Another Famous Jets Fan

Having long been a fan of Adult Swim's Venture Bothers, I'm surprised that I only just recently noticed that Ned, the noseless, mentally challenged giant with three inch skin whom Jonas Venture, Jr. befriends and enlists as a henchmen, is a Jets fan. It seems appropriate that a thick-skinned retarded guy should run around Spider Skull Island naked, except for that New York Jets wool hat. I could be insulted, but it's not a bad portrayal, altogether. I own that hat.

As Dr. Jonas, Jr. says, "Sorry, but we like to let Ned make his own decisions."

Vanity Fair

Hope is the thing with feathers.
-Emily Dickinson

Under how many labels can one entry fall? L'Affaire de Favre has become something so outlandishly bizarre that I am left oddly mute. Brett Favre will actually be paid to retire, stay retired, and be part of the Packers "product," working from home in Mississippi. All the while he has played the Bucs and the Jets, perhaps to raise the dollar value of what the Pack will pay him to stay retired. He will quarterback for no one now, which was what he said he would do - or not do - earlier this spring. But now we know that these earlier plans probably included this mime show of interest in front of the gullible press. I suppose the notorious paucity of post-retirement for most players in the NFL has driven him to this extraordinary shadow play. Even I, for brief periods of time, had some ridiculous notion that he would wear our green, finding that by doing so, I too was only covered in more feathers. Look on yourself, Jets fans. There are probably a few on you, too.

Shea Stadium: The Long Goodbye

It is impossible to overstate how important Shea Stadium was to me as a kid. It was where I first fell in love - with two teams, with a city, with a borough, with nostalgia at an early age way before my time. Everything I needed to know about life I learned in the short space of a few years watching the Mets and Jets play there. Life is a brittle and ephemeral experiment with happiness. Most all else requires patient, persistent, devotion and love, even when it is not merited. This I learned at Shea.

When I was a kid, it never struck me as reasonable that the All-Star Game wasn't played at Shea (it was, back in 1965). Why wasn't Shea as beloved as Yankee Stadium? Would people someday rhapsodize nostalgically about Shea the way they did about past National League parks like Ebbets and the Polo Grounds? I did not understand that what I felt toward Shea was a bit like what my Mom felt toward me as she overlooked my unruly, mangy hair, my lisp or the huge gap between my teeth. She loved me as I was, and thus I loved big ugly Shea.

My wife and I traveled from Philly to Flushing last Saturday to catch one last game at the home ground. For sheer Shea style, the experience did not disappoint. It's clear that the landlords are providing the bare bones of facility comfort as they await the patient's demise. The area beyond the battered-looking outfield wall is like an empty lot unto itself. There was a once a picnic area beyond the 410 mark that today is the front step of the "rotunda" they are building for Citi Field. There were at least five major brawls you could follow by looking for the heavyset security men in mustard shirts amassing to break it up. The Mets and Cardinals went 14 innings with the home team losing 10-8 in a sprawling offensive struggle that saw two homers from Carlos Delgado. A lovely night and a very, very long goodbye. My wife and I managed to get to bed at three.

Here are some snapshots, with the banal observation:



From our seat, the view below, with the pocked (drainage?) turf.





The home run apple, originally bearing the words "Mets Magic," from back in the day when the Mets were proclaiming that "The Magic is Back," circa 1980. How wonderfully incomprehensible that the magician pulls an apple from the hat. It reminds me of Nick Hornby's memory of a footie game where the PA system played "I've Got a Lovely Batch of Coconuts" to celebrate a victory. The apple makes sense, I know, but it's a mixed hat of metaphors at best. No rabbit to be found anywhere. The apple is no Mackintosh; it looks its age, its membrane a battered, faded red. My wife hopes they take it to Citi Field. It's no Bernie Brewer home run slide, either, but the apple is the perfect Shea accessory. Look at the makeshift manner in which the newly recovered leaf is attached to the fruit in question.

It is not seven after three, although I think that's when we finally turned the lights out at home. If you look closely, you see that the time is actually 9:07 pm. Armitron doesn't bother to object to the poor product placement.


