Our 300th Post - Patriots 45 Jets 3

While the Jets were being pummeled by the Patriots in the first half of the Monday Night game, I felt a bit like the drunken washout I resembled when the Jets fell to the AFC Champion-to-be Raiders in the January 2003 playoffs, about five months before I dried out. It was an awful feeling, having nothing else but inebriation to shield me from feelings of cavernous loss. I wouldn’t have cared if the world had caved in. My disappointment was at least tempered by the fact that I eventually had no sense of, well, anything at all. There was no other consolation.

So what was my consolation tonight? Oddly, I found myself listening to the Beatles. From their newly published catalogue on iTunes, I downloaded everything essential gone that's gone missing and stolen over the years, especially Revolver and Hard Day’s Night. The latter became suddenly important to me as the Patriots tagged on a 21-point lead going into halftime. I found Richard Lester’s film A Hard Day’s Night on YouTube and watched it while psychologically checking out of a humiliating blowout. The game played on in the background. We may play in the playoffs and have a revenge, but more than one fellow fan has wondered to me if the Jets will even win another game this year. Ah well. They will finish with a winning record for sure, but I knew the Jets shouldn't have given Danny Woodhead away.

But meanwhile, what came up in the foreground of my view were the Beatles. I first listened to them through my Mom’s stereo as a little kid. She owned A Hard Day’s Night, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Abbey Road, her least favorite, a gift from her drugged-out brother-in-law. Each Sunday, while living in Queens and later in North Merrick, my parents would return from Mass, cook breakfast, eat, open the Sunday Times, and listen to two albums – Eileen Farrell’s Puccini Arias and A Hard Day’s Night. The music emanated companionably, twining together like an odd couple not unlike Mom and Dad, themselves – one part classical, one part modern. They insisted on liking both, refusing to choose either at a time when the classical and the modern were entirely separating.

Both albums were recorded before I was born, each a remnant of the early 60’s, back when my parents first fell in love. Though she was more partial to Sinatra than opera, Mom loved Farrell singing “O Mio Babbino Caro” from Gianni Schicci, which I would later hear in the Merchant Ivory film A Room With a View. Dad preferred opera almost exclusively, just as he considered himself a Rockefeller Republican until he met Mom. But in 1964 he found himself voting for Lyndon Johnson and going with Mom to see A Hard Day’s Night in a hot Manhattan theater so crowded with screaming girls as to prohibit a clear sense of exactly what was going on in the movie. But my parents went back again, and despite the fact that they had both skipped over Elvis in their adolescence, they suddenly discovered there and then for themselves the four British men who were already changing the world.

One night, when I was a little boy, and Channel 5 was showing Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night, my parents pulled the RCA black and white into the kitchen for us to watch in its entirety while we ate at the table. I was about six. I may not have been aware of it, but Mom claims that while the music in the film came on, I bounced up and down as I ate. It's an infectious response to the Beatles that I’ve seen in my nieces and my friends’ kids – they’ll all perk up at the sound of Harrison’s Rickenbacker, Starkey’s drums, Lennon’s ooo I need your love, babe and Paul’s Hofner. It's a simple human language of love.

There was once a time when my brother and I could practically do the film from start to finish. Richard Lester presents a colorless picture of an England that I grew up desperately wanting to see for myself someday. When I went to England, I found that The Beatles weren't of anyone's interest, any more than someone on a Memphis street had something to say about Elvis to a Japanese tourist. The Beatles are more an American obsession, but Lester's England was there in England for me to find in its colorless towns and the natives' cheekiness. The movie is more English than the group themselves. The Beatles were already reaching well beyond the simple English trains they run in and out of in A Hard Day's Night, away from the screaming girls from the provincial towns where they play. What makes the movie special is Lester's dialogue.

There are so many great scenes from A Hard Day's Night. In one sequence the film turns toward Ringo’s private sojourn. Having been talked into it by Paul’s Irish grandfather (“a king mixer,” Paul says) Ringo decides to leave the group and go “parading before it’s too late." He's going to find himself as an artist, taking photos of the bleak scenes he encounters. While he walks along a dingy riverside, he collides with a little boy's rolling car tire. The boy is Charlie, aged “10 and two-thirds,” whose face is lashed with dirt. He doesn’t know who Richard Starkey is. To him, Ringo’s just another guy. Charlie says he doesn’t want the tire anymore.

