This House is Our Home (I Guess)

Recently I had a chance to drive by the Meadowlands and see the progress on our new stadium. (image from Baseball Fever, ironically enough) Its initial supports are raised, and with no one living within its reaches, there are no chances of urban crane accidents here. Incidentally, it has recently been christened "MetLife Stadium," one of many corporate logos the stadium will have over its first decade of use. Such a plan finally casts aside the illusion of permanence involved in the corporate naming and renaming of stadiums throughout the country. Cut to the chase, in other words: John Mara and Woody Johnson are paid to use these names and by these many names will parts of this house be known. As more than one science fiction writer has predicted, we are not too far off from the time when you can choose to corporately brand yourself, maybe even just so someone finally read your blog.

First, some background. You can gripe about sharing a stadium with the Giants, but as you'll see from this link, there is actually considerable precedent for strange bedfellows and stadium sharing in New York. If you already know the story, you can skip it, of course.

Isn't it a shame, though, that we didn't get our own stadium? Frankly, no. I don't know what we would have done with a midtown stadium, with its million dollar views and its high priced parking and victuals. As evidenced by the knuckle dragging cretinism of the slobs at Gate D, Jets fans don't really belong at an address anywhere near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Speaking as one myself, albeit from a considerable distance, the fans of the Gotham Football Club are falling further and further from the graces of basic civilization. (image taken from the Daily News) This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has also noted the increasing appeal of ultimate fighting. I also know football's not exactly for brain scientists, but the now upscale people living on the Lower West Side are grateful that no one will be asking them to remove their shirts to show us (under pain of being hit by beer bottles) their rack.

And isn't the West Side debacle just grist for the mill? Jets fans have always been a regretful lot by nature. I mean, what would we do without regret? We regret that we traded Bob Talamini to Boston in 1970. We regret letting John Riggins go in 1975. We regret hiring Lou Holtz. We regret not getting Walt Michaels psychiatric help when he needed it. We regret three-fourths of the Sack Exchange crossing the picket lines in 1987. We regret drafting Kenny O'Brien and not Dan Marino. We regret drafting Roger Vick, Johnny Mitchell, and Blair Thomas. We regret drafting Kyle Brady and not Warren Sapp. In fact, Jets fans show up at Radio City for the draft exclusively for the purpose of expressing their disappointment and regret in advance. We regret Dade County pulling up the tarp for a rain storm before the Mud Bowl.

We regret Pat Leahy missing a field goal in 1981. We regret Bill Belichick rejecting us in favor of New England, further compelling us to regret his very origin in this world. We regret Mo Lewis' hit on Drew Bledsoe. We regret Parcells' decision to have the Meadowlands changed back to artificial turf in 1999. We regret Joe Namath ever agreeing to speak with Suze Kolbert. We regret letting James Farrior go to Pittsburgh and Kevin Mawae to Tennessee. We regret drafting Kellen Clemens. We regret leaving Shea in the first place. The West Side Stadium itself is merely the Jets fan's imaginary Fortress of Regretful Solitude. We regret everything. When you don't have much to celebrate, you inundate yourself with the stories of Regret, the Janitor of Fate. Two missed field goals in the 2004 playoffs by Doug Brien still make me nauseous and dizzy, but at least that feeling lets me know I'm still alive. I'm a Jets fan.

So I can live with the sharing. But here's where I object. As I understand it, according to what's planned for the stadium, the technology is available and will be used to change the arena's colors and appearance from green to blue from game to game, its decorative holographic touches from Jets to Giants, depending on who is playing that day. (photo taken from Baseball Fever again) At the flick of a switch, you can have a Jets stadium or a Giants stadium. There is cynical truth implied in the stadium's scheduled name changes, and the changes of shades from green to blue belies this. These teams do not belong to the fans, but to Mara and Johnson, and so too does the stadium. The fans swarming into its surrounds are like their mice in the maze, being lead to through the various turns and gates, looking for familiar signs and, ultimately, to the metaphorical cheese, i.e., beer. Recall again what Horace Stoneham of the baseball Giants and Walter O'Malley of the Brooklyn Dodgers taught us 51 years ago. Teams don't belong to their fans. (Except in Green Bay.) I just hope none of the fans going in and out of its doors won't get fooled by the (G)iant-sized images of George Sauer accompanying them to the new Gate D. There's one of Spider Lockhart just behind it at the touch of a button. But imagine if someone pushes the wrong button....

