NY Jets #62 - Part 2

Sports fans are often torn as to how to answer the question, "Does everything happen for a reason?" On the one hand, everything in sports happens for a reason. Every play, every action on the field has a consequence that directly or indirectly determines the outcome of a game, the "everything" of the question. Last night's Mets game was largely determined by the successful pitching of Chris Young over seven innings and also by the five RBI's by Ronnie Cedeno. But even three of those five runs came as  a result of a shabby play in left field by the Giants' Melky Cabrera. Performance determines a measurable outcome, reflected in either a win or a loss.

But sports are once again not at all like life. Unlike the outcome of a game, the "everything" of life is an ongoing struggle that is never quite complete. We go through each day having completed a generally routine experience and so therefore seem at an end, but that distinction is an illusion. An end is not the end; it's the conclusion of what appears to be a "day," a mere completion of the Earth's rotation while hurtling through space on its measurable, endless revolutionary orbit around our Sun. Sleep is only the imaginary measure of an end, and that's only because we go into an unconscious, nurturing dream state available to most Earthbound, sentient creatures when the Sun appears to vanish over the horizon. There are no winners and losers. We create narratives to help us understand, but these are mostly comforting, or discomforting, illusions.

My co-worker, fellow sports fan and friend Patrick ends his days at work by asking me, "Did you win or lose today?"

I begin by equivocating on the issue, much as I do above: what does it mean to win or lose at anything, other than in a game? I ask.

"I'm asking you," he says, insistent, standing at least three inches above me, "did you win or lose?"

I answer again by offering some indicators. I thought my lesson on paragraphing went well, but the ensuing peer review writing workshop exercise seemed to fall pretty flat, with the students feeling mostly confused. "I have to do better next time," I say. "I see where I went wrong. I'll win next time, but I have to say that at the end of today, I feel like I didn't do as well as I could have for the kids. So, I don't know, I feel like today, yeah, I lost."

Almost like Olivier's insistent dentist in Marathon Man, he approaches me more closely and merely repeats the question, "Did you win or lose today?"

"I lost."

He shakes his head, unhappily. "That's not what I want to hear. You got through your day. You won."

"I won?"

He nods. "You got through your day."

"I won."

"You won."

****

Todd Burger #62, clearing the lane for Leon Johnson

Todd Burger #62 shows up in a bit of research and from memory. He had originally been brought in by Parcells in 1998 because he was a "rough and tumble" guard who brought "toughness" to the Jets' front line. I remember that front line, with Elliott and Mawae, and sometimes I think I'm still rooting for Parcells' team to go to the Super Bowl in 1999, just as I'm still waiting for the 1983 Jets to do it; just I'll always be waiting for last year's group to go there, too. Burger was cut at the end of 1998, his last season in the NFL.

He was arrested in 2007 as part of an illegal gambling ring in New Jersey. It was only when I came across a 2008 article by Matt Taibbi in the Phoenix that I discovered that Burger wasn't the mastermind of the organization, but rather, one of its "enforcers," one of its bruisers, the shakedown guy. He's the guy who's hired to beat up the guy who owes another guy money. He's the guy who rings your front door bell and convinces you he's there to repair a visible problem with your satellite dish, and the next minute, he's in your kitchen, eating some cold leftover pizza from your refrigerator in one hand and pressing your face into your kitchen counter with the other.

As Taibbi points out, "Give Burger a few added points for sentimentality... At least he wasn’t coking up and braining strippers like some ex-football players do." And that's true. Questions remain with me, though. Why was he was cut in the first place, and before the 1999 NFL Draft? Is the fine line between "rough and tumble" and being an enforcer for the mob discernible at the very start? I'm having a hard time believing that Parcells ever objected to Burger's propensity for that kind of guy whose paw, having now finished with the cold pizza in his left, has now commenced to take you by the scruff of your neck with and swat your helpless, regretful face with his right.

****

Does everything happen in life for a reason? We ask ourselves this question most often when coincidences occur. It's a coincidence that I was just thinking about that vacation I took with you, about how fun and regretful it was at the same time, and all of the sudden you just happened to be visiting town, walking into the very same deli that I'm in right now, waiting for my cold cuts. What were the odds? The odds were pretty steep. But it happened, anyway. Either that, or you're following me. What does it mean?

Joe Pellegrini #62

Between 1978 and 1979, Joe Pellegrini #62 played for the New York Jets. He played defensive tackle for the University of Idaho and then for the New York Jets for two seasons. There was nothing strange at all about it.

Joe Pellegrini #62

Then Joe Pellegrini #62 graduated from Harvard in 1982 and played two seasons on the offensive line for the Jets, from 1982-83.

In other words, two men with the same name played in the same number for the same team at different times over a period of seven seasons. You can see this for yourself on the All-Time Jets roster page. You can read about the elder Pellegrini's (above, left) celebrated play while playing for Idaho in the late 70's; you can find his NFL statistics, limited though they are, on his seasons with the Jets, here. You can find out about the other Pellegrini (right) from his recent success as an investment banker and you can see that he spent several seasons with both the Jets and the Atlanta Falcons.

