Fuhrer. The only reason for this exclusion was that Glickman was Jewish. Let's just take a moment to remember that this decision came from then USOC (and later IOC) leader Avery Brundage whose own legacy of racism throughout his entire career speaks for itself. Glickman's harried voice carried all the qualities of a man traumatized by the experience of being betrayed by his own country. His was my first football voice, and it gave me a better feeling for experiencing the Jets than Curt Gowdy, John Brodie, Charlie Jones or Len Dawson ever could.

Back to imagining games. This is relevant to last night's second preseason game against the Redskins, aka "Brett Favre's Preseason Debut," which I was not able to watch anywhere because it was an exclusive to the NFL Network. Since we've recently been reminded that keeping your tires properly inflated will improve your gas mileage, I've noticed that you now have to pay for air at most gas stations. But though air is no longer a privilege to which I am entitled, I still steadfastly refuse to subscribe to the Network, and I don't know anyone who has done so. The sheer amount of money it costs to be a fervent fan is depressing. The latest strategy of having vaguely funny Jimmy Kimmel advertise the network's advantages is not compelling enough. It's extortion. I can't give in, especially when I recall how satisfying it was to see Roger Goodell having to reverse course and show the regular season Sunday night game between the Giants and the Patriots last December. I would rather follow the example I set as a little boy on Long Island - or as an overgrown child in Philadelphia - and use my imagination.

So I followed the Jets game online, which is nowhere near as informative or loyal to the ongoing action as is Major League Baseball's online coverage of their live games. That's by design, no doubt. Brett Favre threw a short touchdown to Dustin Keller, which was the only story people were interested in. From there, the game was handed to Kellen Clemens at QB, with little else to speak of. Mike Nugent hit a field goal from 40-plus, and then he errantly hit the upright from 23 to tie. Welcome to Gang Greenland, Mr. Favre. By the time it was over, I was myself well into the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres the experience of which, I propose, is not unlike the experience of watching a full NFL exhibition game. Having long loved Aqua Teen, I know that it is, ultimately, a program best suited to its intended time frame of 15 minutes - which by the way, is also the amount of time that Brett Favre was on the football field last night. Of course, the makers of the Aqua Teen are aware of the absurdity of trying to work their creations into a 90 minute storyline, so they only heighten its stupidity to create a movie that intentionally defies narration. Let's see NFL Network even try to tackle the same issues. An entire exhibition game is a mind-numbing experience (unintended). "What the fuck am I still watching this for?" asks the NFL Network subscriber. "I paid good money for this?!?"

And how would the NFL Network's coverage have been able to do justice to the strange appearance of Tom Cruise at last night's game at the Meadowlands? It's me, Tom Cruise. I'm a guy like you, wanting to see Brett Favre play. I cannot ignore the odd coincidence of his offering signatures at a Jets game the same weekend Shawn Andrews is returning to Philadelphia Eagles' camp after struggling this summer with serious issues of depression, an ailment no doubt that everybody's favorite Scientologist would want to diagnose with an E-Meter. I'm glad to see Shawn Andrews back and unafraid to speak openly about depression as an illness treatable with something other than vitamins. Who would have believed that an athlete has a better grasp of reality than a movie star?

Provided the weather holds, I will be attending training camp on Wednesday. The promise of seeing one of the ten greatest quarterbacks practicing from noon to 5 is a remarkable thing well worth worth the price of a car rental. There are some absurd expenditures I'm willing to make. Next year I'm certain the Jets will charge for watching practices at their new Garden State facility. But I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.

Brett Favre: "We'll See."

In the late summer of 1976, my family traveled up to Massachusetts to see my uncle and his family. It was always an epic journey. To a seven-year old, three hours in the car was longer than a movie, longer than a nap. It was ten Saturday morning cartoons. It was as long as a football game. As we got on the road, my mother told my father to pull over and let me go into the local shop so that I could buy something for me and my brother to read on the trip.