Worthy of the Hall (or Maybe Worthy-ish)

So for once, I will not talk numbers. Today, I wonder aloud (to obviously no one in particular other than myself) as to who among the Jets family deserves to go to the Hall of Fame. Here I mention six candidates total, knowing that one should be considered a lock, another being a good choice that might take time, another who will require a generous but unlikely senior vote, two more that are admittedly debatable choices, and one more who is simply in poor taste. (Note: all images from Ebay)

Exhibit A: Curtis Martin. I have heard some people suggest that Martin's limited playoff experience makes his case a harder one to argue. I have heard people say that the relative brevity of his career disables him from a shoe-in induction. I have heard people from the New England area malign his candidacy because he gave up three big ones with the Pats in favor of a near decade of the Jets' own schizophrenia. Simply put, no matter how history plays out, each of these arguments is essentially wrong-headed and misjudged. As a player, a teammate, a star on teams that have middled their way through time, Curtis Martin is the absolute, consummate sportsman. Yuz all haytuz. Retire his number, forge the bronze.

Exhibit B: Joe Klecko. The Jets are aggressively pursuing his candidacy. His number retired, Klecko was the player chosen to lead the recent Jets rookies on a tour through Canton (this is a yearly NFL trip for all its rookies). Click on "Jets" and check out how goofy he looks in the group picture. He resembles a man who has not been seen by his son in anything other than a business suit for some time, and now the boy realizes his Dad hasn't any sense for comfortable weekend clothes. God help me, the son thinks. Is this my destiny, too? Klecko's also had experience doing the public speaking route, whether he is talking about Catholic values or talking to the Teamsters; often such audiences overlap. He has had his share of personal suffering and has managed to turn his life around by becoming a more virtuous citizen. Though he was less talented than Gastineau in terms of sheer speed and stealth, Klecko was the strongest player of his time, and he went to the Pro Bowl several times on the basis of playing multiple positions at the front line - something which very few players at the defensive front can claim. Put him in, baby. And buy him some comfortable-looking pants.

As every Jets fan who cares about this issue will tell you, a recent discussion between Dr. Z of Sports Illustrated (a voting Hall of Fame member) and Ron Wolf (once a member of Jets management many a moon ago) raised the issue of who deserves a shot at the Hall. They both agreed that two Jets deserved the honor. Both said Klecko deserved a chance, but they also argued for Exhibit C: Winston Hill. At this link, you'll see that Hill's analysis of his own name is humorous. I saw him play in his very last season for the Jets in 1975, but his career spanned back to 1963. Of Winston Hill, the late Matt Snell once said, "So graceful, so light on his feet." And from a bruiser that's a rave. Was Snell being facetious? Was he ever? Such an unlikely characteristic (Hill's lightness, that is; not Snell's humor) for one so large as Hill was not so easy considering that Winston topped the weight class of his time at 270 plus pounds. A three-time AFL All-Star. Three-time Pro Bowler in the rotten 70's. Winston Hill deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Here's the thing though. Historically, the Hall has given preference to players at the scoring or stopping points of the ball, not at the offensive line. The HOF has done its share to try and amend this, but offensive linemen learn as early as high school that they will not get the cheerleader (not that I knew anything about that personally, either; I ran cross country and did theater; these had their own emasculations). This prejudice against tackles and guards was especially true when Winston Hill first became eligible for induction, and, to be honest, his name wasn't even brought up at the time that I can tell. The other indignity about the voting is that once your name has come and gone for a few years, you become forgotten in favor of the newly eligible. People are already talking about the class of 2012 - Favre, Strahan, Sapp, et al. Jonathan Ogden will richly deserve the honor at that time, but it won't be like any of us will expect another offensive lineman to be inducted along with him. Usually one a year is seen as enough. Gary Zimmerman is this year's. By then, Winston will still be waiting in his own late 70's, the 1970's themselves dwindling receding further and further from his memory.