Why? asks Ringo.

“Ah, you can have it. I’m packing it in. It depresses me. It gets on my wick.”

“That’s lovely talk, that is,” says Ringo. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“I’m a deserter.”

“Are you now?

“Yeah, I’ve flung school out.”

“Just you?”

“No. Ginger, Eddie Fallon, and Ding-Dong.”

“Ah,” Ringo says, taking off his camera strap. “Ding-Dong Bell, eh?”

“Yeah, that's right,” Charlie says, nonplussed.

When Charlie asks Ringo why he isn’t at work, the world’s most famous drummer says he’s a deserter, too. Just another dropout.

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The Jets’ travesty sped its way into the fourth quarter.

I know full well that the Beatles' melodies have kept me aloft through most of my depressing episodes of the past, some real, some imagined. Things like losing at Foxboro 41-7 in 1976, or 55-14 at Foxboro in 1978, or 56-3 in 1979. Or when the first place 10-1 Jets met the Miami Dolphins for a Monday Night Game almost exactly 24 years ago in 1986 and lost 45-3 - and then never won another game during the regular season.

Well, anyway. Whatever the degree to which they are a little too legendary, looming too large in our legend, to turn a phrase from the movie, The Beatles have always existed well beyond the grasp of my own self-inflicted misery and are therefore always a consolation. They sit behind Mom and Dad, and the Jets, right behind Catholicism in the list of the longest looming influences of my childhood. And I’m a little like Charlie tonight. In the film, Ringo eventually abandons his sojourn and gets back with the group in time enough to go onstage for the live show in the film. But what happens to little Charlie? Does he stay a deserter? He throws the tire aside.

It depresses me. It gets on my wick.

****

Where are Ding-Dong Bell and Eddie Fallon. And Ginger?

“Ginger’s mad,” Charlie says. “He says things all the time.”

What things? I wonder.

NY Jets #36 - Part 2

Safety Jim Leonhard took a pay cut to move from Baltimore to the Jets and to play for Rex Ryan at the end of the 2008 season. He said that "We decided this was the best situation for me."

A pay cut? The best situation? The Jets? When I first read this, I simply appreciated anyone saying that we are the best situation. I felt a little like the experienced teacher who looks with winsome despair at the new recruit who is full of naivete and idealism. Sure, you say that now. A long line starts right there, kid. After all, we are Jets fans. We are never the best situation. But Jim Leonhard has played since then like his is the best situation, and in a matter of a season and a half, he has made people around the NFL believe that he is right. As of this writing, the Jets are tied for first place with New England at 9-2 and are playing for that undisputed place in an upcoming Monday Night game in Foxboro.

But Fate works mysteriously, ironically, cruelly. With days to go to the game, Leonhard broke his leg in a "freak thing" during what was, according to Rex Ryan, the best practice of the week. Eric Smith will replace him, and while Smith is tough, Jim Leonhard is a leader. Symbolically, he represents the heretofore pathos-free hubris of Rex Ryan. He is the man you see depicted above, the small, confident, fearless figure who faces the opposition without concern for either his team's history of failure in December or his opposition's superiority. This is the mental strategy of winners.

And now, as we await a recharged version of the clinical Patriots offense against a derailed Jets defense, I feel happy to at least have come this far. Ryan's reaction to Leonhard's injury was to say, "I feel sorry for Jim, but not for us." That's the attitude I'm talking about. But I've been around too long to believe him. With Jim Leonhard or not, I know the rest of this story, or this one, or this one. If the Jets win this week, it will mark a dramatic change in the narrative I have known for so long. If they beat the Patriots, I will teach all Tuesday in my Namath jersey. And who knows? Maybe I should believe in something bigger than a loser's narcissistic sense of perennial despair. I should try an alternative to that. Maybe I'll try the mental of strategy of winners someday. Meanwhile, I suspect I will not need the Namath jersey.

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A while ago, you could, for $5 on Ebay, purchase a signed photograph of University of Hawaii Assistant Coach Rich Miano (above) fighting with some unknown persons on the sideline of a recent game. An article on Miano's career (mostly with the Eagles) makes the photo seem even funnier: "He had to fight for a roster spot; he had to fight for playing time. He had to fight for respect. And after the fight was over... Miano raised his arm in victory." OK. Fair enough. Miano is still at Hawaii, but I don't know how much this photo goes for.