As night fell, as the wee small morning hours crawled in, the eerie Shea lighting became an interesting thing to observe. The powerful string of lights near the ends of the semi-circle offer the bulk of the light cast on the players. The rest of the semi-circle is in relative darkness, creating what I have always felt is a rather stark light on the field.

There he is. Cow Bell Man, or "Cow-Bell Man" as his Mets jersey reads. The crowd genuinely loves him. A man and his cowbell, or "cow-bell." He came visiting for a Mets-Phillies game at the Vet about eight years ago, and the back of his jersey read "Cow Bell-Man," which was confusing. This has since been corrected. Cow. Bell. Man. Cow. Bell. Man.


Farewell, old friend. See you at the implosion.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 27 - Part 3

I attended a Catholic college in Rhode Island that was a day and a half by car from my family. That wasn't what I planned; it just happened that way. My Dad moved us from New York to the Deep South in 1987. When he did that, I became a stranger in two lands - New England and the South, two different worlds, yet two parts of the country that are remarkably parochial in their own ways. New England introduced to me the sensation that I have felt all my life since, that of being a stranger. New Yorkers who move elsewhere have this. Their diaspora around the country fits with the sense of a lost homeland. Like God's own chosen people, no matter where they are, New Yorkers know they have a home that is already ideal for them, waiting for their return. The New York metropolitan area is a place full of pressure, angst, neuroses, excellent food of every variety, sports out the yang, constant local news, excellent (or competently objective) journalism, and cultural experiences of every kind. It also has an oppressively high cost of living and a former Governor who thought he could get away with having sex with hooker who appeared in hip-hop videos. This... this is New York.

I've lived in Philadelphia for 15 years and am proud to call it my home, but like the weepers by Babylon's waters, I remember Zion. Having a disconnection from where I grew up proved worthwhile in the end, I suppose. It produced the person I am today - wary, careful, and skeptical. I like that. At college, I found other souls from disparate parts of the world - United Kingdom, Switzerland, Illinois, Maryland - who felt similarly detached from home, who also could not return on weekends to do laundry or get a hot meal. We spent the lonelier weekends playing cards, getting drunk, eating food from the "Yuck Truck," striking out with girls, and using fake ID's to get into local neighborhood bars and receive withering stares from indignant townies.

Our college had no football team. Its basketball team occasionally went far into the March tournament but usually saw its bubble burst beforehand, or they got beaten in overtime in the first round. The New York Jets of my college years were an underachieving bunch, going 24-38-1, with no playoff appearances. I spent one football season in England. In my sophomore year, I did what some people do when they are lonely; I turned to following Notre Dame football.

There was some basis for my jump on the bandwagon. My uncle went to Notre Dame, and I think my grandfather loved Notre Dame football more than his own life. To a grade-school educated factory worker in Brooklyn who remembered "Irish Need Not Apply" signs, my grandfather looked at Notre Dame as the great example that the Irish could make it in America, and though his goal of visiting his ancestral homeland could never be realized, Notre Dame remained a kind of floating homeland for him. It was for me, too, but for different reasons, obviously. I mean, I was certainly enjoying the better socio-economic benefits of being a fourth generation Irish-American. It was a good time to root for Notre Dame, though. Coached by former Jets coach-washout Lou Holtz, Notre Dame went to the Cotton Bowl in 1988 and won the National Championship on 1989. Three of my exile friends had siblings or parents who went to Notre Dame, and we followed Saturday's games more than any game on Sunday.

I know Notre Dame is hated, and rightly so. Like the Patriots, their arrogant fan base is to blame, but so too are Rudy and ND's wannabe alumni. As erroneous as it seems now, I made myself believe that Notre Dame tied together all the disparate parts of my life - my rapidly lapsing faith, my old home, my little club of fellow exiles, and my grandfather's old devotions. It made sense at the time.

