NY Jets #19 - Part 2 (Includes Profanity)

While riding Amtrak from Philadelphia to Penn Station in the spring of 2000, a guy in the seat directly behind me, who certainly sounded at high decibel like someone from Jamaica, was nearly spitting in my ear while conversing to the person on the other end of his cell phone. He insisted, time and time again, that The Bitch left him with nothing. The bitch took his money. All his money.

"What am I gonna do?" he asked, over and over again - not so much even to the lucky person on the other end after a while, it seemed, but to the world and to God. "What the fuck am I gonna do?"

It went on like this the whole way. It was OK at first, maybe around Croydon, but it was really old by the time we reached Newark. I couldn't move my seat; there was nowhere else available in the car, and I wasn't about to risk losing it in an effort to look through the crowded train just because I couldn't stand hearing it over and over. The bitch left me with nothing. Nothing. What am I gonna do? New York wasn't far by then.

Finally, New York. I got up, and as he and I exited to our separate ways at the station, he caught sight of my New York Jets t-shirt and addressed me in a familiarly distressed tone, as if it were part of his ongoing troubles:

"No!"

I looked at him.

"Holy shit. What the fuck they gonna do without Keyshawn, now? Huh? They are so fucked. What they gonna do?"

Well, we know what Keyshawn Johnson #19 did. He won a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay that the Philadelphia Eagles should gone to and won. I still resent him for leaving the Jets for more money, more respect, more rings the way that I resented John Riggins for doing the same in 1976. But then Keyshawn went and got kicked off the Bucs a little while afterward. He was the first player of this era to whom I had ever heard of this happening. But regardless of where he went, Keyshawn was, deep down, always that petulantly difficult author/rookie on a 3-13 team. He was tall and singularly self-possessive to the point of narcissism, which laid the groundwork for all the headcase wide receivers to come - Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Ochocinco, Braylon Edwards - and yet the Jets have not had a receiver of his caliber and height since then (including Braylon Edwards) so my friend on the train was right to worry after all.

The only thing he really did wrong was to slam Wayne Chrebet - someone who came to the Jets as a walk-on and not a first-round draft choice - in his 1995 book. And then, after being picked up by Tampa Bay, Keyshawn compared himself to Chrebet by saying. "You're trying to compare a flashlight to a star. Flashlights only last so long, a star is in the sky forever." Their careers are the same number of seasons, with Keyshawn finishing with 814 catches in 162 games, whereas Chrebet finished with 580 in 152. Hardly a star to a flashlight. To this day, Keyshawn's unkind words about Chrebet provide the lone basis for my judgment of him. You can see Keyshawn Johnson on ESPN as a talking head on Sundays, wearing the inexplicably bad suits that they put their talking heads in, but no one will retire his number anywhere because he could never be a part of a team for long enough.

Wayne Chrebet has lost a great deal more. He has lost much of his memory and cognitive function due to the frequency with which he was pounded on the field, and unlike Keyshawn, Wayne Chrebet will be immortal with us, for whatever that is worth to Wayne. Number 80 hasn't been worn by anyone lately, and it should be retired by Wayne Chrebet's only team. Star to a flashlight indeed.

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Bobby Riley was a replacement wide receiver with the #19 for the scab New York Jets of 1987. I wonder if the squad has reunions.


Number 19 and former Jets quarterback Malcolm Wood's nickname is "Dick."

When did the name "Dick" became something a widely understood slang - scurrilous, profane and insulting? It must have been somewhere around the early-70's, after the declarations of the sexual revolution, just after the Nixon Administration, about when I first became a Jets fan. I don't exactly know when in grade school I first learned that among all the terms for the male member the most notable was "dick," but its usage was widening fast. Thus, when Dick Cheney became Vice President, the name and its bearer were already so inextricably linked as to be anticlimactic, redundant. Of course he was a dick. What kind of man shoots his friend in the face? Now I'm worried that Cheney's complete and overall dickness as a Dick has actually softened the impact of this all-purpose slur.

But talk about redundancy and bad luck, how about "Dick Wood?" When he was drafted in 1959 by the Baltimore Colts, the name Dick was perceived as no more poisonous to the common person than a basement lined with asbestos. But by 1979, most of my classmates named Richard were already nicknamed "Rich" or "Richie." Nobody was a Dick anymore. But Malcolm Wood was still Dick. That wasn't going to change just because society did.

Today the use of "dick" has been expanded to encompass the usage as noun, verb, and adjective - all pejorative, all useful, while "Dick Wood" is now the kind of name that intramural college whiffleball teams give themselves. Among Dicks, Dick Wood is still a lesser figure, despite throwing the first touchdown at Shea Stadium and being the most traveled quarterback among different AFL teams, which, when you think about it, may not be all that much of a compliment.

