NY Jets #71 - Part 1

Is it not enough to face the prospect of living in a country that in January will be led by a vulgar, overgrown child with a seriously untreated personality disorder, whose election was guaranteed by an FBI Director with connections to Rudolph Guiliani, or possibly to a Russian dictator? Is it not enough to imagine that this 45th President will likely be impeached and then succeeded by a guy who looks like Race Bannon and who also believes in gay conversion therapy? No. Because today, we must finally play the the first-place Patriots, a team whose coach and quarterback are - of course - good friends with a President-elect who gave off camera advice to a television personality on how to sexually assault women.

I did not know I could hate the Patriots any more than I do at this very moment. Don Shula's Dolphins? The '76 Raiders? The '77 Cowboys...wait, the Cowboys of any era? Big Ben's Steelers? I would gladly pledge an unholy allegiance to any one of these destructors if I knew they could bring Belichick's gray, dull, spiritless, predictable brand of football low forever.

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Jeff Bleamer #71, played tackle for us in his last season in the pros, 1977. (I'd like to start out, however, by mentioning that the names for #71 are particularly good. In addition to a Bleamer, we have a Chalenski, a Lusckinski, a Krevis, a Pickel, a Stuckey and a Winkel. That is all.) Bleamer went to Penn State and was amazed to be drafted by any pro team in 1975, let alone the Philadelphia Eagles, who were, as he put it, "in my backyard." A 2015 Morning Call article outlines the terrific differences between the drafts of then and now by using Bleamer as an example. He may have been pleased to have been drafted, but the reason it happened is because Joe Paterno called Mike McCormack, the-then Eagles GM, and reminded him that the team had yet to draft a Nittany Lion. Bleamer was drafted. That's how things worked back then. I think we can all agree for reasons that don't need to be outlined here how that was both a better and worse system.

Mike Chalenski #71 is roughly my age and was, unlike myself, a USA Today high school All-American. He played well at UCLA and then, like Beamer, was drafted by the Eagles. I found his LinkedIn; he specializes in Information Technology and Services, but his Pacific Philadelphia Trading Card from 1996 (above), his only season with us, makes him seem a little more than mortal than his work in IT, though maybe it shouldn't be that way. I don't know. Maybe that's what's wrong with our country. But lettering three years at UCLA seems like a mark of distinction that never leaves you.

Maybe it's the fact that Chalenski recovered his only pro fumble as a Jet in 1996, arguably the worst season in franchise history. I don't know which game it was, but I do hope he kept the ball and has it somewhere special. Real life is a mundane and daily grind that should be punctuated by little bits of experience that possess all the resonance of childhood fantasy.

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Jarron Gilbert #71 played on mostly the practice squads of the Bills and the Jets. He earned a BA in Sociology from San Jose State. To further reinforce the earlier point made by the Morning Call with regard to how much the draft has changed, consider the following:

This above is what the Chicago Bears considered upon taking him in the third round of the 2009 draft. Or perhaps, they, like you, were impressed by the video of him jumping out of a swimming pool.

Obviously this is something cool. One commenter on YouTube says, "It's harder then it looks! So all you people that sit on your ass... And dislike this video first.. try to jump on top of the 1st step of the stair case.. lol.. And if you don't bust your shit! LOL." Another thing that's wrong with our civilization is that a simple YouTube video can produce vitriol, both attacking and defending. Am I sitting on my ass? Yes. Am I disliking this video? No. In fact, what I like best about it is the odd Yo La Tengo- tinged-with-Dark Jazz soundtrack that doesn't really fit the grainy video itself.

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As I write this, I have just been watching what are the likely winning points that the Giants have scored over the Browns - Jason Pierre-Paul's recovering a batted ball and taking it all the way to the house. The Giants now lead 20-6, with most of the fourth quarter to go, but in Brownsland, it's clearly another loss. The Browns had gotten a terrific 50-yard gain on a Terrelle Pryor Sr. reception.

