New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - Final Acts

Originally founded by Illinois abolitionists, Knox College has sent three players to the NFL in the league's history. Bob Prout, pride of Knox, was its first player to go to the NFL in 40 years. On October 5, 1975, visiting Emperor Hirohito of Japan and John Roche, my father, looked on from separate locations at Shea Stadium while the Jets played against New England in their earliest home game in seven seasons. Jets safety Bob Prout caught an interception and returned it for 10 yards. The game would be one of the three victories the Jets would manage that season, beating the Patriots in an unusual drubbing, 36-7. Do you think Hirohito returned home to the Imperial Palace and reported to his disinterested servants that he had seen the Jets, the greatest of American football teams, whose greatest defensive player was named Prout? Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan until his death in 1989. Dad gave up his season tickets after the 1976 season. Prout's pickoff was the single statistical highlight of his career. In all, he lasted seven games with the Jets in 1975 and is not visible on subsequent NFL records. Bob Prout wore #25 in 1975.

It has occurred to me only now that I haven't even tried to name the best player to play in each number. Every number should have at least one superstar, don't you think? (photo from the NY Daily News) What amazes me is how few genuine superstars have owned our numbers through time. Fodder for a later entry, obviously. Note to self. In the meantime, Kerry Rhodes is the present day owner of the New York Jets #25, and he is probably the closest thing to a star we will find in #25, which is serendipitous, don't you think (honestly I'm not trying to be like Bob Costas)? Having recently signed a five-year deal, Rhodes is a fixture and an admirable one for the Jets. He is an example of how certain players don't make it to the Pro Bowl if they play for teams that are, well, considered the way the Jets are. It will interest if his play will continue to match the extraordinary PR he accrues through his foundational work, magazine covers (i.e., Essence) and canoodling with A to B list stars, like Jennifer Hudson. His website has been rerouted to his present role on the Arizona Cardinals. I liked Kerry Rhodes despite being disparaged by Rex Ryan. He will have more of his day. I believed he was born to play a greater role with Darrelle Revis. But what half-talented corner does not feel this way? Travel on, Kerry Rhodes. Happy trails.

****

But a replacement player? Behold an exception to the rule. Usually the strike-year replacement player/scab will play on until the strike is over and will then be summarily dropped from the team. Some, occasionally, will be retained. I remember the list of transactions after the 1987 strike reading like the dead list from the Lusitania. One name among a handful stood out, and not just because he's very nearly the winner of Booth Lustig for #25: George Radachowsky. He was retained by the New York Jets, despite having missed all of the 1986 season. Some of the others retained that year by the Jets included future coach Jim Haslett at linebacker, Dennis Bligen who has been discussed quite cleverly on these pages, Tom Flick and Sean Dykes. OK, but here's the issue. The Pro Football Reference lists EVERY TOUCHDOWN EVER SCORED BY GEORGE RADACHOWSKY, and fortunately for us EVERY TOUCHDOWN EVER SCORED BY GEORGE RADACHOWSKY equals one, against Miami, on September 24, 1989. I was watching the game while staying on a friend's couch in Rhode Island, waiting for my chance to go to England, but I may have been hung over from cheap beer and unrealized sexual plans from the night before, or just drunk on more cheap beer. But I do not recall George Radachowsky returning a failed Dolphins placekick for a touchdown in the first quarter - arguably the most exciting play in football - and yet he did. It was his last great act in his last season with both the Jets and pro football.

"Marshall Starks just sort of wandered into the Jets' lineup." This is what the 1964 Yearbook says about our next #25. Just mosied in. Howdy, Marshall. But what do Marshall Starks and George Radachowsky have common, some 23 years apart? I will tell you. Like the younger replacement player, Starks' only score in his football career came while converting a failed opponent's field goal into a touchdown. Yet in his case, there is not even a record of the event in the Pro Football Reference. Such can be the statistical fate of certain final acts. Alone they are judged too superfluous to become data. But in the context of another player with the same number, these coincidences can seem almost mystical.

Reggie Tongue? Winner of Booth Lustig for Funny Name jersey #25. Instead of winning John Lynch in a free agent struggle, the Jets signed Reggie Tongue, who played for one season for us in 2004. His final act was a season with the 2005 Oakland Raiders, which is not something I would have wished on anyone.