This shop sold both candy and cigars, and it smelled primarily of the latter. There was a soda fountain and a counter with revolving stools. The man working behind it seemed ancient and leather-faced. I loved it. I always knew as I walked in that I had entered the relic of a world nearly forgotten. Nothing looked like this anymore. There had been the 5 & 10 on the main avenue, with its wooden floors and large bins of inexpensive crap for sale, but it had been turned into a modernized Woolworth's and Woolco, minus the lunch counter. Our "candy store" in North Merrick, Long Island was a window into the kind of world in Queens where Dad and his brother had once worked as soda jerks, whatever that meant. The sign above the entrance to the store was bounded by the Coca Cola signs that suggested that you "Drink" not "Enjoy" the product in question. I loved any excuse to be there. Born as I was immediately in the wake of the Jets' past glories, I was in love with things that I had just missed and would probably not appear again.

Mom and Dad were waiting in the car, so I couldn't browse. I brought Charlie in with me, and I might have asked what he wanted to read. More likely not. He was four. I didn't know what he wanted to read. I looked at the myriad of magazines on a rack that definitely didn't stand at children's eye level. There may have been a prohibition against my buying another comic book. I had already put together a rather formidable collection. Sometimes when Dad and I would go into the candy store after Mass on Sunday, I would ask for a copy of Sports Illustrated. With that in mind, I took the couple of dollars my parents gave me and bought the August 30th issue, with Reggie Jackson on the cover.

Actually, I bought two. One for me and one for Charlie. I thought very literally, just as any knuckle-headed big brother would - one who had yet to recognize his sibling was a separate human being with a mind of his own. The leather-faced, lifetime filterless smoker behind the counter rang us up without a single change of expression. Why was a little boy buying two copies of the same magazine? The man was like the character of that Hemingway story who intones, Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. A boy with a similarly dressed smaller one in tow buys two issues of the same Sports Illustrated with Reggie Jackson on the cover. Give us this nada our daily nada...












Back in the car, Mom was horrified that I bought two identical copies. Dad laughed. I didn't understand what the problem was. Two were better than one. That's why there were two of us, me and Charlie. I didn't get it. This was an issue with Reggie Jackson on the cover. Former MVP. Former angry A. Reggie. I didn't even have a particular attachment to him, but I knew he was probably as important as the Fonz. Certainly more important than Gerald Ford. And now apparently until the end of time, Reggie Jackson was a Baltimore Oriole.

A what? An Oriole? That's right, citizens. You may not know/remember/care, but before he came to the New York Yankees, thereby forcing me to endure four years of a jealous Met fan's indignation, the A's traded Reggie Jackson to the Orioles. At the time I didn't know about his attitude toward Baltimore. He was previously the subject of large-print grade school biographies that I got out of the school library. I didn't read the small print of a major magazine. Back then, SI was still written somewhere at a junior high level. I looked at the pictures.

Had I read the article, I might have discovered why he would eventually move on to the Yankees. Once you're passed the surprise that Reggie even played for the Orioles, you're less surprised that he never wanted to be there. He held out at the beginning of the season and played poorly up to the All-Star Break. He would play out a season there and raise his numbers high enough to make himself tantalizing to the free agent market. He wanted, as he says in the article, to "go to a place with a liberal attitude." Interestingly enough, he specifically eliminated both the Mets and the Dodgers "because they emphasize organization over individuality." For a Mets fan this is hilarious to consider, especially when the Mets of the late 70's were so consistently bad. It's impossible to imagine their possessing a concrete organization of any kind, except for Tom Seaver, whose days on the team were numbered. Did Jackson consider staying in Baltimore in 1976? In the article, this remains inconclusive. We'll see, he seems to say. Right.

I have a slightly older friend who's a lifetime Orioles fan, one for whom the 70's were a time he recalls being filled with constantly great expectation. But when I ask him about Reggie Jackson in Baltimore, he replies with a shrug that conceals a slightly perceptible sense of hurt and shame. It hurt to know that Jackson didn't want to play there, so much so that the fans made him feel even less welcome after his initial holdout. This then only intensified Jackson's urge to get out of town and take off for somewhere like the Bronx. My friend didn't say it, but I recognize a fan's wounded pride. Before Gary Carter came to the Mets, the path to Flushing apparently seemed appealing only to the dour, stony-faced and grim George Foster, or the perennially frustrating Dave Kingman. Likewise, the Jets never got free agents. This feeling of being undeserving was like a sense memory, a Jungian archtype built into the subconscious of fan a former AFL team in a city where the Giants once played in Yankee Stadium.