By then he'll share this trait of short-term memory loss with the NFL itself, who treat their elder players - even those like Mike Webster, who made it to the Hall - like discarded family in the old country, left behind for the land where the streets are paved with gold.

How about some more sentimental long shots? The Conigliaro AFL site leaves Winston Hill out of its AFL All-Time First Team but does put Gerry Philbin on its First Team's defensive line. I would vote for Gerry Philbin because he's a Jet. Whether he deserves it or not is like asking me who deserved to win the 1999 AFC Championship. Philbin had a strong ten year career in the NFL and endured playing one year (or half of one) in Downing Stadium for the WFL New York Stars. Must have made him sentimental for the more innocent days of training along the Hudson River with the fledgling Jets.

I'm happy to see online discussion point out Marvin Powell as an even more likely long shot to go to Canton. Powell was probably the best offensive lineman on the team in those unsteady years of the 70's and early 80's. As a kid, all I remember hearing about him was that he was going to be a lawyer someday. He studied law at USC. There were always pictures in the yearbook of him fitted into badly tailored suits - Marvin Powell, future attorney at law. I have no idea how that turned out. My own law career did not pan out. However, I also did not go to the Pro Bowl fives times - Marvin Powell did. But if Winston Hill has little chance at Canton, does Marvin Powell?

* * *

I find that most online discussions regarding any Hall selection are characterized by two things: 1) needless acrimony 2) that someone hauls out that old bitch of an argument that Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame when "he clearly doesn't deserve it." I see the point, though I cannot agree. Namath changed the game and the course of American sports, and for that he is entitled. Then couldn't the same argument be made for the short, checkered career of...

...Mark Gastineau?

Ha. I know what you're thinking, right? Just put away your extraordinarily large and rotting grapefruit. I'm just arguing that Gastineau's extraordinary athleticism and, oh I don't know, joie de vivre, changed the way the game was played. Lawrence Taylor was infinitely more important, I grant you, yes, but...

Oh, enough. Who am I kidding? Although the Sack Dance is slightly more offensive than the histrionics of Terrell Owens and Ocho Cinco, today Gastineau's nonsense would probably be deemed as punishable Taunting, that cardinal sin of the No Fun League. Actually, that's a bit like the chicken and the egg since it could be said that the Sack Dance was the ur Taunt and that his excess made them take all the the fun out of the game. Mark Gastineau was the class clown/village idiot who ruined it for everybody. "Oh yeah? You kids don't like it? Don't blame me for canceling recess. Blame it on your little smart ass friend Gastineau over there. Now how funny is he?" Great. Nice going, Mark.

But these are the least of all his sins. I still haven't forgiven Mark Gastineau his late hit on Bernie Kosar in the Nightmare of January 1987. I should, God knows, but I've never been a very strong man. I'm not about to start now.

More Thoughts On Numbers

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains...

-Tennyson

One of the things that I've come to appreciate in my continuing efforts to name all persons who have worn the New York Jets uniform, number by number, is just how seemingly meaningless our endeavors are on the popular scale. When we are given our sweet release from this life, we will probably not be known for the good work we did, and for the most part, even if we're lucky, the content of our lives will be whittled down to whatever bare bones, statistical evidence of our existence that the world has on hand.

Take Leander Knight, #20. Here is what the records show: "4YR 1INT." He played for three different teams in four seasons, one of which was the Jets in 1989, and amid all of it he apparently recorded nothing more than one interception. The problem here is not that he was unusual in this sense but that he is commonplace. The game is populated with the best efforts (so one assumes; one is a fan, not an expert) that will never get recognized or appreciated. Just like you and me. You don't have to be a Jets fan to understand that this is true; you need only realize the sheer numbers of people who have played in your team's colors. It's only a matter of time before you start thinking about the infinite, nameless persons through centuries who have walked the deserts of the world, herded sheep on its moors, tilled its soil and heard the wordless beauty of a distant song. It is enough to crush a person existentially sometimes.