OK, when you think of the name Mel West, do you think an actor from early 1960's TV? Well, close. Certainly, for our purposes, "Mel" has to be a player from the 1960's, doesn't he? Mel Renfro. Mel Farr. Mel Gray. Mel Tillis. See how right it all seems now? Yes, #25 Mel West played for the Titans from 1961-62. He scored three touchdowns for the mighty Tites in the space of a single week in December 1961, and these represented every touchdown he ever scored in the AFL or anywhere in pro football.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - The Poets

Because of the brutality of the game, we long to find some gentle eccentricity in a player, some unique sense of consciousness that transcends football's impersonal wrath. Onetime #25 Nick Ferguson is a source of endless fascination for me. For one thing, he is a journeyman, a state of being that is likely to produce the philosopher in any player. Behold his odyssey:

According to his records, he was undrafted. He was a practice squad player for the Bengals, the Bears and the Bills. He played in the Great White North for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1997, then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (what is a Blue Bomber?). Let's not forget that between stints in Winnipeg, he played for the Rhein Fire of NFL Europe. Somehow, in some way, Bill Parcells did that magical thing of locating unrecognized, durable players and brought Nick Ferguson onto the Jets for three seasons in #25, and then he made his greatest mark with the Denver Broncos from 2003-2007. Despite an injury that has left his career in limbo, he is currently listed with the Houston Texans, and yet one can hardly discount the potential of one who spent the best of his years as a practice squad player. He clearly does not know when to say when.

Here's the thing, though. Though there appears no evidence of it that I can see, apparently Nick Ferguson writes poetry. He's Odysseus and Homer all in one, the traveler in search (sometimes in vain) for home, and also the blind scribe documenting it the whole time. Blind? Indeed. Do any of us really know where we'll land?

Or is the poet the man who plays on the practice squad, wearing a #25, yet never plays a pro game outside the preseason for anyone, anywhere? Like Robert Farmer in 1999? The invisible ones?

Or Clifford Hicks? Is it the veteran who plays a decade without much recognition or notoriety? Hicks is one of the very few players we mention in these pages who has actually played in a Super Bowl, which should tell you something about the Jets' rosters through the years. He was on two of four Buffalo Bills squads that went down consecutively against the NFC East in the early 90's. That alone could be the source of great poetry about the frailty of the human condition. Finally, in addition to being a defensive back, he was also a kick returner through much of his career. The Football @ JT-SW.com site offers his information as having scored no touchdowns on returns but, in 1994 with the Jets, having "5" under the category of "fumbles." Now, are these fumbles recovered or turned over? After having spent some time uncovering the names, the names, the endless list of names on these pages, I am compelled to feel such a persistent sympathy for all of these human beings that I hope, for the sake of Clifford Hicks, it is the former of the two kinds.

Well, let's forget art and philosophy for a moment and focus our attention on the nuts and bolts of the dollar, the final note in sports. One of the more interesting ideas for a reality TV show is one that will focus attention the lives of thoroughbred jockeys. Who would have thought that RJ Kors, former safety at #25 for the Jets over two years (and who looks like a pretty boy in his team photo) would ultimately become a successful agent for jockeys? In a recent debate over jockeys wearing promotions at the Kentucky Derby, an older and more successful Kors suggests that allowing jockeys to advertise is not exploitative; it will likely guarantee better salaries and more financial growth for people in a sports profession not known for high salaries. It's also not as known as it should be for its high rate of crippling injury. Who would ever have thought an agent could do such good for unsung athletes?

Other Jets

In his latest book, God Save the Fan, rabid Arizona Cardinals fan (you are reading correctly) Will Leitch, formerly of Deadspin, recounts a conversation with a dog-faced Cleveland Browns fan who claims that being a modern Browns fan is the worst lot there is. No, Leitch counters, not by many miles. The current Browns are worth grieving over to be sure, but Leitch asserts that the Dogpounder's actual team exists over in Baltimore; they are called the Ravens, and, good news for the pounder, they won a Super Bowl over the Giants. So technically (he wanted to say it but didn't) the lost Cleveland fans should consider themselves Ravens fans. You have a team, he says, and you should follow them even after they move.