Thus I was familiar with this feeling undeserving apprehension, even before Brett Favre - at the conclusion of his first Jets press conference - answered the question of whether or not he'll stay another season in New York with a lukewarm and hesitant, "We'll see."

We'll see. It's what Dad said when I asked if we would be going to anymore Jets games after he gave up his season tickets. It's what I say to kids when they ask if they can watch the film versions of the books we read in class. It's what I fruitlessly say to my wife when she says we need to get three dogs someday. Already feeling undeserving, I want to approach this season with the naivete of the boy who doesn't read the fine print. But one's own experience is unavoidable. When Favre moves his arm around, speaks of its feeling "tired," reminding everyone he's 38, he seems almost to be metaphorically looking at his watch. Like a one-time chronic mercy date and third wheel, I read such signs with an instinctive suspicion and paranoia. It's not just that it's getting late; it's just that he's got somewhere else he'd rather be.

Delusional

I am going through the stages of Delusion, fully expecting to land squarely in a thorny patch of reality. What are the stages of Delusion? I don't know. I think its different from plain old Denial. There might even be actual stages of Delusion, but for our purposes, let's just say that when I heard at about 4 am on local news radio yesterday that Brett Favre had been traded to the Jets, I thought I was literally still dreaming. When I tried to shake the dream away some more, I thought that maybe news radio was pulling an early morning hours prank on us again. Early on in our relationship, my wife and I swear that we heard the news radio guy say, "In other news... free french fries at Little Pete's Diner tonight." We heard wrong (but really - we heard it).

Likewise, with the Favre story, I figured they were just playing with one of the few Jets fans I know in Philadelphia. And believe me, I know myself - kind of. Anyway, once I digested it, I felt the unease that accompanies a false vision or hallucination. If you've ever had a fever dream that wandered into consciousness, you know what I'm talking about. At first, you try to shake it off, but it's not going anywhere. As Auden says, the vision seriously intends to stay. So there are stalagmites hanging from the ceiling. Someone painted the face of a clown on your wall. Your floor is 70 feet away. OK, you think, if this is the way it's going to be, then OK. I'm ready. It's whacked. But OK.

The vision kicks in. Brett is here to stay. To stay. Right? Right?

Maybe.

ESPN spoke glowingly of the deal last night. The Post, the Daily News, and Newsday all put Favre on their covers. The Times? In their usual, detached, can't-be-bothered approach to the Jets, the Times was kind enough to make it their lead in the sports section, but the first three paragraphs of the top story made it clear that the Jets fan (they presume such persons are not Times readers) is getting Favre for only a year. He's not staying, they indicated. Favre himself said, "We'll see" when asked about it. Oh, the Times seemed to suggest - like the iniquitous girl who sat next to you in your 10th grade Chemistry class back in the day - oh, you think he likes you? Oh my God! How funny! Oh, no. Nooo. He just feels sorry for you. Silly Jets fans. Aren't they so...delusional?

What's horrible is that like the bitchy classmate, the Times is often right...well, I guess with the exception of when they insisted that Clinton step down from the Presidency, or when they initially supported Bush's war in Iraq. And then there were the plagiarism scandals. Outside of that, though, they enjoy a readership in that reality-based part of the American mind that seems less important to both the News and the Post. But though I read their paper, I hate the way the Times has always relished the inadequacy of the Jets, as if they were forced to report on the bastard child as well as prince. As if the Jets were the only team that moved to New Jersey. And while the Jets are definitely not the team that won the Super Bowl last February, and while Brett probably still wants to get with an NFC team that might play Green Bay twice in a season,... I mean,...well...y'know...

Well, look at Newsday. They changed the color of their paper's trademark on the cover to green just for the occasion. You know? It's just thoughtful. Jesus. You know? A weary fan appreciates a story that exists outside the realm of reality sometimes. For now, the vision still seriously intends to stay - even if Brett doesn't.