But back in the day the Hurricanes of Miami were reviled even more than Notre Dame. The two undefeated teams met in the autumn of 1988, in the finest college football game I have ever seen. "Catholics vs. Convicts." At the end of a long comeback, Notre Dame managed to deflect Steve Walsh's efforts toward a two-point conversion at the last second and the Irish held on to win, 31-30. It made me happier than any Jets victory I had ever known. Notre Dame had given me all that I had needed in the moment, and after that, I cared less and less about them. It couldn't last. Today, I find myself almost rooting against Notre Dame and their longtime monopoly on Saturday afternoon's television time. It was a short-term relationship that made me happy enough to go on with my life. As I would soon discover when I got my bearings straight, the Jets were my life.

But until today I did not put it together that the Pat Terrell the Jets obtained in 1994 was the same Pat Terrell responsible for making the big play - Notre Dame's deflection of the two-point conversion. Particularly in college football, big moments dwarf the players who make them. Maybe that's why I like the professional game. It's not work for nothing. Pat Terrell leaped up for the ball, and I leaped with him, collapsing with my friends into a blubbering mass of joy. Pat Terrell wore #27 for the Jets in what was his most unremarkable season of work and then moved on to his next team in 1995.

And finally, to conclude our discussion, Phil Wise actually had the longest Jets career in #27. The first news I get from the Jets All-Time Database was that Wise experienced a consistently compromising injury, in both life and work. The 1975 Yearbook is quoted as saying, "One of the best all-around athletes on the team, but has been bothered with a series of groin pulls which have cost him 11 full games." Did they need to be so specific? Against the Colts at Shea in 1973, Phil Wise recovered a Raymond Chester fumble caused by Mormon Burgess Owens and ran it back 80 yards for a touchdown. I know Dad was there. The Jets won, 20-17 - one of four wins they would manage all year. I'm trying to imagine him seeing Phil Wise pick up that loaf of bread and take it home. It's a mixed blessing to remember such things, but then as the movie says, sorrow is just old joy.



Phil Wise may even have been slicker looking than the man who replaced him in #27, Ron Mabra. But then did he sell leather in the off-season? I don't think so.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 27 - Part 2

Jesse Johnson spent four seasons in the NFL, all in the secondary in #27 for the New York Jets. These weren't bad years to play for the Jets so they weren't bad for a hard working player like Johnson, who as far as I can see was never considered a constant starter. But the Jets then were a team plagued by injuries, and when Johnny Lynn or Bobby Jackson was injured, as one of them invariably were during those years, Jesse Johnson would step in. The only note I was able to make of a specific contribution was a well-timed batting down of a pass intended for someone on the Cleveland Browns in 1981, a season where the Jets needed to win every game they could in order to just barely make the playoffs for the first time in 12 years. The Jets beat the Browns 17-16. Every play counted. Every player was needed. Even then, the Jets lost in the Wild Card round. But Jesse Johnson lasted for two more years, filling in and taking over when necessary. Half of life is showing up.

I've been waiting to write about #27 Ron Mabra, who played one season - 1977 - for the Jets. This is mostly because of his picture, which I've now come across dozens of times when I'm researching Jets players on the Jets' All-Time Database. He looks like a fusion jazz artist, a sheik, or a member of Earth, Wind and Fire. He graduated from Howard University which, though esteemed, is not a football powerhouse. And his last name is interesting to me. Rearrange the letters and you get Abram, the Jewish patriarch's original name. Change the pronunciation of his last name a little and you get a Bostonian's pronouncement of the celebrated cigarette with the cowboy on its ad. Who is Ron Mabra, man of mystery?

Ah, but then the crushing reality of statistical truth - Mabra played two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, during which time his greatest mark was made returning a kickoff for 26 yards. According to all the available records, the only distinction he made as a Jet was to wear the uniform three times. But he might have gone on to have a successful law degree somewhere or perhaps a real estate business. Or pushing up the daisies, like Artimus Parker. So, the book closes on Ron Mabra. But wait! Not before we remember that the personal anecdote for him on the Jets All-Time Database: "Part-time hobby became a full-time off-season business when he opened leather shop in Atlanta." Ron Mabra, you have not let me down.