So what does a player have to hang onto? As with all forms of human history, only those players who truly stand out (not always for good reasons) have a chance at immortality. Having your number retired is one way for this to happen, but it's no guarantee. Three players have had their numbers retired by the New York Jets - Joe Namath, Don Maynard and Joe Klecko, two of whom are in the Hall. This is a little unusual around the league but not by much. You retire numbers, I think, with an eye toward honoring the players and in hopes of making them appealing to Canton. I don't think it works; Bob Dee's retired #89 for the Boston Patriots doesn't make him any more likely a candidate than Pete Lammons of the Jets whose good but not great career in #87 remains unretired (it's Laverneus Coles' uniform anyway).

The Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs each have a promiscuous seven player numbers retired, whereas the Dolphins retired a more demure three. Most tellingly, the Cowboys and Raiders have retired none, which means they are above such exercises out of sheer uniform preservation. There are only 99 numbers from which to choose, you know. More reasons to hate them, I suppose. Pittsburgh was reckless enough to retire Ernie Stautner's #70.

There's something in this for the New York Jets fan to take home with him. Teams like the Raiders (who may never climb out their current funk so long as Al Davis is alive) and the Cowboys have a history of winning so vast that their fans may feel dwarfed by its timeless legacy. When a Jet's number is retired, it goes into a factory sealed case and is symbolically placed (it looks cartoonish, actually) against the wall along the sideline. It makes the fan feel more like he is a part of the history of his team. The player stands in civilian clothes at a halftime ceremony, microphone in hand, acknowledging the fans' tributes. Now that he is liberated from wearing the very same burdensome number, he has become one of them. As Tennyson's old, retired Ulysses says of immortality, "I am become a name." At least now he belongs to himself; his number belongs to us.

Perhaps Raiders fans wear their own mythological, suggestive outfits to the games at the Coliseum because their team does not belong to them so much as much it inspires them abstractly and creatively. That's not so bad, I guess. It's still better than being Cowboys fan. Those living in the nearby vicinity of Irvine, Texas probably think they will be Raptured anyway, so Earthly immortality means very little to them. Persons bathed in the justifying blood of their Lord are not liable to see one player as distinct from another; all those who play in Cowboy whites are deemed to be Christian soldiers.

My point is that I think that to be a true fan is to follow your team to the bitter end. This is what my Dad told me, and though he is not the Jets fan he once was, I still believe he is correct. These numbers are important to us because they are the history of our team, and that's why I will keep track of them some more. In fact, I'll probably get cracking on #25 a lot sooner than I thought, too. It's a lot of fun; it wastes an amazing amount of time while I should be doing more important, less interesting things.

No-Name Entry

Two great players have now retired from the game this first half of the year, and we are all the worse for wear as a result. No, not Derrick Blaylock. I don't think he's officially retired. I mean Brett Favre and Michael Strahan, the latter I will speak of as a ploy to begin talking about something having to do with the Jets. That's the way it works here. I will do the following: 1) speak very briefly in praise of the retiree in question 2) discuss the Jet whom I cannot think of independent of Michael Strahan 3) (I think you know where I'm going here) speak in promised praise of a front four defensive line and 4) air out favorite football nicknames. Begin.

Either because of his weird near-whine of a voice, the spacious gap between his teeth or its subsequently forming lisp, Michael Strahan is a somewhat humanizing figure in a predatory game. I had a lisp as boy that I kind of taught myself to get rid of by adolescence, but I might also have realized that how you carry it makes a difference, and Strahan's was, in a manner of speaking, attached to a sack machine. Even so, he remains a gentle Giant. The image I have of Strahan remains the television-friendly, "gap-toothed grid standout" who brays, "More meat!" at Subway's "Jared" ("Jarrett?"), a kind of descendant of another telegenic Giant, Rosey Grier.

How appropriate that these two exceptional figures of the game - one offense, one defense - finish the same year. Brett Favre was the willing victim of Strahan's twenty-second and one-half sack, the sack that surpassed Mark Gastineau's 1984 record of 22 sacks in a season, set in Gastineau's prime. I remember seeing Mark Gastineau on the sidelines of the game that day, and it was nice of the Giants to allow him to be there to acknowledge Strahan's moment, especially since he had become anathema to so many people by then - his family, the Players Association, Brigitte Nielsen, Jackie Slater.