Yet he retains a distinction of having a name that scores high in repressed giggles, along with names that are even funnier, like Dick Trickle of NASCAR or Dick Pole of the Red Sox and Mariners in the 70's. And interestingly enough, Dick Wood coached his way back to the Jets, as running backs coach for a Richard - Ritchie - Kotite's 3-13 squad of 1995. Just a couple of Dicks.

NY Jets #19 - Part 1

Someone very close to me has a quote he uses almost unselfconsciously to describe his reaction to the status of life in general, and his words become more and more important to me as I get older. Is est quis est. It is what it is.

It's another version of Doris Day's que sera, sera, but with a little more acceptance of the present, not just the future, as an uncontrollable element of life. It is what it is. What is it? What it is. Accept it or not. It is only what it is - which is what it already is. This is not to rhetorically say, in the manner of Peggy Lee, est ut totus illic est ("Is That All There Is?") for what is is not actually all there is, but what is is what is.

Back in the early 1970's, it was common to greet someone with, "What it is?" as in "What's happening?" but the question soon became a statement - less a curious interrogative than a declarative of preemptive mutual acceptance: "What it is, my man." Slang changes quickly, though, and "What it is" is now long dated even among my Me Generation colleagues at work.

When I think about American culture in the span of my 41 years, I have to admit how much has changed in just the last decade. This morning, I corresponded with three people via Facebook and e-mail, whereas at college in the late 80's, I had to speak on the phone, by mail, or by face-to-face contact, none of which I'm particularly good at. This was also the case in 1971, when Chris Farasopoulos #19 first joined the New York Jets. In a very short period of time, within the last ten years, the world has gotten better at accommodating hermits like me. I'm not entirely sure that this is a step forward for civilization, but I am of a mind that all forms of progress - with the exception of cul-de-sac track housing and Twitter - are to the benefit of humanity. And it is what it is, anyway.

Two years ago, when I first did research on Chris Farasopoulos, I found a story that says he was initially offered a baseball contract with the Baltimore Orioles, which he apparently turned down because they asked him to shorten his name. He refused. It is what it is, he said. Accept what it is or not. Can you imagine any sports team trying to pull that today? Ask Troy Polamalu, whose hair is allowed to conceal his own name on his jersey and nearly his number. Times have changed for the better in a short span.

Of course, there's always the chance that the Orioles may simply have been trying to be polite in saying that Farasopolous' long "ethnic" name was the problem when it might, for all we know, have been his lack of ability, although that's a strange way of being polite. Luckily, the New York Jets were a team that welcomed eccentrics and individualists, so they were certainly capable of accepting someone on the squad whose only peculiarity was that he was born in Greece. Did Farasopolous feel cheated later that decade when Jon Lowenstein was allowed to keep his name on the back of his Orioles jersey? Does he feel cheated by progress' ironic sense of humor, especially when the Jets are a contender in their sport now (which wasn't the case in the 70's) but the Orioles are not? Nowadays the O's would take a Sri Lankan bowler like Muthumudalige Pushpakumara if they thought he could throw a curveball.

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I don't have children, but if I had produced a son by some accident and were allowed to give him a name, it would almost certainly be Laveranues. It's a first name you can never spell correctly the first time. Laveranues Roche.

Sometimes people leave your life, then they come back. Then they leave again. Then they come back again. This is our team's relationship with Laveranues Coles, now #19. As we know, when he played for the Jets time and again, Coles wore #87. We wore #80 for the Redskins and #11 for the Bengals. David Clowney wears #87 for us now, and numbers 82 and 88 are taken by tight ends this summer. I think Number 80 has been kept special (though not retired) in the wake of Wayne Chrebet, as is #85, (for Wesley Walker). Dustin Keller is #81. Jerricho Cotchery is #89. That still left #84 and #83. Is it an insult to wear a number too close to your old number? I'm not going into why I disapprove of receivers wearing such low numbers. I just do. There's precedent for it, but linemen don't wear any numbers in the 80's anymore, so there's plenty of those ten digits to go around these days on any given squad, even with more tight ends than there were in the old days. A receiver shouldn't wear a quarterback's number. That's not the way God made us.

(NBC lists Coles' 1999 near $400 discount at Dillard's as one of the most bizarre sports scandals of all-time, which is silly. How many of us have received discounts from friends working at a major chain? When I was in grad school I got a $3.23 employee discount on a copy of Richard Bausch's Violence from a guy who worked at Borders back in 1992. Does that make me a criminal? Likewise who can blame Coles for stealing? College students and graduate students do their work for nothing, after all)

Coles' receiving numbers are a little bit better than most receivers. Compare him to - or confuse him with - Santana Moss who was drafted by the Jets out of the University of Miami a year after Coles (and who mocked him with a Dillard's bag, no doubt) and for whom he was once traded back to the Jets later on; we see that Coles' numbers are statistically better. Would it therefore have been an insult to wear #83, the number of a player for whom you were once traded by very same team that signed you on again, and then again?