Please Note

We have a late addition to our list of winners in the Booth Lusteg Awards for Players in the New York Jets Organization With Funny-Sounding Names:

#4 - Brett Favre

Just trying to be thorough.

Into the Modern Era...

Despite the assured move from one Bay to another, this, dated today, from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune regarding Brett Favre's status:

"The sources were also under the impression that the New York Jets were not out of the running for Favre's services."

As an altar boy in a small town in New York, there were two churches for the one Catholic parish - one Italian, one Irish. Everyone in town knew that the big Catholic church in the center of town was the one founded by the Irish, the one where the pastor lived. The other, humbly made from the granite pulled from the nearby quarry that had also been used to construct the nearby Kensico Dam, was the Italian "chapel." The Irish ran the parish, and one day the pastor decided to take the statues and idols out of the Italian church due to what he deemed "excessive idolatry." Statues of saints Mary, Jude, Joseph, Anthony and Clare were there, but so too were saints lesser known to Americans, like Cabrini and Rocco, who pointed to a wound below his knee. When the residents of the "Flats," as that section was deprecatingly called, heard of this, they were up in arms. To them it didn't matter if the pastor was addressing an issue as old as the Nicene Creed, nor that he was insisting that the Italians in town move into the modern era. Their point was not that the idols meant anything literal or miraculous; the objects simply gave inspiration to the believers. He soon saw that his would have been a losing battle for many years to come. Embittered devotees do not always forgive a slight. The statues stayed.

I'm actually grateful not to be a Packer fan. I'd prefer to go without feeling angry an entire season that a man I had come to treat like a parish icon was not welcome on my team anymore, all in the name of "moving forward" toward the club's modern era. Did Mike McCarthy insinuate that Favre was making a deal with Ted Thompson back in March for Favre's non-retirement retirement just to drive the quarterback crazy? Was McCarthy telling the truth? I can't imagine that either McCarthy or Thompson will really be better off taking the idol out of the church. As Boomer Esiason has said (and it's difficult for me to say that) no one will care whether or not the Packers made the right decision when Favre will be inducted into Canton. Packer fans will remember that he was spurned by the team, and they will not be any happier than they are now, unless Aaron Rodgers leads them to the Super Bowl in the space of time between Favre's Florida arrival and his induction speech. And that is unlikely to happen, even with Rodgers' admirable character habits, like last summer's flirtation with the fu manchu. More likely is the possibility that the people forcing Brett Favre out will already have been looking for new jobs by the time he is immortalized in bronze.

Too much of my summer has been taken up looking for quotes like the one above. There's been too much time following the insane Favre story and chastising myself for following it, knowing that the Jets are really not in consideration for his services. I know it. You know it. We have two - eventually three - quarterbacks. (Sigh). Let's just get going. Nobody's adding an idol in this parish (or building a church, for that matter). Who wants to be guilty of idolatry, anyway? Packer fans, witness to occasional miracles, are entitled to it.

A grievance, though. I would like to take issue with Harvey Araton of the Times, for suggesting the Mangini and the Jets are unworthy of Favre's attentions because of Mangini's breaking of an "honor code" (among whom? the "honorable?") and turning in evidence on Belichick. As if there had been no AFL to begin with, the Times would prefer the Jets just go away, as if they were a nuisance taking us from the full focus that they want to give the Super Bowl champion Giants. Even when the Jets were helping to prosecute dishonesty (and usually the only way to do that is to hear the canary singing of other dishonest men, like Mangini) they remain at the fuzzy end of the city's lollipop. Such is often the fate of the squealer. So be it. I'm still glad Mangini did it. The city itself still remains a bastion of the Yankees-Giants world. So be it, too. The Jets have always been the working class team, and nobody gives the blue collar anything. He must fight for his place. Though I am neither a fan of Mangini nor of the cynical leadership of Woody Johnson, I still prefer the sentiments of Angel Navedo, my personal favorite in the world of Jets blahg insanity. He has helped me to believe in my own my gut feeling from the beginning that, for better or for worse, we don't need Brett Favre. Damned be my own science fiction and pipe dreams to the contrary.