Mark Gastineau did not play long enough to figure solidly inside the parameters of the world occupied by Strahan and Favre, and he certainly was never regarded enough of a good citizen within to compare with those two, either. Still, like Gastineau, Strahan was a prima donna at times, although less of a ghoul in doing so, and, like Gastineau, he has had his lion's share of troubles in divorce court. High profile athletes often do. I'm not so sure, however, that that Strahan's progeny will be tripping merrily along the idiot box without a shred of talent and without anything more than an aspiration toward a modeling career. Let's face it; Mark Gastineau has had a strange life. And as much as Strahan will be justly remembered for his great defensive play, he is the half that seemed to have just survived the grinding machine of NFL fame. Gastineau was the half not so lucky.

Or was he? Play along here. Take away the legal troubles, Brigitte Nielsen, the domestic violence, the falls his opponents were allegedly forced to take in his mercifully short boxing career, the drugs, the crossing of the NFL players' picket line in 1987, and you have a young a pioneer of the early-stage mullet who was drafted in 1979 as one of two shattering bookends on the Jets defensive line. The other was Marty Lyons. Together with Joe Klecko and Abdul Salaam (and later Kenny Neil), they became the foursome with (I argue) the best nickname in NFL history, the New York Sack Exchange.

For those who do not know of whom I speak, let me assure you that the New York Sack Exchange, the Jets defensive front four from (at their best) 1981-84 were never the debonair or ebullient kind of athlete that Joe Namath represented. In fact, they were the post-Namath kind of athlete. They were the kind of characters you find populating the background of a bar fight in a Burt Reynolds film from the Carter years. Actually Klecko was in a Cannonball Run movie. Once the door had been opened to any particular kind of personality in a uniform that claimed a commercial right to existence, God only knows what kind of company would be let through the door, and in this case it was a bunch of unlicensed truck drivers. Actually, Klecko was a licensed Teamster. Man, he did everything.

But a Sack Exchange? An exchange of sacks? Among men? Wha? How brilliant! When they visited the actual Stock Exchange way downtown in the early 1980's, trading was temporarily suspended. Imagine the consternation in Paris and Brussels while Messrs. Gastineau, Klecko, Salaam and Lyons stood atop the podium, hearing cries of "Let's Go Jets!" Weird but true. Qu'est qu'il y a la probleme? "Uh, the Jets are on the trading floor." Gicleurs ? Avions ? Vous ne laisseriez pas la terre de Concorde à New York, mais avez-vous laissé des gicleurs dans la bourse des valeurs ? "Uh, yeah."

They retain a folk status among fans around the hibachi in the Meadowlands lot (and probably Gate D) as a group of individual renegades, like a Magnificent Seven minus three, each with his unique persona. Lyons the cleanest of the cuts as the cuts went, Salaam even more reserved (for a period of time the Jets and the football public did not know where he was living in retirement), Klecko the workingman's bouncer, and Gastineau the troubled star of sorts, preening, gesticulating, and, above all dancing. To see a Gastineau Sack Dance was to watch one man's interpretation of the flurry of activity one sees in two house cats fighting. He seemed a blur of arms and a gyrating head, a man set on fire desperately dancing for his life. It was an offensive defense, showy, full of brass, more trouble than it could possibly be worth after a while, embodying the spirit of Wahoo McDaniel and all the aspects of show biz that the Jets were originally looking for way back in in the 1960's in order to fill the seats at Shea. But while the Jets were fashioning a public image as the team with an erratic Sack Exchange, the Giants in the 80's were fashioning a championship defense that even made the one Strahan took to Arizona for the Super Bowl last January seem paltry. I still like being a Jets fan better, although God only knows why it had to be that way.