To further clarify this challenging point, he presents a drastic example from his own experience growing up in Illinois, between Chicago and St. Louis, a divided identity that creates quandaries over sports teams. In Illinois, Leitch picked the Cardinals over the Cubs just to be a contrarian, much the way some Philadelphians love to up the ante of the city's native grouchiness by embracing the Cowboys. The feelings run that deep. But Leitch also gave his loyalty to the St. Louis football Cardinals, Bill Bidwell's team, especially when Terry Metcalf, OJ Anderson and Stump Mitchell ran the concrete carpet floor at Busch Stadium.

But then Bidwell moved the team to Phoenix - a place, as far as I know, uninhabited by actual avian cardinals. No matter. Though he has never set foot in Arizona, Will Leitch says he remains to this day a devout football Cardinals fan, and even if you know a lot about football, you probably still don't know as much about the Arizona Cardinals as does Leitch. But then who could blame you? It is a team that only its mother could love.

I mention all of this as a stunning prelude to discussing a film that I'm glad I saw this evening, My Winnipeg, which, unintentionally, presents a compelling counter to Leitch's argument. The movie is described by its writer and director Guy Maddin as a "docu-fantasia," and I think its trailer gives insight into Maddin's interpretation of memory's subjective and surreal nature.

To Maddin, Winnipeg is a tragic and mythological place, laced with a sense of missed opportunity and loss. Among other things, this relates to his discussion of the departure of the Jets - the Winnipeg WHA hockey team that got incorporated into the NHL in 1979. In 1996, the Jets moved to yes, Phoenix, home of the Cardinals. (image taken from the Canadian Design Resource webpage) Maddin apparently did not stay loyal to the team when they moved to the southern desert. To him, his city and its original team are forever linked. He makes the point that the Jets were merely the latest manifestation of all the big and small hockey clubs that tied together the Winnipeg community over time. To strip away the contemporary incarnation of that hockey tradition just for the sake of the NHL's short-sighted profits and its desire for luxury boxes was a soulless, inhuman thing.

Maddin talks about the importance of Winnipeg Arena to his family's life (photo from the Manitoban Historical Society website), and he imagines the ghosts of Manitoban hockey legends playing their spectral ice hockey games in the shell of the empty Arena even as it is being demolished. Most especially poignant are his thoughts on the arena's final implosion day (depicted here in a local news report), which did not go as planned. The film's amusing interpretation of this moment is appropriate to Maddin's belief in Winnipeg as a city of ghosts and sleepwalkers.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 25 - Part 1

For most of us, Joe Namath is someone about whom we read in middle school biographies and who never quite leaves the fields of our imagination. For Ray Abruzzese, Namath was a friend - a real, flesh and blood person. Abruzzese was in the right place at the right time. Born in South Philadelphia, he then went - of all places - to the University of Alabama, where, two years into his playing for Coach Bryant, he met the profoundly slick freshman quarterback from Beaver Falls, the future of football, the man who would revolutionize sports culture. From there, he hitched his wagon to Broadway's star. How could he resist? Ask yourself - if you had been a South Philly kid, growing up seeing that for every gangster there was always a retinue of fifty, wouldn't you do the math and assume that your future was to be in a bigger man's entourage?

After a couple of unsuccessful seasons in Buffalo as a pro, Abruzzese was brought over by Sonny Werblin to play in #25 for the New York Jets from 1965-66. (photo from New York Jets All-Time Roster) He is described in the Jets' 1966 Yearbook as a "tough tackler" at defensive back, but he was actually hired by the Jets to play more specific roles for Joe Namath - as familiar Crimson Tide face, as hanger-on, close friend, and self-professed bonus babysitter. Later, after Abruzzese was cut from the team, he became a business associate in Bachelors III and in whatever else those crazy boys were up to. In his Namath, Mark Kriegal suggests that Abruzzese was there for all the phases of Namath's rise and plateauing, sort of like Joe Pesci's Joey LaMotta in Raging Bull. According to script, though, the star eventually rejects the loyal brother-figure who has befriended and helped him. According to Kriegal, Namath rejected Abruzzese for various reasons and never reconnected, and he suggests that this is simply Joe Willie's way. We know Jake Gyllenhaal will play Namath in the biopic, but who will play Ray Abruzzese?