But I remember Rich Miano playing defensive back in #36 for the Jets in the 1980's. You can also spend the same amount of money on a signed 1985 photograph of Miano in a 19-6 losing effort against the soon-to-be Super Bowl Champion Bears. Now this I might just buy because it was taken on the day of my first car accident. I was 16 and Christmas shopping; it was freezing but clear and beautiful, and while trying to pull into a parking lot, another 16 year-old Christmas shopper rear-ended me. My parents had just installed an FM radio in my Dad's Chevy - mostly for my benefit - and I was so scared they would think that they had made a mistake in buying it for me because 1) they would assume that I wasn't paying attention to the road because I was trying to turn the dial to just the right place and 2) they would find out that I had been listening to the Jets-Bears game on AM and wonder what the point was of buying the FM radio (with its promises of rock, friends listening to rock in car, friends hooking me up with a girl with whom I could listen to rock in the car so as to shield my mortifying social skills) if I were still listening to AM. What Rich Miano knew about life I also knew about FM radio. I had fought for that thing. Sometimes it feels like you've got to fight for everything. All was well, though. Because I was 16 I underestimated my parents' capacity for understanding. We never did get that dent repaired, though. Or did we? Oh well. I can't remember everything.

You can't say much about #36 Joe Fishback's five-game career with the New York Jets, but you can say two things about him. First, he ended his career in Atlanta (where he began) playing in the Georgia Dome for the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl Somthingorother against the Bills. This obviously means that he ended his career with a Super Bowl ring; not since I wrote about #24 Johnny Sample have I mentioned a Jet who ended his career with a ring. Secondly, he is the winner of the Booth Lusteg Award Winner for Funniest Sounding Name among the #36s. My apologies to Buddy Crutchfield.

NY Jets #36 - Part 1

As the away game against San Diego began during the Brett Favre season, #36 David Barrett picked off a Philip Rivers pass and brought it back 25 yards for a touchdown - the only touchdown of his career. It was the Jets' first score of the game, and it seemed as though we were beginning the game in exactly the way we needed. However, it was a mirage. The Jets lost the game by more than two touchdowns, and though it was wonderful to see the normally bellicose Rivers seem flustered by Barrett's pickoff, the fact is that the badder guy won in the end. Brett Favre's energetic high fives for the defense as they came off the field were a mirage, too. Brett never bonded with us; he never really cared for anyone other than Jenn Sterger and some assorted Jets employees who were repulsed by his advances. David Barrett was injured for most of the remainder of the 2008 season and was released even before Rex Ryan was brought in to coach. He had a fairly good five seasons with us and that, my friends, is all I'm going to say.

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Wellington Nathaniel Crutchfield, III goes by "Buddy," and he was a Jetskin, having come over from Washington to the Jets from 1998 to 1999. According to the less than meticulous records of professional football, he made one tackle in his one season with the Jets in #36. In an entirely unrelated piece of information, I once saw blues piano player Jimmy Crutchfield, a local St. Louis legend, and his band play a concert for a group of East St. Louis, IL transitional high school students whose school resembled something out of a third world shanty. After playing for an hour, Crutchfield, a thin, angular man whispered, "One more, one more. Then let's get the hell out of here." I recall that it was rather amusing.



It's not often that I include hijacked snapshots of our Jets Among Men in uniforms other than the green and white. But in this case, from Corbis comes this remarkable 1973 picture (above) of #36 Bob Gresham - who played behind several other Jets running backs in 1975 and '76 - facing insurmountable odds. Playing for the Houston Oilers at the time, Gresham is about to be hit on both sides by the old and new Monsters of Midway - Dick Butkus and Wally Chambers, respectively. In other words, he is about to be plowed. He knows it, surely. In a moment, his vision will be blurred not just by the heavy blue-black of home uniforms but by the shattering, almost noiseless explosion that will take place in his head after these two linebackers hit him. Who knows - maybe even Butkus and Chambers will have some fragment of the experience too, so powerful and terminal do the impending hits seem in this frozen moment of portent.

I feel like Bob Gresham. It's not just my usual paranoia. Sometimes it just feels like the walls are closing in and you're about to be hit by two enormous men who are trained to knock people out of the game, and you're just little Bob Gresham. You come to work, you work hard, you gain your little 400-500 yards in a good season, running off of 2nd and 5, usually. But now you are about to meet one of the hits that will shorten your career and maybe even set you back a little. Here it comes.