Which brings me to my last point, about nicknames. While looking around, I saw to my disappointment football has yielded very few good nicknames. Here's a pretty weak example of what I'm talking about, but the point can be made elsewhere, too. The Sack Exchange is a great nickname for the way it honors the important economic landmark of New York, but it also clarifies the foursome in terms of their status in history. They single-handedly made the sack an event worth keeping track of such that Strahan had Gastineau's original number of sacks to break for the record. Other such nicknames through time seem to fit the stereotype of the No Fun League. The "Crunch Bunch?" According to the link, "In the early '80s, Mario Sestito of Troy, New York is credited with coining the name after A NY Giants newsletter at the time called 'Inside Football' held a contest to name this offensive line." At least Jets fans needed no contest off the field for a nickname. I may sound like a bitter City fan to a better United in Manchester, but I'll take what I can get.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 23 - Which Kevin Williams Was That Again?

For the secondary of any franchise there is usually little to no public recognition. The receivers that the secondary covers get so much more profile. Currently Pacman Jones is maintaining an attention and focus normally elusive to DB's and safeties because he has an impressive criminal record. Otherwise, these folks travel a great deal, toil in anonymity, and show up on replays and game shots as the guys that got beat on the big pass play. One case is like many: making his way on the trail of the Mississippi from Minnesota down to New Orleans, Mike Mayes made a year's stop due east in the New York Jets uniform of #23. It was here, with us, in a 1990 game against the then-pathetic New England Patriots that he forced a fumble and caught an interception. There you are man, the gods said. Today your day has come. It was the only interception of his three-year NFL career.

Even in the the 1968 championship season, Bill Rademacher #23 remains one of those tertiary names of the season's significance, but he's one of those rare and versatile fellows who, after being a casualty of Weeb's post-Super Bowl purge, then became a running back for the Boston Patriots, scoring four touchdowns in 1969. Take a look at the rosters of the 1969 and '70 Patriots and you will find several key Jets, disgruntled by Weeb's pecuniary proclivities.

Shafer Suggs played five seasons in New York, with a mysterious journey to Cincinnati and back. But really, all I need to say is found in a back entry, "Dreams and Numbers."

No, this isn't Marcus Turner, the famous New Zealand folksinger. (I think.) Defensive backs and safeties have a shelf life that averages out to about five years. But what if you never get to play for a good team in all that time? Fresh from UCLA, Turner played from 1989 to '91 for the Phoenix Cardinals (which is almost as funny a name as "Utah Jazz") and then for the Jets, from 1992 to the hard and cruel season of 1995. The 1993 Jets played poorly to an 8-8 record, but that was the best record of any squad for which Turner played. With that kind of luck, even the money you make must smack of misfortune.

Though he started in #31, Hank Poteat was cut by the Jets in summer 2008 and then was re-signed during the ensuing season wearing #23. What else do you need to know? That he is the third male of his family to be named "Henry Major Poteat?" That his nickname was "Sweet Feet?" That he earned a Super Bowl ring with Those of Whom We Do Not Speak? I include here a 2007 NYT article on him because it's one of their characteristic special interest articles that isolates a hard-working player, usually on defense, who learned from his daddy and takes humiliation like a man. Specifically, in 2007 Hank got the first interception of a long career in transit from one club to another. Now that Hank is out and back again this season, we might as well point out that he also dislodged a fumble in the game against Cincinnati in week 6. I am officially rooting for Sweet Feet this year. Hells yes.

Let's not neglect Kevin Williams, #23 from 1998 to 2000, who suffered a serious throat infection that endangered his career, if not his life. He bounced back to play a few games each season for Miami and Houston until 2002. He is not - repeat not to be confused with the Kevin Williams, webmaster for the site that discusses near-death experience entitled "There Is Nothing Better Than Being Dead." I hate when my suspicions are so blithely confirmed. This Kevin Williams quotes a Dr. Diane Morrissey, who says, "If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing." Well, Jets fans can certainly testify to that.

Though Donnie Walker played for the Jets in #23 for an indeterminate number of games, the Jets database puts his only notable statistics with his playing days on the Buffalo Bills in 1973. Not much I'm going to say about that. Then, #23 Eric Zomalt played a single season in 1996, the Jets' worst. Emotionally, it must have been his least satisfying. How could it be otherwise? "Sure, we were 1-15. Ah, but those were good times. Good times." God almighty.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 23 - The Reminder

The Jetskins Saga continues with the entry of two-year player, #23 Derrick Blaylock. He was released to Washington at the beginning of last season, and despite finally reaching an agreement with them, he was eventually released without playing a game. He is currently a free agent. What does a football player who gained a couple of hundred yards a season do in the meantime, waiting for the call that might never come? It is a reminder to all of us, perhaps.