OK, before we go any further, while we're on the topic of the film, I just cannot possibly resist including this link. You know how you're at a cocktail party, and somebody's talking to guests with dead-eyed seriousness, talking louder by the moment, becoming increasingly impolite, inappropriate and downright menacing? Well...he's just acting! It's humor! Wow, Christ, I mean - what talent, huh? Even still, people start to move away toward the CD collection or pretend to look at the books on the living room shelf. This guy suggests (tongue and cheek? I think?) that Joe Namath sounded like a "retarded black guy." Wow! Did he really say that!? Gosh, isn't he shocking! Ah hell, who cares. This guy's Joe Namath sounds a lot like a really retarded stereotype of a normal black person. That kind of humor did work for Andy Kaufmann, I guess. (I guess)

Remember Ed Bell? Well, now we're talking about a different Ed Bell. Actually, he is Ed Bell prototype 1. He is the first #25 in the history of the Jets organization, which also means he was the first Titan to wear the number. He was a pioneer, the AFL's very own version of a Mercury astronaut, yet the New York Jets' All-Time Database says that this Bell had two interceptions in his only season with the Titans. It's not much, I realize. But Ed Bell's story goes further back for us. A link from Virginia Tech suggests that defensive back Ed Bell rubbed it in the face of Jim Crow's ambassadors when he played at University of Pennsylvania. (photo from New York Jets All-Time Database) Though they refused to play visiting black players in Dixie, institutionally racist schools like Georgia had to play against African-American players like Ed Bell when they traveled north to play urban schools, specifically Bell's Penn team in 1952 at Philly's Franklin Field. Such was the age when athletes by virtue of simply walking onto a field and being themselves became something unexpected and transcendent.

Number 25 Scott Dierking was a five foot ten running back, an unusual height for a running back unless you consider #42 Bruce Harper at the more extraordinary 5'8". (Does anyone remember the Jets' backfield in 1979 being called the "No Name Running Game?" I thought not.) Whether in how tall he was, how short he was, or in how many yards he gained year by year, Scott Dierking was always second or third in distinction. Dierking's best season was the injury-ridden year of 1980 when he was the team's leading rusher and had six TD's, but QB Richard Todd was also the fourth best rusher that year, so that'll give you some idea of what following them was like that season. They were supposed to go to the Super Bowl; they went 4-12. Like so many important Jets of that era, Scott Dierking arrived as a rookie with the Jets in 1977 and stayed until the Jets had exhausted their potential for the playoffs in 1982. By the standards of a young Jets fan's experience, there was no more exciting time to be alive than those years. Despite my own present-day capacity for nauseous, self-induced anxiety and terror, I will never feel as intensely crazed and terrified with anticipation as I was on the Sundays of those years. I sat on that furnace-brown rug we had in the living room, in front of a Jets game, waiting for them to live up to their reputation and potential, waiting for my life to change. Waiting.

Read All Of This

Because I am on summer vacation from teaching and because I have an unsettled mind, I find myself writing a great deal here lately. That's in terms of both frequency and volume of entry. As I look at it, as I think about what I am doing, I realize that I am writing long chapters for an infinitely large bottle. Of course that metaphor doesn't work very well because an infinitely large bottle would be visible from land, sea, or air, and its user would almost certainly be rescued from his deserted exile. The old Police song here holds true.

Ironically the weblahg affords such limitless opportunities for self-expression in an era when people read less and less. People write plenty, no one reads it, partially because no one reads anything. Jets fans are sometimes portrayed as, well, "challenged" readers as we like to call them in education; that may not be fair, but one would have gotten that sense from Erik Boland's work covering the Jets for Newsday (replacing Tom Rock). He clearly fed them slabs of meat that the stereotypical Jets fan likes, even things without any relevance to the stories he was writing, including shots of broads in skimpy bikinis on the beach. Fuckin A. "Keep em comin Boland," said one reply. One picture looked a glamor shot of a near-computer-generated Sims girl, complete with vacant eyes, lips like a Uniroyal tire, and blanched skin. I started to wonder if he was pulling the fan's leg.