Then, the turnover then happened on the very next play - as if on cosmic cue. The sound from the remaining Browns fans in the stands was a poignant combination of resignation and bitter laughter, as if they had been waiting for this particular piano to drop on them, as it always does. I'm certain it wasn't the Giants fans laughing. People who are proud to follow a team they know will break their hearts must respond this way. Otherwise why are you there?

JP-P looked like a tight end on his way to the end zone, at least compared with the man who was the first to greet him there - the Giants' Damon Harrison, who was once briefly a #71 for the Jets, and then our #94. Considering the serendipity of this moment, and the uncertainty with which I may be navigating the blog by the time I get to that number, I decide to discuss Harrison now. Who knows what kind of country we'll be living in by #94?

Are the Jets worse off without him? What's unfortunate is that it there are so many missing pieces in the Jets that it hardly seems worth exploring the question. The Giants have won five straight, and they've done it with much more than Damon Harrison. The Jets are just simply a worse team in many ways.

Here are some random cool facts about Damon Harrison:

1. He is, of course, "Snacks." It's one of the best nicknames in all of sports.

2. He opened up to the Players Tribune about fighting depression and suicidal ideation after Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown. Any time giant men talk about their feelings, it's a good thing.

3. He was All-Pro last year.

4. His first recorded NFL sack was on Tom Brady.

5. After this year's defeat of the Cowboys, the Giants still had zero sacks. Newsday pointed out, during the game that Harrison tried to sack Dak Prescott, but realized that it might register as a late hit, so he pulled up. (Snacks did not sack Dak. There. I said it.) He is a popular player, and still well liked by his former teammates on the Jets, probably for saying something something like this - When he was asked about not sacking Prescott, he said that "I told coach today that it’s kind of good I didn’t get it, because at no time should I be leading the team in sacks. We’d be in trouble.”

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Giants top Browns 27-13. As the game winds down, there aren't any Browns fans left in the stadium. The fans in Cleveland will return next week in the game against Cincinnati because that's what people who are proud to remain loyal do. If only that dedication could be put to some useful purpose.

NY Jets #70 - Part 5

The Jets won today. That's not a phrase I use lightly or, for that matter, often. They won in Jetsy fashion. Todd Bowles benched Ryan Fitzpatrick against the Ravens, started Geno Smith, who managed to get a touchdown pass to Quincy Enunwa before getting injured in the first half, perhaps badly. I don't know why the gods have such a thing about Geno. He is probably not a bad person, and he is, statistically speaking, not a talented enough quarterback for the gods to treat him with such feckless jealousy.

I have a former student who's now in the tenth grade, originally from Lithuania, who's a Jets fan. I don't know how it happened. I don't know what the basis was for his choice. Did he happen to catch one football game in his new country, a Jets game, sort of like the one the Jets played today - one where they benefited mostly from the opponents' miscues? Did he suddenly and misguidedly tell himself, That's my team? It's too late now, and he knows it. His loyalty is branded on his brain. Win or lose, he wears his Jets swag each Monday, but he's lately taken to walking into my classroom when I'm not teaching, and look at me with incredulity. Five times this year he's come to see me after five losses.

"Mr. Roche...," he says. Nothing else. He shakes his head.

"I know, kid," I say. "I know."

He says nothing.

"We're in for the long haul," I say encouragingly.

But he speaks frankly. "That doesn't help me."

"No. They'll probably win a Super Bowl in your lifetime, not in mine."

"That's even more depressing."

"Not for you, though," I try to salvage as we walks away. "Not for you!"

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The blog is back. I don't know why. Why was this Sunday different from any other? Maybe I'm just avoiding the 90 freshman papers I need to grade. For a long time, I forgot my password to the blog, and I just let it slide. When I recently figured it out and returned, I found a handful of kind email messages from people wondering if I was okay, wondering when I would write again. I appreciate that. It's been almost two years since I last wrote, and some things in my life have really stabilized since then, while other things just keep me up at night. I'm probably just like you. It's been so long since I've written that I would visit the blog just to see if it was still there (why wouldn't be?) but after a fashion, the Google search for "Infinite Jets" would return with Did you mean Infinite Jest? No I did not, but never mind.