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"Most people believe 1972 was Steve Harkey 's best year." I love when I go to sites like armchairgm.com and encounter such appraisals. It was his best year, especially because running back Steve Harkey #36 gained 129 yards for the Jets that year, 67 more than he gained the previous one. If you look at how running backs start out, I guess you could say that Harkey was on his way to becoming another Bob Gresham, destined to someday be pummeled by a Hall of Fame linebacker or two. But instead, Harkey's career stops after '72, the rest is silence, and all that there is to find in the Jets' Yearbook is the following achievement: "Paved the way for a pair of George Nock TD runs in Week 3 14-10 win over MIA." Paved the way for George Nock. If that's all that you can leave behind, then so be it. You can meet George in #37.

NY Jets #45 - Part 4

It's hard to walk around with a name that everyone either associates with the most dread of household inspects or with a joint that has gone nearly past its usability among many hands and mouths. But like most of the blemishes of one's life, you get used to it, especially past the age of 12, when most kids are done pestering you about the obvious things that make a person ugly - your face, your walk, your voice, your name. Then you enter the adult world, where it's different. Grown people make quiet note of the blemishes God gave you, without needing to turn it into a soul-shattering verbal refrain that, as a child, you'd have to steel yourself for on the lunch line, day in and damned day out. Adults save such cruelties for their own private amusements, waiting for just the right moment to bat you back into mortal place.

I'd still rather be an adult. If today someone makes a reference to how I must get high a lot, or to Franz Kafka, or to being the only one who will be able to survive a nuclear attack, I can always say, "Oh. Yeah. Right. God. I've never heard that before."

But what about Tony Stargell, who played in #45 for the Jets from 1990-91? When I was a little boy in Pleasantville, NY, and Tony was 13 and growing up playing football in LaGrange, Georgia, Willie Stargell shared SI's Sportsman of the Year with Terry Bradshaw.

Willie Stargell
(1940-2001)

Willie Stargell was "Pops," the most recognizable baseball player of his day outside of Reggie Jackson and a fine example of a human athlete as well. Willie Stargell's power so obviously came from a frame unenhanced by performance enhancement, that in his near middle age he had a beer-gut. He preferred a good time to a statistical high, and he still won the NL MVP in 1979 at the ripe old age of 39.

I was a Mets fan, but I rooted for the Pirates in the 1979 World Series because they were National League, because they were the underdog, and because they were "Family," with Pops at the head of the table. Grown men of Tony Stargell's age still know who Pops was; he was larger-than-life, but he is gone now, long dead and gone by more years than I can believe. It seems like only yesterday that I was imitating Wilver Stargell's batting stance in my cousin's backyard, trying to capture his strange lilting action of the bat as readied for a pitch. Men of a certain age - my age and Tony Stargell's - know who Pops was. He was exactly the model of what sports isn't now. Sports is not really about fun, and to paraphrase an axiom of Wilver himself, the man yells play ball, not work ball. He doesn't yell "moneyball," either.

It seems awfully trite to say something like that nowadays, but the shift in priorities is infectious throughout our culture. The pay scale for baseball players is based on their statistics. The man who was recently elected to become the new governor of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth is imitating the fat man who governs New Jersey in the belief that public school teacher pay should be linked with the statistical data of student testing. Nothing can remove the love of learning any more than moneyball can ruin a love for baseball; people will still be taught by creative-minded teachers and will also still be watching baseball when these narrow-minded governors are dead and forgotten, save for being mere names on occasional bits of state park property. But both teaching and baseball are a whole lot less fun when they're purely the property of statistical content. And since moneyball became the way of America's Game, Willie Stargell's Pirates haven't been to the postseason, either. His statue stands a lot larger outside their park than Willie Stargell himself once stood, but for men of a certain age - mine and Tony's - that's pretty damned tall.