What's bizarre is that the reshuffled name Abram is also the first name of the Jets' current owner of #27, Abram Elam. And this would basically be where the jocularity (such as it is) of this association ends. The full story of Elam's journey to the Jets is a circuitous one, and is shared also by the son of Donald Dykes. While attending Notre Dame, both Dykes, Jr. and Elam were accused in an on-campus rape of a student in 2002, with only Elam indicted. He refused to implicate Dykes and the two other plaintiffs whom Lindsay Charles accused, which I suppose was admirable only to, well, the other men accused. All four were kicked out of Notre Dame, though it would appear that Abram, the only man found guilty (of a much lesser charge than rape) had the least involvement in the crime. Ironic, yes, but pitiful all the same. Sometimes irony just doesn't cut it. Three rapists - if Charles is to be believed - are scott free. After serving his minimal time, Elam signed with the Jets and is both an exemplar player and citizen. His accuser still intends to pursue a civil suit against Abram Elam, perhaps with the ferocity of someone who hopes that someday all the persons involved will be punished.

From the harrowing to the more ridiculous: Would you follow Kevin Porter to the gates of Hell? Sure you would. Guy who looks like that? Hell, yes. How about just to Kansas City, the place where his NFL career began with the Chiefs? It is there that he currently coaches the Brigade, who are an Arena Football team. He ended his career in #27 for the Jets after just one season. I can say no more than that, other than to add what I heard a play-by-play guy say on NBC's coverage of the indoor game: "This is Arena Football, Tom. There's nowhere to hide." Whenever I'm changing channels of a Sunday in the Springtime, waiting for the Phillies to come on, I'll come upon Arena Football, and either my wife or I will try to be the first one to say, "There's nowhere to hide." The irony is, there is somewhere out there, for then I change the channel.

Tony Scott in the year 2000: one interception for an unknown (possibly zero) numbers of yards. Tackles? Unknown. One kickoff return for what I would presume to be a fair catch. Re-signed on April 9, 2002. Waived a little over two months later, on June 26. Again, football is like life. It is cruel.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 27 - Part 1

In the continuing story of how the New York Jets (like some other teams, too) were a repository for players at the end of their career throughout the 1990's, we come to Steve Atwater, who retired in #27 one year after joining us in 1999. (photo Ebay) In his biography online (how many times can I avoid using the "W" word?) Atwater's departure from his longtime Denver Broncos position was, according to Mike Shanahan, the hardest decision the coach ever had to make. "Is it easy picturing Steve in green and white..?" Shanahan asked. "No. Was it the right thing for him and our team? Absolutely." After a year under Parcells, riddled with injury, Atwater ceremoniously returned to the Broncos. ""This is the way I wanted to go out," Atwater said. "I bleed orange and will always bleed orange and blue." Ronnie Lott, Leonard Marshall, Art Monk, Tony Eason. They know it and we know it. They need a paycheck, but their hearts remain where they originally made themselves famous, not with us, and they usually make little impact in green and white. I'm quite certain Brett Favre is going to Tampa Bay this weekend, and the truth about these imposters of sorts will give me consolation when I see Jon Gruden's stupid grin.

Can two men be at the same place at the same time? They can if they play for the New York Titans. Take Jim Apple and Don Allard. If the Jets' All-Time Database is to be believed, they both played in #27 for the Titans in 1961. Apple at quarterback, Allard at halfback. Can a player lose his spot and be replaced that easily? They can if they play for the Titans. New uniforms were expensive, I guess, and if the Titans couldn't even afford to pay their players just imagine the costs of outfitting them. Who got cut first? And why did a quarterback wear #27? It's not unheard of when you consider John Hadl, but such a thing is a throwback to the leather-helmeted days of, say, Sammy Baugh, who QB'd in #33 for the Redskins in the 30's and 40's and who was head coach of the Titans in 1961. Anyway, certainly an anomaly, no?