How did this happen? How could this be? What does it mean? There are a considerable number of people throughout the United States with this name, but the odds remain somewhat stacked against this occurring anywhere in the NFL since or again, unless they have the names of Robert Smith and Michael Davis. As a kid, I used to babysit for a family named Pelligrini down the road from my house. They were nice people. There used to be a bakery in Hawthorne called Pelligrino's where we'd go after Mass every Sunday. But that's it. I've known a lot of Josephs in my life, but I've never met anyone named Joe Pelligrini, and the odds of doing so in my life remain bleak.

There is one possible explanation for this - that the organization may have been too cheap to use anything other than a stored #62 jersey for a guy named Pelligrini for another guy named Pelligrini. If that's not it, then we are left in the realm of mystery, wondering, as one does when a coincidence is in evidence, whether or not it all happened for a cosmic reason that none of us are evolved enough to understand.

****

But then, like a firm believer who always thought was an artificially created "face" on Mars, I am forced to accept a simpler, less exotic, less enjoyable explanation of what I see with my own eyes. The simple truth is that I have been tricked into an illusion. From 1978-79, defensive tackle Joe Pelligrini, born in Aberdeen, Washington, graduate of the University of Idaho - the man you see in the blurred picture above - actually wore #77 on the Jets; the team's All-Time Roster has made a simple mistake, certainly not the first one we've ever located. What do you expect from a web page that no longer offers specific data on its former and active players, other than an error message that depicts a referee who looks almost exactly like Steve Carrell?

We create narratives to help us understand the outrageous and confounding mysteries of our lives. It was comforting to believe that two men had the same number and name, because such serendipity hints at a world of greater magic, and who knows what other wonders this magic could yield? But there really isn't much magic in the world. If there were, our teams would win against the odds more often than they do and leave us to bask in the presence of their unexpected glory. Instead, we are left with the logical explanations of why our teams do not do as well as we hope, mostly because they could never be as good as we imagine they might be.

NY Jets #50 - Part 2

Pop - my grandfather - was the chief engineer in a paint factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and he was the only one who had to be alert on Christmas in case the works started freezing up.  My mother would drive him down to the factory and wait in the car, looking up at it, while inside the building Pop got its guts moving and pumping to keep them warm and alive. She stared at the factory long enough to recognize it again right away when she went back just last year to see how much Greenpoint had changed.  Today, Greenpoint is just another regentrified Brooklyn neighborhood where you need to be a millionaire to buy an apartment with even the slightest hint of Manhattan's view across the East River.  She found the old factory right away, though of course it had been converted into lofts.

When he was young, Pop lost his beloved younger sister when she choked to death at the dinner table. His own father, a patriotic immigrant from County Wexford, broke his back and lost his own factory job the very next day. Pop came from a world without even a shade of guarantees, when the possibility of ruin lingered around the corner. It must have shaped him, I suppose, this way of being that I've been told is the peculiar property of people who have been displaced, rejected, persecuted - Jews, Africans, Armenians, Irish - a sense of humor that arises from an ingrained sense of doom. He was a happy man at parties but he worried himself to morbidity when one of his own children caught a cold.

I say all this because it reveals the contradictions of the lives of people like Pop; they relished with pride where they had come from, but he never thought anyone should leave the neighborhood for the big, bad world outside. He loved Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy's Notre Dame football because it was Irish-America's Harvard, a school for people like him, but when his oldest son, my Uncle Chris, a real, live, certified genius, wanted to leave Brooklyn and study chemistry at Notre Dame, Pop didn't speak with him for months. Why would you leave the neighborhood? Why would you leave me? But leave home Uncle Chris did, and he never looked back. And in doing so, he inspired my Mom and Uncle Mike to do the same.

In some way, therefore, Notre Dame became for us what it is for a lot of Irish-American families throughout the country - the cultural stamp of success. I wanted to go there when I was a kid because Uncle Chris went there, and of course being the middling high school student I was, I was promptly rejected. I knew I never had a chance. But before and after, I rooted for Notre Dame like they were some kind of family legacy.  Their 38-10 Cotton Bowl upset of Texas in 1978 made up for the disappointment of the Jets' 1977 season. I followed the Forty-Niners in the early 80's because I couldn't believe Notre Dame could produce someone as brilliant as Joe Montana, the man previously resurrected in the 1979 Cotton Bowl by chicken soup.

Pop might have rooted against the Jets in the Heidi Game right there in the living room, sitting next to my Dad because the Raiders were quarterbacked to victory that day by former Notre Dame star Daryle (he pronounced it Daree-al) Lamonica.  Perhaps Pop never liked the Jets much because so very few Notre Dame players really went through the Jets' system. John Huarte came and went and never got a number. There were Jim Carroll LB #55 (1969), Robert Farmer #25 RB (1989), Joe Katcick #77 DT (1960), Lance Legree #70 DT (2005), Bob O'Neil LB #62 (1961), Paul Seiler #79 T-C (1967), and Pat Terrell #27 S (1994). Whether this is typical throughout the league or not I cannot say, but I find it interesting that all of the above lasted no more than a year with the Jets.