I did get a number of comments on past entries from family members and friends of players, some of whom had recently died. One guy wanted me to know that his mother was one of the original Jets cheerleaders from the late 1960's, and I managed to find some film I had somewhere of some of those gals cheering on the sideline and asked him if maybe one of them might have been his mom, who had passed away sometime earlier. He opened the link I sent him, on Easter, with all his family gathered, and indeed, one of the images was his mom. It was emotional moment, he told me. That was pretty cool.

I hope you're still out there. Hope you're doing better than our football team. I need to write more and at the very least finish number 70. There have been a lot of new players who've gone in and out of numbers that we already covered; I can't say I'll be able to backtrack and revise those entries. Maybe I'll try. Otherwise, I'll just keep moving forward by looking backward and hope that I'll serve you well. If you're reading this, thanks.

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Between 1978 and 1984 there wasn't much to be concerned about. I was nine on the front end of those years, and 15 at the end. If he's lucky, a boy's life between those ages can be simply summed up as playing late outside with his friends until, to turn a Joycean phrase, his body glows, until it's too dark out to see the ball. When he goes home, there's a reliable meal on the table. When he needs to be somewhere, he rides his bike with abandon. When my dad came home from work at night, I hugged him, and his trench coat smelled of the city and of the train car's cigarette smoke. I was not always a happy kid, but most of the time there was nothing really outside of my own mind to make it unhappy. During the years I taught at a high school right outside West Philadelphia, I had already seen more than enough children who did not have the slightest glimpse of such a simple, contented life as the one I had known.

And then there was the Jets. In those years, they offered lots of promise, chances at what appeared to be greatness, but always, always in the end, an early exit. There are few things in life that I have loved with such unrepentant emotion as I did my football team between the ages of nine and 15. What else is there?

And so say the name Stan Waldemore #70, and I can immediately picture his face, his uniform. I can hear Marty Glickman or Spencer Ross naming him on the play. He didn't always start, though he started pretty regularly late in his career. He is a regular at retired player meet-ups. When I mentioned that I was writing about him, my wife noted that his last name is similar to the notorious villain of the Harry Potter novels. I think he replaced Randy Rasmussen, who was a Jet forever, a player who was invariably blocking in front of Matt Snell in all of the childhood stories I read about Super Bowl III. That must have been a bit of a challenge to follow after Randy Rasmussen.

He had a good career. This is about all I can say about him, though in his book The View from the Bench, former offensive lineman George Mills talks about losing his job on the Nebraska Cornhusker line to Waldemore when the latter was just a freshman in 1974. He makes sure we know that Stan Waldemore was a good guy. Mills had to constantly petition line coach Monte Kiffin that he was better than Waldemore, all the while acknowledging that injuries were prohibiting him from really competing with Waldemore. It was nothing personal, though. It was a career at stake, masking as a boy's game.

As for Dakota Dozier #70, our current wearer of the number, I do not see any record that he has started a game on the offensive line this season, but he might take comfort from Mills' book about being an unused football player, or perhaps he might be reminded that he is earning good money without having to worry as much about permanent brain damage as Sunday's starters will. As a former consensus All-American, that probably doesn't mean much to him.

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Woods (at left) and teammates from Tennessee State University, before he was drafted by the Lions. I did not know I could want anything as much as I want the jacket worn by Alvin Coleman in the middle. At the right is Robert Woods, another future Jet, and Larry's brother.

Larry Woods #70 played for the 1973 Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins and then signed with the Jets, playing for us from 1974-75. I do not remember seeing him play, but I remember his face among the player pictures in the game program. He has the distinction too of being a member of the original 1976 Seattle Seahawks. He started only three games for the Dolphins and was able to play considerably more for the Jets. In a Times article during the 1974 preseason, Woods admitted that the prospect of playing more often was more meaningful than being guaranteed a chance to go to the playoffs on the bench. By the end of the 1975 season, the year I first saw his face in the program, I was happy rooting for the Jets, so the experience was branded on me, even as they lost, over and over. By the time I was 16, like my Lithuanian immigrant student, out of the glow of an ordinary little boy's life, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. But it was too late.