Now I'm really suspicious. Boland's imaginary letter from Woody Johnson is truly brilliant. He addresses the issue of the Jets' owner discussing the idea of selling ownership of seats in the stadium as PSL's, or Public Seat Licences. In order to help carry the burden of paying for the stadium to be built, season ticket holders would be required to buy from the team the seat itself, which could then be sold as an "asset" (Johnson compares this with taxi drivers selling their medallions). But he imagines Johnson, out of respect for the fans, suddenly changing course and addressing Jets season ticket owners by denouncing the shallow idea of PSL's. It is a fine piece of writing.

But the comments Boland got below the entry amazed me, though maybe they shouldn't have. Granted, there are a couple of stories about Woody Johnson himself which enlighten as to his distance he appears to take from the fans (surprise, surprise). Most agree with Boland, but many, many more than I expected criticized the amount of writing he did in his entry. "Did anyone honestly read all that?" was one comment. You expect me to read all this? Where have I heard that question before? Where...? Ah yes, in my classroom. A student teacher with whom I worked was amazed at how students responded the same way no matter what the content - 300 pages or three. Do you expect me to read all this? Apparently.

I asked her to think of it as an involuntary response, like the student's instinctive hunger for surrender, or a ritual prayer for release that they utter without thinking. Conscious or not, they know that the squeaky wheel gets taken off the frame.

The Booth Lusteg Award Winners

Here's the situation so far. In our efforts to name all the players in every number who have played in the New York Jets organization (that includes Titans, too), we have learned many things. Life is nasty, brutish and short, and nowhere is this more true than for a member of a football team's secondary. Also, aside from doing amazing things, football players also have funny names.

We're up to #24. So far, here are the winners of the Booth Lusteg Awards for Players in the New York Jets Organization With Funny-Sounding Names. No doubt we will have a grand prize winner some time before the end of my life. Some of these guys are going to sound really familiar to Jets fans, but then maybe some of you have never thought of their names before as inherently funny. A new schema is required. Life affords new perspectives on old joys.

These are in numerical order, with the name matching his number. Sadly, not every number afforded a funny name. You can decide for yourself which is the funniest so far:

#5 - Booth Lusteg (Our Founder)

#6 - Bubby Brister

#7 - Tom Tupa

#8 - Browning Nagle

#11 - Butch Songin

#12 - Howard "Hayseed" Stephens

#14 - Troy Taylor

#17 - Clyde "Lee" Grosscup

#19 - Dick Wood

#20 - Leander Knight

#21 - Treg Songy

#23 - Dick Felt

This isn't an exact science. You have to take several factors into account while deciding whether a name is funny or not, and even then, it can appear arbitrary. Certain tasteful restrictions do apply, though. A name should not be considered funny because it sounds, as Mario Cuomo used to say, "ethnic." Plus, it doesn't matter how your name sounds, if you have a certain degree of notoriety, your name just stops being funny. "Newt Gingrich" is funny today because Newt Gingrich has been revealed to be a hypocritical boob, but when he was Speaker of the House, his name wasn't funny - even when, as Garry Trudeau once pointed out, it sounded like a character from Dune. "Brett Favre" doesn't sound funny anymore, does it? Ah, but it should. It did once. Admit it. Even if it were pronounced correctly, it would still seem funny. Or French.

For example, take #15, Vito Parilli. His name does not automatically qualify as funny even though it conjures a character from My Cousin Vinny. That wouldn't be fair to Vito Parilli. However, it gets funnier when you consider that his nickname is "Babe." But even then, Babe Parilli is enough of a Jet legend such that he just doesn't qualify as outright funny. He was Namath's backup in '68, and members of that championship squad have automatic dispensation from Booth Lusteg (even #32 Emerson Boozer does, and it hurts to say that). Babe was an earlier standard-bearer NFL backup and a Boston Patriots starter. Therefore, his name is not funny. Neither is #21 "Don Odegard" funny even though he sounds like a character from Fargo. He did however qualify for initial consideration because the All-Time Jets Roster also listed his additional middle name of "Boyd." Say it all together and you have the very textbook description of aural cacophony.

Some names are funny because they carry a connotation that is unmistakably funny. Other names are funny because they don't even sound like human names. "Treg Songy" still wins the award over Don Odegard because "Treg Songy" sounds like a name that a five year-old would make up as he played kickoff return by himself in his backyard. "Here comes Treg Songy." Treg was also a 1987 replacement player, which makes him funny as a person, too. Except that now there's someone named "Trey Songz" who sings music with a silly name.