Tony Stargell
(no apparent relation)

Why must I go on like this? The truth is I actually don't have much to say. Tony Stargell started his career with the New York Jets at defensive back after being drafted by them in 1990. The Jets could have taken Ricky Proehl; they could have taken Neil O'Donnell, Bobby Houston or Anthony Pleasant (all of whom would go on to play for us eventually, anyway); more importantly, they could have taken Larry Centers or maybe even Fred Barnett, though lots of Eagles fans might argue otherwise. Tony Stargell was picked out of Tennessee State and played two seasons with us before going west to Indianapolis. Linebackers stay a while, receivers are needed even when they're not wanted, but the secondary seems so expendable. Tony Stargell is another name gone in and out of our franchise's defensive backfield, and his statistics make no more than a ripple than those belonging to Torin Dorn or Le-Lo Lang, both of whom were also drafted by as defensive backs NFL teams in 1990.

Torin Dorn's a funny name when you say it (didn't his parents say it to themselves beforehand?), though obviously Le-Lo takes the cake. Many men must carry such burdens, and they grow up and out of them. But Tony Stargell probably had to carry the burden of being perpetually asked if he was related to Pops, and when you're an athlete being compared to a legend with your name, you inevitably fall short, regardless of whether or not people understand that you're not related. And no, Tony Stargell was apparently not related to Willie. All of us make mistakes, but when Tony Stargell did for the Jets, the Colts, the Bucs, the Chiefs and the Bears, some smartass in the crowd, on the sidelines or even in zebras probably uttered the phrase, "Sonuvabitch should have stuck to baseball." And that's not fair.

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Corky Tharp #45 is far right.

Thomas "Corky" Tharp was drafted by the LA Rams in 1955 after having a stellar career rushing at the University of Alabama. Five years later, he shows up wearing #45 as defensive back, playing most of the 1960 season for the New York Titans before retiring that year. Above, courtesy of Corbis, you see him in action, to the right, trying to tackle Houston Oilers rookie Billy Cannon. Corky's ride in football, which took him from Alabama to Canada with the Argonauts of Toronto and finally the Titans, is about to come to an end. Billy Cannon's ride in pro football will last another decade, during which he will be turned into an unused tight end for the Raiders and the Chiefs. In the image above, Corky seems already to be shying away from Cannon and the life that football has provided. It's fading time. It will come for Billy, too.

And if you can't tell it from that picture, try the two images below, a before and after. The one on the left is Corky Tharp, the young student who gained just over 2,000 career yards for the Crimson Tide, staring off into a seemingly limitless horizon. The second looks more like After - the smirking, knowing expression of an experienced grown man who has been converted several times over to the most dispensable of positions, playing on an AFL team that can barely break even.

Corky (before)

Corky (after)

Finally, we come to Earlie Thomas, #45 for the Jets from 1970 to 1974. Did he also start his career in the Canadian pipeline? It's an interesting question because apparently his NFL career began with the Jets at the age of 25.

On a humid day at Harvard Stadium in 1970, Earlie Thomas, a rookie out of Colorado State, intercepted a pass by Mike Taliaferro and ran it back for a 36-yard touchdown, giving the Jets a 28-7 third quarter lead. As they have been wont to do in my history with them, the Jets nearly gave away what was left of the game, managing to hold onto a 31-21 win. I find it interesting, by the way, that in 1968 the Patriots played at Fenway but then at Boston College's Alumni Stadium in 1969, and then at Harvard a year later. After that, they became the New England Patriots of Foxboro that we all know and love so well.

Master's or PhD?

Earlie Thomas' interception was just a little more than enough to keep Namath's offense ahead (Joe went 9-for-20 that day). It was am early start to his career; some men are aptly named after all.  Earlie never ran one back again in his entire career. He would pick one more off that season and make four more interceptions his remaining career, ending up in Denver in 1975. Some things come early to those who wait, but then are gone for good.
Some information on him from the 1974 Jets yearbook, apparently Earlie Thomas earned his Master's degree in something related to agriculture, for his dissertation (which speaks to a PhD) "ison aweevil parasite" (sic). At least he's doing some good somewhere, one presumes.

NY Jets #45 - Part 3

First, running back Eddie Hunter #45 may not have been a replacement player, even though he only played one season with the Jets, in the strike year of 1987. He scored two touchdowns that year, but I may have been too drunk or boring at college to have even known about it at the time. All that can be gleaned from the record is that he had a two-year NFL career with the Jets and then the Bucs. Both his touchdowns came on passing plays in his rookie year.