While on such subjects, here's a remarkable collection of details about running back, #23 Dennis Bligen who played for the Jets from 1984 to 1987, mostly as a special teams player. He is the first NFL player from St. John's (the basketball friendly Red Storm when they were "Redmen" St. John's, not the famous program in Minnesota), was the fourth best rusher on the Jets in 1985, and never played football in high school. I'll repeat that: Never played football in high school but played football for a school that I never even knew had a football program. According to Gerald Eskanazi, the Jets sent Bligen off to Tampa Bay before the 15th game of the 1986 season, just as he was coming off injured reserve, and he might have been there for a crucial short down conversion (one of his specialties) late in the fourth quarter of the infamous Cleveland divisional playoff of January 1987 had he not been sent South. Instead, the Jets called an ill-fated Ken O'Brien QB sneak, gave the ball, and two overtimes later the game, back to Cleveland. He returned in 1987 for one season, too little too late. Mystifying, really. Here Jets fans can appreciate what real scholars of History are always bound to learn - that that great collapses always include the absence of such little nuts and bolts.

Number 23 Jerry Davis played six games in 1975. In the same jersey, Mike Harmon played nine games in 1983. Nothing else can be found of their presence in the NFL. It can sometimes be a short span.

In the same vein as a previous recipient of the Booth Lustig Special Award for Dicks, let us not neglect Dick Felt, the first #23 in our organization's history. After a standout career with Brigham Young, he came east to play in Gotham for the Titans and then for the Boston Patriots from 1962 to 1966. Young men just aren't named Dick anymore, are they? What a shame. Is it Nixon's fault, or does one put the blame on the merciless, unforgiving course of slang? Perhaps that thousand yard stare that accompanies this photograph is the only natural expression remaining for a man who has been reminded all his life that his name is the terse, passive construction that expresses an action performed on a noun. Ah well.

Jamie Henderson played in #23 for the Jets from 2001 to 2004. Still in the thick of a somewhat promising first couple of years, he suffered a motorcycle accident that, it would seem, ended his career. It is telling of the time that most accounts of this accident took pains to point out that Mr. Henderson was not speeding, was wearing a helmet and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time. Neither was he racing. On the Wacky, Jamie Henderson is now mentioned as a defensive backs coach for Georgia State, though one suspects what he himself suggests in his own peculiarly poignant website - that someday he would like to coach at his alma mater, Georgia. Memo to self: I never want to ride a motorcycle.

In the average span of an average career in pro football, Mark Johnston's in the AFL is pretty average. He managed four interceptions in each of his first three years with the Houston Oilers, then one with Oakland and then one with the Jets in #23. As the Jets database so bluntly puts it, "Played eight games with the club during the '64 season and tallied one interception." Though factual, it sounds dismissive. It's a reminder that despite our best intentions and efforts, the truth of our lives can often be as bland as it sounds. A Jets fan understands such verities.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 21

Twenty-one. A number with so many interesting connotations outside the football world, yet so few within it. There is LaDanian Tomlinson #21, whose name is so remarkably funny that he can only be an exception to every rule, anyway. I like funny names. (Which is why it's, well, reasonably amusing that when I wrote that above, Tomlinson was not a Jet. "Treg Songy" still has to be considered the funniest among #21's, however LT's funny name quotient goes through the roof if he's a bust, like "Brett Favre." I'm liking those odds).

Like Aaron Beasley. Any name with "Beasley" in it is funny. He had six interceptions in one season with the Jacksonville Jaguars and five in two seasons with the Jets, 2002 and 2003 and four in his final season as a pro in Atlanta. He wore #21. He is originally from Pottstown, PA, which is not far from where I live. According to Wackypedia, Beasley is currently the founder of Fever Sport Drinks, based in Maryland. Oh, the things that athletes do after they are done with the greatest of games.