(Question: How did Treg Songy and Butch Songin end up playing for the same franchise more than twenty years apart? Coincidence??)

However, there are exceptions to the rules we mention. "Bubby Brister" will always be funny - maybe not in Denver where he played so well toward the end of his career, but in my heart, his name will always sound impossible, country-fried, and wonderfully American in the funniest sense. Say this phrase aloud: "God Bless You, Bubby Brister." See? It's a gut buster.

So what makes some other names funny? Interestingly enough, what makes one funny name funny does not guarantee the humor in another funny name. There are certain characteristics we identify as commonly funny. Alliterative names are funny. Apparently, first names with the letter "B" carry the funny gene. On the other hand, #19 Dick Wood and #23 Dick Felt are guaranteed laughs because their surnames offer a descriptive characteristic to the inherently funny first name. Dick Wood is also funny because his given name was "Malcolm."

"Troy Taylor," though not really funny per se, becomes funny when you consider that it sounds like a made-up football player's name. This becomes even funnier when you consider how short Troy Taylor's football career was (although maybe not so funny for Troy).

Howard "Hayseed" Stephens played for the New York Jets in #12 only a few years before Namath made the number famous for all of professional football. An edition of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary published in the year he played for the Jets offers the following definition of his nickname:

hayseed n 1 a: seed shattered from hay b: clinging bits of straw and chaff from hay 2 pl hayseeds: BUMKIN, YOKEL

Number 20 continues to beguile and charm me, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because, unlike "Troy Taylor," "Leander Knight" just doesn't sound like a football player. I don't know. But see, that's another thing. Sometimes you just don't know why something's funny, and that's OK. For example, I find #17 funny not just because of his funny last name, but because his nickname is "Lee" and his given name is "Clyde." But that's not enough for a truly funny name; were that the case, we would be talking about the Jets former #17, David Clowney. No. The point is no one is prepared the unknown discomfort that Clyde "Lee" must have felt in school hearing his surname called aloud: Grosscup.

Finally, there is the in joke, the private humor we Jets fans feel with certain names. It's true that "Browning Nagle" could be considered a funny-sounding name, but there was actually a time when that name gave us a sense of hope and confidence, like when I saw rookie Browning Nagle quarterback the Jets to a victory against the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1992 Hall of Fame Game. However, fate can turn a name funny. His name is funny today because it expresses the self-deprecating sense of pessimistic hope we feel every time we believe that this is The draft pick who will turn the team around, or that this is The year where everything will be different. No, he's not. No, it's not. Vernon Gholsten suffers from the same problem.

And finally, look at the list one last time. You may not realize it, but five of the eleven names above were former New York Titans. Of the many, many names and numbers we have seen so far, names of Titan players are among the funniest. That is a staggering fact. This is at least evidence that the Jets organization has been around for a long while now, certainly as long as the AFL itself, such that arcane handles like "Butch" and "Dick" are out of fashion and therefore potentially funny. But when you take into account the fact that the New York Titans themselves were inherently funny as a football team, the potential realizations that result are practically limitless. (This means, by the way, that our honorary member of Booth Lusteg's solid crew is Harry Wismer, the Titans former owner - funnier even than "Sonny Werblin.") So, a funny team will also have players with funny names. Does everything in life happen for a reason? If yes, then Someone has a sense of humor. If not, then life itself remains a funny existential business indeed.

RIP George Carlin

My love of the Jets and of football in general has endured losing seasons, misunderstanding girlfriends, intellectual assaults from huffy colleagues in graduate school, indifferent, hostile cities, and my own neuroses. I know that baseball is the thinking man's sport and that football is the thinking man's whipping post. But screw it. I love football. It's too late to change that now.

However George Carlin offered the most convincing depiction of baseball's superiority to football. Baseball represents the idyllic myth of the small town and the empty field. Football, on the other hand, is a conflict of attrition, an industrial battle for primacy. He was correct, of course. Football is war. How American.

RIP, Mr. Carlin. You were the first person I remember as a child being described as an "iconoclast."