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Speaking of the undergraduate, there are players who operate in the collegiate world like gods - men who are legends to a population at the height of their capacity for enthusiasm. Such is the college star. And the person who makes the best cult recruit is also the biggest and loudest fan in the stands - the college student. I remember having an irrational, deep, cosmic attachment to my college's basketball team while I was there, and I don't even like basketball all that much. I remember seeing our star point guard at a college party and being introduced to him by friends as simply "Money." Something tingled at the base of my neck when I clasped his hand. I remember screaming my lungs out when they won the tournament championship about three years after I graduated from college. Was it the truest happiness a person could feel? I nearly had a mental collapse when my alma mater went into triple overtime in the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament 12 years ago. Following college sports prepares you for one thing and one thing only - to be a Moonie.

But what eventually happens to these immortal college stars, these cult idols? Tim Tebow scored his first professional touchdown against the Jets, but will he ever be any more than just another star made humble by the unsentimental world of crass professionalism? If the Christian Coalition has anything to do with it, then he will absolutely run for Governor of Florida someday. But think of John Huarte, Pat Sullivan, Brian Dowling, Ed Marinaro (we'll get to him), John Rogan, Pete Beban, Billy Cannon or Gavin Grey. Sure, Tebow can run for President, but what has happened to the rest?

Iacavazzi in a Princeton
Jets uniform

What ever happened to Cosmo Iacavazzi? He graduated from the last undefeated Princeton team in 1964 and was eventually drafted by the Jets for the 1965 season. In the crucial final game of the season against Yale, tied at halftime (Princeton had never been down all season) Iacavazzi then went on score on runs of 39 and 45 yards in the second half. At the moment when his team needed him most, he came through, as the great ones always do. He must have appeared to the Princeton loyal as the most blessed human on Earth, and Princeton ran away with the Ivy Title. He was a runner-up to John Huarte for the Heisman, well ahead of Joe Namath. The Jets then got all three of those guys that year - Iacavazzi, Huarte, and Namath. Huarte never took a snap. Namath changed the course of American sports, and Cosmo Iacavazzi is said to have suited up for two games, without any note of yardage gained.

He must have been thought of as something special by the good people of Topps because here is a 1965 rookie football card as a Jet. He's clearly still wearing his #32 Princeton jersey with the tell-tale Tiger-striped sleeves which have been rendered by the artist into the Jets' green and white. Unlike Tim Tebow, Cosmo Iacavazzi was given a new number as a pro - in this case #45 - with the Jets, starring as nothing more than a backup. The card reveals him metaphorically and literally. He runs toward us out of that unpleasantly yellow background of 1965 Topps, colored a Jet, yet still frozen in his Princeton life.

As the link above shows, he has lived a life of restless pursuits since graduation, including being the mayor of Hillsborough, NJ. That's better than being an orthodontist/forger like Billy Cannon. But is any kind of life good enough for a man who has been the most recognized person on campus?

Jets

Patriots

Jets

Patriots

Speaking of a restless life, what about Otis Smith's, in #45? He is one of my all-time favorites. Otis Smith began his career as rookie free agent with the Philadelphia Eagles at the ripe old age of 26 in 1991. He wore #30 when he began with the Eagles and #23 for the Lions when he retired. Above is a display courtesy of pro-football reference.com, which takes the time to show the numbers that a player wears and also how his uniform evolves, whether playing for one team or for dozens over time. In between the beginning and the end of his career, Smith wore the #45's you see above. From left to right they represent the Jets, the Patriots, the Jets, and then the Patriots again, all between 1995-2002.

The green 45 with the black outline represents the years of Richie Kotite's reign of error, but then Smith was traded mid-season 1996 to Bill Parcells' Super Bowl-bound Patriots, who are represented by the light blue and red 45. The green-outlined 45 represents the point at which Parcells took Otis Smith with him back to the Jets.

The last 45 on the right is for the dark blue and red Patriots of Bill Belichick, who took himself, Otis Smith, and much of my desire to live with him back to Foxboro. It was during Smith's second Super Bowl in New Orleans with the Patriots that he made the most crucial play of the organization's history. Adam Vinatieri's field goal to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl was set up by Otis Smith's interception of a Kurt Warner pass.