Pennington at QB. Clemens at QB. Ainge somewhere in the hazy background. Time to move into our modern era. God help us. J-E-T-S.

Another Famous Jets Fan

Having long been a fan of Adult Swim's Venture Bothers, I'm surprised that I only just recently noticed that Ned, the noseless, mentally challenged giant with three inch skin whom Jonas Venture, Jr. befriends and enlists as a henchmen, is a Jets fan. It seems appropriate that a thick-skinned retarded guy should run around Spider Skull Island naked, except for that New York Jets wool hat. I could be insulted, but it's not a bad portrayal, altogether. I own that hat.

As Dr. Jonas, Jr. says, "Sorry, but we like to let Ned make his own decisions."

Vanity Fair

Hope is the thing with feathers.
-Emily Dickinson

Under how many labels can one entry fall? L'Affaire de Favre has become something so outlandishly bizarre that I am left oddly mute. Brett Favre will actually be paid to retire, stay retired, and be part of the Packers "product," working from home in Mississippi. All the while he has played the Bucs and the Jets, perhaps to raise the dollar value of what the Pack will pay him to stay retired. He will quarterback for no one now, which was what he said he would do - or not do - earlier this spring. But now we know that these earlier plans probably included this mime show of interest in front of the gullible press. I suppose the notorious paucity of post-retirement for most players in the NFL has driven him to this extraordinary shadow play. Even I, for brief periods of time, had some ridiculous notion that he would wear our green, finding that by doing so, I too was only covered in more feathers. Look on yourself, Jets fans. There are probably a few on you, too.

No Old NY Jets Loyalty Goes Unpunished

My brother just informed me that his friend's Dad - a Jets fan going back to the days of Shea Stadium - has just received the bill for his PSL:

$40,000.

Can that be? Is that even possible? I guess I was naive enough to believe that it would only go as high as $20,000, but even then I'm not sure I would spend that much money on anything, other than a home, which would cost me much, much more anyway. I would buy a used car with good gas mileage. I would pay forty grand for my non-existent child's college education, as long as a cheaper alternative were absolutely impossible. I would pay the medical bills had no other choice but to pay. I would pay for my parents' geriatric care, hoping through it all that my parents had remained as financially careful toward the end as they have always been all their lives. But I don't really have anything near that kind money to give to my football team, or to anyone or anything else. And, frankly, I wouldn't. Unless he has a home to sell, how could this guy possibly pay for it without mounting a Sisyphean hill of debt?

I have to say. This business of the PSL's has gone from being yet another callous commercial reality to being outrightly exploitative and depraved.

Try It On For Size

When I was about nine, Sports Illustrated ran pictures of Pete Rose, soon-to-be free agent, trying on different hats from around major league baseball, mulling over where he might see himself in the upcoming 1979 season. Not one was in a New York Mets hat, a sight that would have both delighted and horrified me simultaneously. Everyone knew back then that Pete Rose was the greatest ballplayer of his time, but like many people, I found that there was some nameless thing about him that made my stomach turn. As Dad used to say when he'd see Charlie Hustle taking a lead at first, "That guy has a face you wanna punch." Just ask Bud Harrelson.

But I would have taken him on the Mets - happily. What a laugh, though. Rose on the '79 Mets. That team was their worst squad since 1962.

Brett Favre is different. While Pete Rose's career was punctuated with moments of contemptible guile, Favre, on the other hand, is a seemingly respectable icon. Born in the cradle of the NASCAR constituency, forged in the cold winters of a state generally known for its pluralism and gentle progressivism, he is that rare thing, a man beloved by both the Union and the Confederacy. Yet he clearly fears what comes after football. Given all the things I've discovered in my efforts to discuss all the players who've played in the Jets uniform, I don't necessarily blame him. We see that retirement is a fearful thing for any man whose only job training has been to chase around an object filled with air. Sure, for some retirement from the NFL means family, golf, promotions, celebrity appearances, careers in real estate, casino cameos, coaching, play-by-play work, or a seat at the desk with the fellows "back in the studio." That's the best case scenario. The worst case - all too common with more anonymous players - is addiction, bankruptcy, sex crimes, illness, heart disease, incarceration, social disorientation and early death.