No! Not when we consider the case of Terry Butler and Terrell Buckley (left), both of whom wore #27 in 2005 for the Jets. (photo JAMD) Butler and Buckley are also even closer in the alphabet than Apple and Allard, or Affirmed and Alydar. But here their similarities must be declared at an end. Is Terrell Buckley worthy of induction into Canton? Well, I don't know, but he certainly produced numbers in the secondary that put him in the category for a distant consideration. And Terry Butler? He came from Villanova. Actually, it's a typo on the Jets' Database. Buckley, star for the Seminoles of Florida State, was by 2005 already traded from the Jets to the Giants after his one year of play for us. Butler, star for the Wildcats of that Augustinian university in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, has no statistical content of any kind that I can locate in 2005 or anywhere else. Indeed, the only real value of mentioning any of these guys is putting Buckley into the category mentioned above, of players who treat the Jets like a lame duck resting home. Buckley retired after 2005. So did Butler.

Here's one that got away. He's the opposite of the fellows mentioned above. Russell Carter was one of my favorite defensive players in the late 1980's and he then left for the Raiders of Los Angeles, the Great Satan. (Do you ever think Satan gets insulted when someone else gets the tag of "Great" Satan? I know an accomplished sculptor who's insulted when Britney Spears is referred to as an "artist.") He started out a Jet, on his way to a great career, I thought, and then disappeared from everything I held valuable and dear. Of Lott, Monk, Atwater and Buckley, one always wonders when they are leaving for good, sort of like the way a fatherless child looks at the 27th boyfriend his mother's introduced him to. But of Carter, the boy asks when are you coming home again? The photo above is from Ebay, but how many of Russell Carter's football cards does one really need? Ten? Is this my repayment for waiting for Russell Carter to come home? Jeez.

Let's see. Do I have anything to say about #27 Lou D'Agostino? Yes. Nine games. Nineteen ninety-six. Bingo. The worst season in Jets history - a season that places among the worst in NFL history, too. He made it through its halfway point. I can't believe I did, too.

New York Jets By The Numbers: # 26 - The Final Chapter

There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. There are 32 possible teeth in a human mouth. There are 11 men fielded at any point in time by a professional football team, be it English or American. And there are six players left to mention in the extraordinarily long but remarkably harmless list of players who've worn the number 26 for the New York Jets.

When Chad Morton ran back a kickoff for touchdown against the Buffalo Bills at Rich Stadium in week six of the 2002 season, I had a feeling that I sometimes get in the first third of a Jets season, where I suddenly think it's possible that my normally troubled football team will actually make the playoffs. I don't even entertain the possibility of what that will mean for me. I can't think that cosmically about it, though such visions can feel cosmically real. When I was a young man of 22, I was struck by a powerful, undeniable sensation of instant pure love at first sight when I saw a woman standing across the shoreline of beach on Lake Michigan. That's the woman I'm going to woo and eventually marry in a heartfelt religious ceremony, I thought to myself. ...the woman with whom I'll have children, with whom I'll share a country house, with whom I'll grow wise and old

No. Today, willingly without children, a city dweller, agnostic, I see a reflection of myself with razor clarity. I was wrong. It was not to be. It was never to be.

Most seasons it is not to be. For some teams like Dallas, New England, and Green Bay (at one time, Miami) making the playoffs alone is or was as inevitable as the needed belch after a long pull on your bottle of beer. It cleared away space in the digestive passage for more. For the Jets, a season's tenuous path tempts you to be drawn toward visions of vibrant hope. Usually, these spring with an early success: I remember watching Richard Todd's brilliance in the season opener against San Diego, 1983 thinking "this is going to be the season for which I have been waiting all my life." But it was not to be. Or watching the Jets beat the eventual AFC Champion Denver Broncos 22-10 in 1986. Obviously not to be. Dreaming of better days to come when the Jets blank the defending AFC Champion Buffalo Bills 23-3 in the 1994 opener. Not to be. You get this rush, this feeling that you are in contact with a destiny that has been written for you, and its writing even proscribes the final culmination of all your cloudy desires. The Jets will go to the playoffs. I have seen the face of God. No, sir. You are wrong.