Otis in the right place during the
1999 AFC Divisional Playoffs

Otis Smith blew a lot of coverages for the Jets. Somehow I remember that. But he made big plays - I know that, too. I don't recall any of these any more memorably than I do my own college days, or my childhood, or the endless numbered autumn Sundays I have spent staring at the TV over the years, worrying about both the Jets and the working week to come. Otis Smith is seventh on the all-time list of career interceptions for touchdowns with eight, seven of which were with the Jets. It's the most exciting play in football. And the fact that Otis Smith had the potential to bring into being the most explosive change of a game's course meant that he had a special magic that could transcend a Sunday's bland, mundane depression. That's why he's one of my favorites.  I will hear no debate.

NY Jets #45 - Part 2

I remember 1983 as bleak. I remember getting in trouble. I remember being 14 and unable to focus on homework. I just talked to girls, walking around the hallways, hoping to get some attention. I was also on the cross-country team and on my way to a varsity season as a freshman, but I loathed it. Most people approach their day of competition with a zombified dread, the kind #45 Dwayne Crutchfield described in Sports Illustrated as a college senior running back at Iowa State in 1981. You just feel like one of Sartre's characters in No Exit, thinking that this may be the day that you die, or maybe it's not. I would throw up before meets and spend most of my time on the bus thinking that if I didn't die, it might just be the day I crap myself in fear. Literally.

I hate competition. I still pale in the face of it. In cross-country, I competed against myself. As you leave the aural mayhem of the starting line and endure the near panic of the first mile, you enter into a meditative place of solitude with pain. Your adversaries disappear in and around your peripheral, the gentle quiet of the long course becomes your background and you don't pay attention to anything but your own breathing and your constant dialogue with the desire to give up. I ran fast and well, but I know I didn't run competitively, which didn't bother the coach at the time because I was simply a promising young runner. When I quit right before the next year, he was furious. I don't blame him, but I felt liberated from having to endure pain for no other reason other than endure it. I didn't want to win any more than I was afraid to lose. And I am a Jets fan. I wasn't afraid to lose.

If Dwayne Crutchfield had known about losing any more than winning, perhaps he would have been ready for a career that was typically short for the NFL. Observe how often in the SI article it's mentioned that, as a promising draft choice for the following year he had a low "center of gravity." Today a running back needs to be powerful but short, explosive, compact. He needs to be a Honda Accord that drives through walls. Your adversaries do not disappear. They envelope and collapse around you. Or so it certainly seems. The model for such people is still LaDanian Tomlinson, although he is a senior citizen at the position for the Jets. In 1981, Earl Campbell was still the model, with a low center of gravity and huge thighs, which are also a weirdly mentioned attribute in Dwayne Crutchfield, as if he were a piece of livestock.


(The photo comes by way of "Steve K" on UniWatch - the ridiculously, beautifully obsessive website. Steve "was watching some old NFL footage and spotted Jets FB Dwayne Crutchfield wearing a non-standard NOB font." In other words, his name is sewn on with a different typeset than, say, Marvin Powell or Scott Dierking next to him. If you were a uniform geek, you'd know what that mean, too. When I was a kid, I noticed these things. Now I know I am not alone.)


The game chews you up at the core of the line and spits you out. After a promising rookie season where he ran for 577 yards, Dwayne Crutchfield then gained almost an identical amount in 11 games in the middle of 1983 but was immediately traded to Earl Campbell's Houston Oilers. He would have one more year with the Rams. Earl Campbell followed Bum Phillips to New Orleans, where he played little longer, while Houson went to the air with Warren Moon. Because of his low center of gravity, Earl Campbell is today sometimes wheelchair bound at the age of 55. Perhaps Dwayne Crutchfield was fortunate enough to carry the ball much less than Earl. Don't be afraid to lose sometimes. It hurts much less.

And don't be afraid to be wrong. When I first wrote about #39, which was only six numbers and a year and a half ago, I noted that safety Harry Howard played one year for the Jets in 1976, and even then, apparently only one game. You can still find the write-up on the all-time roster here, though it mistakenly offers #45 Louie Giammona's information instead. Harry Howard remains a mystery. The Jets' site, more focused on the exciting Now, has little time to offer anything of interest about the past; the all-time roster is temporarily inaccessible beyond just giving names and numbers. Maybe because they need to clean up the errors. Maybe because they just don't care about the past anymore. Jets aren't losers (the Past). Jets are winners (the Present). No mistakes.