Retired as many times as Tanya Tucker and Glen Campbell were engaged, Brett Favre calls into the deep chasm of his life ahead, and he doesn't appear to like what he hears. I didn't realize I sounded like that. Better return to the familiar. But where? You can't go home again, as Thomas Wolfe once suggested. Can you? What if he didn't? The now quite possibly freed Favre suddenly appears in the imagination in as many uniforms as Pete Rose once did baseball hats.
So this picture (from Fox Sports) represents my now updated ludicrous fantasy, one more realistic than the one where Pete Rose plays for the New York Mets. Alex Marvez of Fox Sports agrees that the Jets are a good fit for Brett Favre, so long as they deal Pennington away. This seems all the ridiculous with the Favre's face scotch-taped to Pennington's jersey. It really should be the other way round, but I get it. That's what I would have done with Favre's head if I were a kid.

I want it on record that this is Fox that I'm encouraging you to go along with here. The network that brought you the terrorist fist-pump that the New Yorker so poorly satirized. However, Marvez seems to suggest that Minnesota (colder than Wisconsin), D.C. (murder capital made even more dangerous by lifted gun bans) and Tampa Bay (Jeff Garcia) are better fits. Where would you rather retire?

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.

A Farewell to Arms

We know Chad Pennington became a backup quarterback and remained thus (despite having a better QB rating than his younger colleague) until Kellen Clemens became injured in last week's game. We know that one way or the other, it makes no real difference. I want a new set of options for arms.

Tis the season for giving. I give you the best reassurances I can offer:

- The New York Jets lost 20-10, not by an atrocious total, and it would have been 13-10 had Kellen Clemens not thrown an injury-rendering pass to the Patriots for an easy touchdown. Again - none of these are in any order.

- Yes, the New England Patriots have San Francisco's draft pick next year, but the Jets have never done anything so worthwhile with the draft such that we need to bemoan this cosmic injustice. The Jets may yet finish with the same record as the Niners, and maybe they will steal the Patriots' pick, and not the other way round.

- The Jets did not lose to Miami, nor did they give up the Buccaneers' first kickoff return for a touchdown. They were also not victims of the New York Mets' first no-hitter. Thank goodness.

- Thomas Jones will gain 1,000 yards before the end of this season. Jerricho Cotchery will as well. You will find their names on lists.

- Joe Namath finally received his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Alabama this past week.

- David Harris deserves consideration for Rookie of the Year. Stop laughing.

- The New York (football) Titans' uniforms are spectacular reminders that the New York Jets' green and white remains one of the classiest in the game. I can't believe I just said that, but I did. I mean, can you possibly take the Vikings' monochrome home uniforms seriously? Holy God. They look like something Mummenshauntz would wear (below).

- Kerry Rhodes remains tied with six other players for seventh place in the NFL with five interceptions. Number one draft choice Revis has four. Who says the draft doesn't (kind of) work?

- We are not in last place, nor will we by the end of the season.

- In a year when Devin Hester is described as a human miracle, Leon Washington - who did not get into the Pro Bowl (no Jet did) - may tie a record for kickoff returns in one season. He is the Jets MVP, justifiably. As you can see, he thanks the Man Upstairs. It will suffice for me to thank you, Leon.

That's ten. So even in the season of tremendous disappointment, there is reason to be thankful. If I tried hard enough, I could think of one more, but to be honest, it would be too much of a stretch. There are other struggles with which I must contend before the holiday comes. I'm hoping that someday I'll find the Joe Namath sideline parka with the #12 on the front that I should have bought on sale years ago. No luck on Ebay. I might blow $125 on a NFL Throwbacks Namath jersey, which isn't so bad when I consider that the new couch we tried to have delivered to our apartment just barely did not fit into out unit, and we were forced to give it away, in this case to a local women's shelter. It's a tax write-off. It's been just exactly that kind of football season.