But when future Jetskin Chad Morton returned that kickoff for a touchdown in an eventual 31-13 win at Buffalo, not only did he suddenly become a tantalizing free agent to-be, but I saw a vision for the near future that would actually turn out true. The Jets went to the playoffs at the end of the 2002 regular season. In fact, improbably, they won the division. Then they trounced Peyton Manning in the playoffs 41-0 in what may have been one of the happiest night of my life, and became, in the eyes of many prognosticators, totally unbeatable. Then in Alameda the Oakland Raiders treated them like a pistol-whipping steroids abuser does a pesky little neighbor who complains about the music being too loud, and the unbeatables went home. I didn't even wait for the second half of the Raiders game to begin binge drinking the horrible night away. Nevertheless, such successive weeks of hope and excitement are rare and beautiful things, and they can enable you to stay rooting for your team for at least another ten years.

I have a question, though.. When the New England Patriots begin their inevitable era of decline (bring it soon, sweet God in Heaven) their fans are going to have to live like I do now. They'll have to be loyal to just the team they have, warts and all. Do they actually have the stuff to do it? I don't think so. They didn't when I went to college in New England and the Pats went 1-15 in 1990 under Rod Rust. You couldn't find a fan anywhere.

Enough! I have to talk about Damon Pieri. I t would seem that he played in #26 for the Jets for one season - 1993, an uneventful one for both him and the team. Then he vanishes from football for a year and arrives in Carolina, playing two seasons for the Panthers and retiring in 1996 with one interception to his name. He is currently the defensive backs coach for Sunny Slope football camp. Go Green Vikings.

Drafted in the 18th round out of George Washington University by the New York Giants in 1963, Bill Pashe vanishes from training camp and Allie Sherman's notoriously disdainful attitude toward rookies and swims across the Harlem River to the Polo Grounds to play for the newly incarnated Gotham Football Club. Or did he? His only season listed is actually 1964, with the Jets, in #26, as a return specialist. Henceforth he specializes in not appearing in organized football ever again. With a degree from GW, though, I'm assuming he grew up to be a nice young man.

During our numbering of the Jets, we usually run across an eventual veteran of the 1968 Championship team. We reflect, we praise, we think wistfully, we regret, we move on. This process presents a challenge, though, when we consider Jim Richards. Sure, I see him on the sidelines of Super Bowl III, but where else? His best season would actually be 1969, which would also be his last. That year, he garnered three interceptions, which was one more than '68 standouts Jim Hudson and Randy Beverly would gather apiece. Longtime CBS sideline reporter John Dockery gathered five that year, while an improved Billy Baird got the same. Dockery would return in 1970, Baird would not (except as a coach) and Jim Richards would never be heard from again anywhere in pro football. I would show Dad all of these players' pictures in the now remarkably short Jets roster that you'd find in the back of your game-bought PRO! magazine. There would be Dockery, Beverly, Hudson, Baird. But no Jim Richards. I would mutely point them all out to Dad, fluttering like a tiny bird in the nest, hoping for a dollop of wisdom from a beautiful time when we were once champions. He would only squint at a picture with the naked-headed player staring beyond the camera. "I'll be damned," Dad would sparsely reply. "Bill Baird." There, I would think. A testimonial recognition of the past! It's all true! But what happened to Jim Richards? How could a guy who did pretty well on the defending champions not get a chance anywhere else? Does that enigmatic faraway look above reveal his vague anticipation of something wrong in the future, or is that the look of a callow young man who isn't capable of comprehending what he sees? Ah, well.

Omar Stoutmire. Say his name as many times as you like. Every time you say it it's like you're saying it for the first time. O-mar Stout-mire. Grand. Just grand. It seems I have seen Omar Stoutmire in many uniforms - as a Cowboy, as a Saint, as a Redskin, most especially in the Giants organization, where he played especially well in '02 and '03. But he played for the Jets in #26 in 1999 and left as quickly as the good fortunes of my team did that season. He has technically played twice in Washington, but he is not technically a Jetskin.

And finally, we come to you, David West. You thought we had forgotten you, or else you've gotten used to being left off at the end of the alphabet. But you're the first New York Jet to wear #26, and it's easy to assume that your efforts will go unappreciated, unattended. You are wrong, my friend. You played two games for the team with the funny airplane on their helmet. Damned if I can find you anywhere. But I know you're in that team picture (above) at the Polo Grounds. You can't hide forever, #26.



There you are.