It's actually nice to have Coles back one more time. He felt loyal to Chad Pennington in 2008 when people like me were willing to let him go in favor of Brett Favre. He never really seemed to buy Favre's act, and now it's fashionable for everyone to turn their nose up at Brett. He also sang with Elmo, which my wife loves. When sports figures really aren't supposed to admit any level of vulnerability, he also had the courage to open up about being a victim of childhood sexual abuse: it is what it is, he seemed to say, in hopes of helping others to come to terms with accepting what it is, too.

His second reappearance with us signals the twilight of his career, which I suppose explains why he wears a number that's, well, just available. He admitted that this is the end for him and that he will probably be gone as soon as Santonio Holmes is ready to play again. When you have to give up your old number to David Clowney, you know you are very near done. Other than giving up his old number, he is willing to accept what it is and that what will be, will be. Is est quis est quod quis ero, ero.

NY Jets #11 (Updated)

The years with which I have least connection as a Jets fan would have to be the years I was at college in New England. I just lost my way a little. One of those college years was also spent in England. The old one. And Tony Eason? Yeah #11 Tony Eason quarterbacked for the Jets as a backup from 1989 to 1990, my last two years at school. Put him up there with Frank Reich, Bubby Brister, Jack Trudeau, Boomer Esiason, Jay Fielder. Quarterback castaways. This is where the road mostly ends, fellas. Cast off your burden here, ye mighties but look upon this sight and despair. He played two seasons with the Jets in the Coslet years. And I cannot recall a single thing about his play with us. Sometimes it just works that way. I was at college, drinking very heavily, and working on deadlines. I had priorities, such as they were.

No. 11 Brian Hansen came to the Jets in 1994 when Louis Aguiar's directional punting didn't work out. He played five seasons with us, though when I look him up on the Jets' all-time roster, I see that his information is exactly the same as Don Silvestri's. So Brian Hansen enabled me to locate some errors on he New York Jets website. How about that. Yeah. (Time elapses) It's kind of hard to say interesting things about a punter. It's not Brian Hansen's fault.

The Jets had their share of guys who backed up Joe Namath in the 1970's, but the last to do it before Richard Todd was given the full-time job was Steve Joachim, #11 in that magic year of 1976. College coach that he was by nature, Lou Holtz must have noticed that Joachim won the Maxwell Award for excellence in college football after playing for Temple University. In 1974. Originally drafted in 1975 by - say it together - the Baltimore Colts, Joachim's statistics indicate "1G," one game, while his career indicates one team: the New York Jets. We do not know if he even so much as threw the ball.

Is this Patrick Ramsey's
only pass for the Jets?

In the continuing story of the weird rivalry between the Redskins and the Jets, #11 Patrick Ramsey traveled the other end of the pipeline to the Meadowlands. It always boggled my mind how intent Steve Spurrier was in keeping Patrick Ramsey at quarterback in DC. According to several records I checked, Patrick Ramsey has also the extraordinary distinction of having thrown one pass for the Jets all through the 2006 regular season. It is possible that depicted to the right is that selfsame pass. He was shipped to Denver where he played behind the guy who backed up Jay Cutler. How do you go through a whole season and get to throw one pass for a team? How do you not lose your mind?

Ed "Butch" Songin was a New York Titans #11 who apparently quarterbacked behind Al Dorow in 1962 after quarterbacking for the Boston Patriots the years before. We have no photographs, no stories, no images, no half-true anecdotes. To have been an unknown player on a team that was practically a rumor on even the AFL scene is a difficult burden to carry. The only thing I do know is that he passed out of this world on May 25, 1976, a relatively young man, no doubt. The cause of death remains unknown. RIP Butch.

Jim Turner has the unique distinction of being one of five New York Jets to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. He is also a placekicker who's nickname is "Tank," a distinction normally reserved for nose tackles. The Football Issue of September 1969 (left) shows Jim putting the boot to it. He is the last of the straight-on kickers, for both the Jets and the NFL as a whole. He scored nine points of the Jets' 16 in Super Bowl III. If you own the NFL Greatest Games replay of the game, there is a great moment caught on the sideline where a clearly agitated Joe Namath is unhappy about not getting the ball closer for Jim Turner to kick a field goal. Placed in the strange position of reassuring his somewhat high maintenance field general, Tank just keeps saying over and over, "It's OK, Joe. It's OK. Don't worry about it. It's OK."

Troy Woodbury

Tory Woodbury? Anybody? Tory Woodbury? A running back and a backup quarterback in 2001? C'mon. Somebody's got to have something somewhere on this guy. This is crazy. I found more stuff on Butch Songin. What is this, exactly?

That was three years ago. If you go to JetsTwit, you'll get the answers that can only come when a writer takes a blog to the next level - analyzing Twitter content on the Jets in the blogosphere. Wish I had thought of that. Take a look at about 2:27 in the video at the bottom of the link, and you'll see Woodbury's first NFL catch, playing as one of several receivers filling in for injured Wayne Chrebet in a loss to Jacksonville in 2002. He promptly takes the ball to the sidelines at the end of the play.