If you want to know what Napoleon Kauffman is doing lately, you might find him at the annual Sheldon Canley Football Camp held in July at Huyck Stadium in Lompoc, CA. This is another thing ex-football players do - they train the next generation for a nominal fee. It's not exactly Jedi training, but it pays the bills. Once upon a time, Sheldon Canley wore #21 for the New York Jets in 1992 after serving what seems to have been a nearly undistinguished two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. His Jets stats? Four attempts, nine yards. The extraordinary thing is he tied a record for touchdowns in a single bowl game for San Jose State in 1991. It reads like an Arthur Miller play.

What will become of Andre Dyson? The Jets released him in February. I had just recently become used to him at cornerback after many years of seeing #21 Victor Green in that position. These were years where the Jets were bad, worse and better, then a little worse than better. In 2000, Green had six interceptions. He, Otis Smith and Aaron Glenn were fixtures of that strange time of promise, and the more I think about the heartburn of that time, the more I realize that I spent lots of Sunday afternoons terrified of the long pass they would give up. That may not be a fair memory of him, and Victor Green was, in particular, the most effective of them all. But I'm confused. Does this mean Justin Miller now gets Andre Dyson's number?

In the bleak 1976 season, #21 Clark Gaines was a bright spot as a rookie out of Wake Forest. He gained 724 yards that season, and not all against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. To me, he was probably the best running back in the NFL. He wasn't even in the top ten for the AFC, of course, but to a little seven year-old depressed by the departure of John Riggins the year before, Clark Gaines was the near best thing that could happen to me. That's sad. I mean, I knew that Joe Namath was not what he once was in the same way that a teenager looks at his parents for the first time with a clear sense of their mortality and fallibility. I needed a replacement for my heroes, and running back Clark Gaines did the trick for a little while. His best season was 1979, when he was 95 yards shy of the 1,000 yard mark.

Sid Lewis? you ask. Yes, #21 Sid Lewis. Who else? Not the Sid Lewis who came from Penn State and played defensive back during the strike-ridden 1987 season, with absolutely no record of his performance? Not him? The very same, my friend. The very same.

Number 21, Don Boyd Odegard. Say it loud and proud. Say it fast and you utilize most of the short vowel sounds in the English language. He's also known as Don Odegard, which takes him out of the running for the Booth Lustig award because it's not as funny without "Boyd." This fellow is one of those rare characters, a kicker and a cornerback; he played special teams for the Jets between 1990 and '91. According to my crack research, he is today he is the President and Director of Operations for the Watts Brothers Farming and Frozen Foods Company. What a world.

Submitted for your approval: Kirk Springs #21. I remember Kirk Springs returning kicks and making two interceptions in 1981, his year-high in a career that spanned five years. Or six. According to jt-sw.com, Springs played from 1981-85 with the Jets and only the Jets. The NFL record books agree. The Times mentions that Springs was traded to the Indianapolis Colts for an "undisclosed draft pick" in April 1987. Which is correct? Did he ever make it to Indy? Was the draft pick ever disclosed? Did the Jets fork over a draft pick after forgetting that Springs had retired the season before? Probably.

When I look up the name of #21 Treg Songy on Google, it asks, "Did you mean Treg Songz?" Hmmmmmmm? No, I did not. I meant Treg Songy, and when I look up Treg Songy on www.pro-football-reference.com, I discover he played in two games in 1987. That can mean only one thing: REPLACEMENT PLAYER!!!! Treg's in charge of refreshments for the reunion this year.

And finally, Steve Tannen, #21. Look at that 1973 Topps card. Is this guy also a Saturday afternoon Channel Five Hong Kong kun fu villain's henchman or what? Look out, baby. Pay attention. Tannen played cornerback for the Jets from 1970-74, and he grabbed seven interceptions in 13 games during the 1972 season. That should have been a Pro Bowl appearance, my friend, and that would have gotten him a gig in kung fu cinema. Miami's Jake Scott had five interceptions at strong safety that year, and he went to the Pro Bowl. Typical bias in favor of the Filets. Nice job, anyway, Steve.