In Louie Giammona's write-up on Harry Howard's page, Lou Holtz is quoted in 1976 as saying, "when you list height, weight, speed, statistics and the intangibles without a name, there is no difference between Louie and Archie Griffin." Guess which player won the Heisman twice? When you think about it, the quote says more about Lou Holtz's one year of professional football coaching than it does about Giammona's potential. Lou Holtz was wrong, but then all of us have intangibles without a name. These may not make us stars, but they will pay off somehow.

(Giammona is here seen playing against the Patriots in a 1976 loss at Shea, which was the last game Dad and I attended while on his season tickets. Though I think I remember it being was too cold for short sleeves, the database tells me that Giammona gained 26 yards that day, while there are no actual statistics for him in 1977, the only other year he was technically a Jet.)

The note about his induction into the Utah State Hall of Fame mentions that after he joined the Philadelphia Eagles in 1978, Giacomma eventually became the Team Captain for an Eagles squad that won more often than they lost and went to the Super Bowl in January 1981. At 5'9", his good luck may simply been those intangibles: he was plucky (that word again) and tough in the way that Dick Vermeil obviously liked (see Mark Wahlberg in Invincible), and he also came from the same town in California as Vermeil. In this sense, there can still can be distinction born from mere attitude and origin. The Jets all-time roster, its full information indefinitely on hold, was wrong about Harry Hamilton, but maybe Lou Holtz was right about Louie Giacomma without really knowing why.

Take a Picture

It's important for any man to remember that when he sends a picture of his own sexual organ to, well, anyone, he's bound to be become a social pariah, but I think it's incumbent upon me to remind no one in particular that Braylon Edwards' DUI drew a mere quarter punishment. And that is wrong.

Was there ever a time when it was OK for man to send a woman a photo of his member? I'm beyond the age and station where it is even appropriate for me to ask a female friend this question (I'm as old as Brett Favre, of course). But I suspect that the answer would be no. A man receiving a comparable photograph from a woman might well be lead to think he's won the lottery, but even the most eager of men might be compelled to wonder whether or not the female in question (whom he knows about as well as Jenn Sterger personally knew Brett Favre in 2008) has been snorting cocaine. My own wife says that she would go to a friend and ask what was wrong with me if I took pictures of my dong and sent them to her. It sounds unfair, but as I'm writing this, I guess it would be bizarre, wouldn't it? "But honey, I'm love crazy?"

But if there was ever time when it was OK, it was only so because a Polaroid picture taken in 1979 could never have been shared among hundreds of millions of people at once, unless its existence went by way of urban legend. I choose 1979 because that was the last time the Jets played Minnesota at home on Monday Night. (I don't think Tommy Kramer sent any Polaroids of his alter ego that year.) I'd also like to take this moment to add something to the record of #37 Tim Moresco, who recovered a fumble in the Jets' 14-7 victory over the Vikings that year. He also set up a Kevin Long touchdown for the Jets against the Cleveland Browns in 1978 by stripping a fumble on a kickoff. I never mentioned that in Moresco's original entry.

How do I know this? I wish I could claim to remember what happened that late December when I was nine and heartbroken, but I can't. I remember watching that Browns game and hearing Spencer Ross and Sam DeLuca on WCBS radio saying how cold it was in Cleveland. But the proliferation of old games on YouTube has become absolutely indispensable for a football dork like me who enjoys, as my wife puts it, "used sports." I mean, look at Norm Snead. Just look at him. He looks like a man who has been pulled from the Franklin Field crowd to fill in for the Eagles at quarterback. For every unwanted dong on the Internet, there's a 1975 Monday Night Football matchup between the Steelers and the Rams. So there's progress.

Finally, it's October in Philadelphia, and for the fourth year in a row, the Phillies are in the playoffs, and everybody in this bipolar city wants to play the Yankees in the World Series. As much as this has been a special series with the Reds, the Phils must hit more than they have been in order to support their extraordinary pitching staff if they're going to beat the Giants. Secondly....no. Just no. What kind of hubris drives a host of fans who normally support a franchise that once let Norm Snead run around in the cold with just his football uniform think it's OK to invoke the Fates to weave something especially bad for them? Why wish for the Yankees? Everyone I speak to here seems to think they're Leonidas' Spartans. If the Jets managed to make it to the Super Bowl this year and were matched against residents of the Grace Presbyterian Village senior center in Dallas and won handily, I would still jump up and down with the same euphoria I would feel if they defeated the Saints. A championship is a championship.