Except for Bob Crable #50 who played his entire 1982-87 career with the Jets at linebacker.  When Crable came to the Jets, I was ecstatic.  In 1979, when he was a sophomore in #43, I watched him block a last second Michigan field goal to save an Irish win.  The kick was pretty low but would have been blocked had it been sent straight skyward because Crable got the kind of height that basketball players dream of (though he might have climbed on someone's back).  It looks impossible in the picture because it was.  But at least they beat Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Bob Crable's pro career didn't possess the legend that he found at Notre Dame, and once again we must all simply agree that this is the norm.  That's the way it is.  College glory and pro fame are just two different species.  He was drafted in the first round.  Knee injuries hampered him.  He accumulated 10 sacks in his career overall, which is going to be an important point below.  He did play a full 16-game season in 1986 when the team found the momentum to go to the second round of the playoffs.  I include a picture from Corbis taken on that exquisitely painful day of January 3, 1987, when the Jets blew a 10-point lead against the Browns with 4:14 left and lost the Divisional Playoff.  Whether he imagined his hard work over that season would finally yield something greater in this game - the furthest in the NFL playoffs he had been since his rookie year - I don't know.  Today, he is as a college linebackers coach.

No matter what the lead, no matter how far ahead the Irish were, my Pop paced the floors listening to Notre Dame games on the radio with his characteristically pervasive dread.  No lead was safe, just as no guarantees existed in this life.  Your boys could blow it at any minute.  As I grew into my teenage years, I began to discover my extended families' assortment of ticks and traits programmed into my own, and I saw Pop's characteristic fears and anxieties in myself.  I had inherited his sense of life.  The world was filled with unexpected ruin.  On January 3, 1987, Bob Crable's last playoff game, I felt a justification for this worldview. 

****

There are many ways that ruin has come to the Jets.  Football's two football strikes - 1982 and 1987 - did wreck us.  They each followed an impressive playoff show for the Jets the year before (and it looks like it's going to happen again) and each time, the strike in some way broke their flow for years.  The draft, too, has a notoriously gruesome past for the Jets; whereas some teams make mistakes in the draft that just make a paper cut, the Jets have historically made mistakes that actually hurt them for years.  It's well documented. 

But one could argue that the Jets have made very good draft choices since the beginning of the millennium.  The lone, really brilliant choice in the 1990's was James Farrior, but in 2000, we chose Jon Abraham #56, Shaun Ellis #92 and Chad Pennington #10.  Then there's 2001, with Santana Moss #83. In 2002, we picked Bryan Thomas #58, Jon McGraw #38; in 2004, we picked Jonathan Vilma #51 and Jerricho Cotchery #89.  In 2005, there was Kerry Rhodes #25.  The motherload was 2006:  D'Brickashaw Ferguson #60, Nick Mangold #74, Eric Smith #33, Brad Smith #16, and Leon Washington #29.  In 2007, Darrelle Revis #24 and David Harris #52.  In 2009, Mark Sanchez #6 and Shonn Greene #23.  There are some notable absences above from the team that went to the AFC Championship, and James Farrior was on the winning side of that game, but look at it.  For the most part the team we brought was the team we drafted.  It's amazing.  Life is not all about blue ruin.

But we must admit that one of the players for whom we all felt the highest expectation didn't pan out at all - Vernon Gholston #50 - the furiously talented Ohio State linebacker who was going to terrorize quarterbacks, just as he did in the Big 10.  For years after he was drafted, they would speak of his growth, his potential.  It happens.  Players take time in the NFL.  In Hard Knocks, Rex Ryan made several references to Gholston's performance in training camp this past season - most specifically, indicating something to the effect that "they really dropped today."  If you are a male or are familiar with the anatomical behaviors of male farm animals, then you have some idea of what Rex was talking about, as only Rex can.  But he was talking about Vernon Gholston.

But earlier this year, Gholston was finally cut, having made a handful of tackles in three years and (as noted so often) no sacks.  He is the kind of draft bust that people wrote about mockingly in terms of the Jets for years, but now he is the exception to the rule (we did draft Dustin Keller #81 that season, too).  He is a top draft choice that didn't work out.  The same might be said for Mike Nugent #1 in 2005, as well as the entire 2004 draft, which includes not a single active player.  And our 2010 draft did not seem to produce much (I'm still imagining Joe McKnight doing something).  It's tricky when you play well the year before.  But still, the Jets now officially draft slightly above the average for success.  But not Vernon.

Perhaps it was the hype that surrounded him as a defensive player, the sense of possibility we have never felt for, say, Kyle Wilson, drafted first round last year at defensive back.  Maybe it's being a linebacker, the man at a position with the capacity to change the flow of a game just like that; can you imagine last year's team with a Farrior, or a Vilma, or an Abraham still on staff?  I do when I'm daydreaming.  Perhaps it's because we let so many great linebackers go over the years that we put so much hope - too much perhaps - on Vernon Gholston, so his departure feels poignant.

And so it is, Vernon, we say farewell: