On Jay Feely, Politics, Paradise Lost and Ceramics

I'm not much into politics. Though it manages to catch my interest from time to time, it's something that I choose to observe from the periphery. It's not a subject I feel particularly qualified to speak on.

Me, I'll stick to what I know. Football. Baseball. Books. Bebop. Hip hop. Sports movies.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of former Giants (and current Jets) placekicker Jay Feely, who participated in "The Great American Panel" on Fox News' Sean Hannity Show on Monday.

Turns out Feely isn't a big fan of President Obama, and on Monday he went as far as to openly question the President's character.

When prompted by Hannity to speak on America's support of Iranian students, Feely first quoted some old dead guy named Phillips Brooks, then dug into Obama. "He's creating a foundation from which he must lead from," Feely said, "and that foundation does not have the same character traits that have made this nation great."

Hannity and Feely's panel mates ate it up. "You are ruining the stereotype of the typical football player," said one. "That is really well said," added Hannity.

Though Feely is a man who kicks footballs for a living (and not all that proficiently, one might reasonably argue), his appearances on shows like Hannity indicate that he clearly sees himself as someone whose greater future lies beyond the gridiron. Like football stars Jack Kemp, Steve Largent, J.C. Watts, and fellow Wolverine Gerald Ford did before him, it's possible that Feely intends to use his platform as a star athlete to one day springboard himself to elected office. And wouldn't that be something?

In a 2006 interview with John Branch of The New York Times, ESPN producer Pete McConville (of the ill-fated "Cold Pizza") said of Feely: "If you told me that in 10 years he'd be governor of Florida, I'd say, 'O.K., I could see that.'"

Wow.

Yesterday, after Deadspin and Newsday's Bob Glauber had a little fun with him, Feely posted 18 separate posts to his Twitter account in an attempt to clarify and amplify the statements he made on Hannity. One of those posts (or Tweets, as the kids call them) caught my eye (and ire) more than the others:

"Any American who chooses to educate themselves (and unfortunately many who don't) can add to the dialogue and make our country better," Feely tweeted.

Oh, so Jay Feely wants to talk about education now? Interesting.

For years, I've been itching to share my "education of Jay Feely story." Those feelings only intensified after his three-miss horrorshow in Seattle back in 2005. And when I started this little blog in January, 2008, I knew I'd get to it eventually. All I needed was an appropriate opportunity. Well, here we are.

Flash back with me, if you will, to the Winter of 1995, when Feely and I were both students at the University of Michigan. I'm a 20-year-old junior with an uncontrollable Jewfro (contained, on most days, inside a dirty white ballcap), two hoop earrings in my left ear, and a penchant for writing endless collections of manic, unpublishable poetry. Feely, on the other hand, is a 19-year-old sophomore/redshirt freshman finance major who had seen his first action for Lloyd Carr's Wolverines that previous fall as a kickoff specialist.

It's first day of Winter Term, and I'm sitting in the back row of a classroom in Mason Hall as a professor begins to explain the syllabus for, if memory serves, English 469: The Works of John Milton. It's a high level course which, I quickly realize, I have no business taking (I dropped the class shortly after), and as the professor continues to run down what can best be described as an intimidating reading list (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, etc.) I notice a shadowy figure shuffling nervously in the doorway.

After a few moments, the professor is alerted to the shuffler's presence and asks if she can help him. And, as if on cue, in walks Hannity's pal, Jay Feely. He looks lost, but he also looks like he's not sure if he's lost. Somehow, he's caught in between.

"Um," Feely stammers. "Is this ceramics?"

"I beg your pardon?" responds the professor.

Undeterred by the smattering of audible snickers that has broken out throughout the classroom, Feely repeats himself.

"Is this ceramics?"

"Do you see any potter's wheels, young man?"

Feely looks around. "No."

"How about clay? Do you see any clay?"

"No."

"Then I guess this isn't ceramics, then."

*Rimshot*

You should have seen the look on Feely's face. I don't think I'll ever forget it. It was the kind of face a teenage boy makes when he gets caught masturbating by his mother. Or the face Bald Bull made when you stuck him in the gut. Ironically enough, it was the same face Feely would make 10 years later on the carpet of Qwest Field while, thousands of miles away, yours truly savagely destroyed a barstool.

The idiocy of the exchange cannot be understated for a variety of reasons, most notably a basic understanding of Michigan's campus. It's a big campus to be sure, but it's even bigger when you take into account that there is a Central Campus--where Mason Hall is located--and a North Campus--where the art school (and engineering school, and music school) is located. In order to get from Central Campus to North Campus, one must board a bus and ride for approximately 15 minutes. They're absolutely nowhere near each other. And unless Feely had been trapped under a blocking sled for a year and a half, he had to know that. Really.

The relaying of this story is not intended to disparage Feely so much as to pump the brakes on whatever "up with Feely, the great intellectual" groundswell might be emerging from the desperate right. To be fair, he was just a kid at the time. And by all accounts Feely appears to be a decent human being, commendably active with various charities such as the United Way, Easter Seals, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I know he's been through some difficult times in his life, too, and I don't mean to diminish what he has overcome by pointing out that the guy's a doofus.

Clearly he is, but his politics make that point for me.

Feely may well have a future in politics, but for now I suggest he stick to kicking footballs. And just in case he forgets his place again, I'll remind him that much like that classroom in Mason Hall, there aren't any potter's wheels in the New York Jets locker room.

Should've Known Better

Please forgive the crudely executed image above. I created it in MS Paint, which accounts for the poor shading. Still, I think it effectively illustrates what the Mets and, more specifically, Johan Santana, laid today at Yankee Stadium. Really, I should've known better than to be encouraged by yesterday's performance. After enduring nearly 30 years' worth of major disappointments (1986 notwithstanding), I really should have been more suspicious, more conservative in my optimism regarding a legitimate Metropolitan turnaround. These guys are hardly as resilient as I'd imagined.

Turns out one bounceback win in and of itself isn't enough to stop the bleeding. Instead, Saturday's victory served the same purpose as applying a band aid when in need of a tourniquet, or trying to plug a leaking canoe with a stick of Juicy Fruit. Sure, it might buy you a few more minutes out on the lake, but eventually the canoe is gonna take on water again. and sooner or later (and probably sooner, knowing these Mets) that canoe is gonna submerge, never to resurface.

The Mets, it would appear, are taking on lots of water, and they're awfully far from shore.

As today's humiliating final score would indicate, Greg Prince's comparison of the 2009 Mets and 1978 Football Giants was apt. 15-0 certainly sounds like a football score to me. And if Friday night marked Luis Castillo's "Joe Pisarcik moment," then this afternoon marked Johan Santana's Dave Brown moment. Santana's pitches were intercepted with seeming ease by the Yankees' bats, and, after being roughed up for 9 runs, he was sacked in the fourth inning. Santana looked less like an ace out there than someone in need of an Ace bandage. And a copy of this book.

I don't quite know why it is that I continue to allow this team to fool me into believing in them, especially after the events of the past two-plus seasons. Ever since Adam Wainwright's wicked curveball froze Carlos Beltran to end the 2006 NLCS, the Mets have been an imposter, a bunch of baseball zombies masquerading as a major league baseball team. Sure, David Wright is leading the major leagues in hitting. Carlos Beltran is swinging a hot bat, too. Francisco Rodriguez has been outstanding, and Omir Santos has been a revelation. All of those things, plus two dollars, will get you a ride on the subway, but none of those things are enough, individually, to make the whole of this team equal the sum of its parts.

In a way, these Mets truly do remind me of the Giants teams of the Dave Clown—I mean Brown—era. Those teams had some outstanding talent in Rodney Hampton, Michael Strahan, Jessie Armstead, Jumbo Elliott, Keith Hamilton, and others. They also had a coach (Dan Reeves) who had reached three Super Bowls and who today stands as the 8th winningest coach in NFL history. But the Giants managed only 23 wins out of the 53 Brown started, partially because they lacked talent to support their star players, but mostly because they lacked an identity.

The Mets, unfortunately, have an identity. Just ask 2008 World Series MVP Cole Hamels—They're "choke artists." And though they'll do their best to downplay the embarrassment of today's loss as they did Friday night's debacle, that's the identity they'll carry with them until they prove themselves otherwise. There's still more than 100 games left in the 2009 season. There's a whole lot of baseball left to play. But I'm through believing in these guys.

Today I wasted a beautiful day in New York City by staying indoors and listening to the Mets get humiliated while working on an edit that's proving to be more arduous than I anticipated. The latter I can accept, because it's my work and I get paid to do it. But the former I really should have avoided. I should have heeded the sage advice of my friend Jon Springer, who yesterday cautioned the readers of his terrific blog to "get outdoors, have dinner with ... family, take a few days off." I should've known better.

Tomorrow, mercifully, is an off day for the Mets. The way they're playing, they'll have plenty more of them come October.

Luis Pisarcik?

In an impassioned, epic post to the always excellent Faith and Fear in Flushing, Greg Prince suggests that Luis Castillo's shocking failure to secure a routine, game-ending pop-up off the bat of Alex Rodriguez last night marked "a Pisarcik moment" for the embattled second baseman.

It's been more than 30 years since Joe Pisarcik's colossal blunder cost the Giants a sure win over the Philadelphia Eagles, yet with all due respect to Mickey Owen and Trey Junkin, the fumble stood until last night as the most memorable individual failure in New York sports history.

Pisarcik's humiliating gaffe, as Prince notes, led to the immediate firing of offensive coordinator Bob Gibson and, at season's end, head coach John McVay and general manager Andy Robustelli. Gibson never worked in football again. Pisarcik, the goat, never won another game as the Giants starting quarterback and was released after the 1979 season.

It is unlikely, however, that Castillo's error will carry the same (or similar) consequences for the Mets. Roughly 17 hours after his monumental miscue, Castillo was back in the lineup today, leading off and playing second. Jerry Manuel's and Omar Minaya's jobs both seem safe for now. Accountability, it would appear, isn't all that high on Fred Wilpon's list of virtues.

One of the great things about baseball, though, is that it's a game that offers its participants the opportunity for almost immediate redemption, and Mets fans are, generally speaking, a forgiving lot. So hopefully it won't take Castillo—a three-time Gold Glove-winner—30 years (or more) to live down his infamous error.

There's still 103 games left in the season, and despite all the injuries and schizophrenic play, the Mets entered today's contest in the Bronx only 4 games out of first place. Last night's loss certainly hurts. It's the most painful loss in a season thus far filled with painful losses. But as Carlos Beltran said after the game, the Mets aren't kids, they're professionals. They "have to move on and play better." They "can't go home and cry."

Last night's dropped pop-up may well have been Luis Castillo's Pisarcik moment, but today's game represented a chance to put it behind him and play ball. He took advantage of that opportunity, singling twice and fielding his position without incident. But baseball is a team game, and Castillo's Mets teammates rallied behind him today, banging out a season high seventeen hits while pitching surprisingly well. They got a great start out of Buffalo call-up Fernando Nieve (who?), which was followed by an outstanding inning and a third from the suddenly lights-out Sean Green. This time around, K-Rod allowed no baserunners in the ninth, got the final batter (Melky Cabrera) to ground to third, and David Wright made the routine play to end the game.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Having seen the abyss and avoiding its depths, I'm hopeful that these resilient Mets will continue to rally in the wake of last night's horrorshow. Sure, they're still down Delgado and Reyes, and they're going to have to continue relying on guys like Tim Redding and Nieve for the time being, but after bouncing back after one of the worst losses in franchise history to win in convincing fashion they showed the kind of resolve and character winning teams must possess if they are to be considered serious pennant contenders. Exactly the kind of character some said was missing earlier this season.

Of course, the Mets can undo all of this by going out and laying an egg tomorrow afternoon. But with Johan the valiant taking to the hill, I don't see that happening. A true ace, the only eggs Johan associates with are the golden goose eggs he is known to post on major league scoreboards.

Now let's put this whole thing behind us and never speak of it again.

Tour the Giants New Training Facility with Steve Smith, #12

As you may have read elsewhere, the Giants recently moved into a brand-spanking new, state of the art training facility, located just west of Giants Stadium.

But reading about the 199,000 square-foot complex really doesn't do the place justice. You've got to see it to believe it. And thanks to amateur filmmaker/wide receiver Steve Smith, you now can.

Smith recently posted three self-shot videos to his Facebook page (totaling about 15 minutes) in which he gives his fans a nice tour of the entire facility (minus the executive floor). In the videos are cameos by teammates Rich Seubert, Shaun O'Hara, Kareem McKenzie, Ahmad Bradshaw, Zak DeOssie, Sinorice Moss, Adam Koets, Osi Umenyiora (a welcome sight), and trainer Ronnie Barnes.

Enjoy:

Part 1 (4:00)
Part 2 (9:10)
Part 3 (1:43)

Michael Strahan, Master Thespian

While his former teammate Tiki Barber is busy making omelettes and humiliating himself (repeatedly) on network television, Michael Strahan is busy exploiting the same medium to become a sitcom star. Here's a promising 2.5 minute trailer for his new show "Brothers," a family sitcom which will debut on Fox this Fall.

Other athletes have made successful transitions to sitcomdom, most notably Bob Uecker and Alex Karras (though Dick Butkus not so much), and Strahan certainly does appear to have the charisma to pull off playing a retired NFL superstar named Mike. The trailer is also, much to my surprise, not entirely awful, and it's always nice to see Carl Weathers get work (though it will take some getting used to his shaven domepiece). I wonder how many episodes it will take before Weathers snaps at Mike, "Don't be a damn fool!" 2? 3?

As the ever astute Dash put it in a recent post to Deadspin, "this thing will either last 15 years or be canceled in the first week."

Amen, brother. I'll set the over/under on the number of gap-tooth jokes in the first season at 92.

Me and Tweeter King

Hand me a late pass if you need to, but this whole Twitter business is a game changer. I've just been futzing around on the site killing time, and in the span of two days I've been directly addressed by both Rich Eisen of NFL Network and Peter King of Sports Illustrated. Who's next, Oprah?

Now, I'm not deluded enough to think that either Eisen or King are reading this humble, infrequently updated site, but you never know, you know? Crazier things have happened.

Eisen and I are both proud graduates of the University of Michigan, and I actually met King once on the set of Inside the NFL. He kindly gave a glowing endorsement for a book I acquired and edited a while back, too. So, you see, Peter King and I are regular pals. Just like Peter and Favre are. Only I didn't choke away a Conference Championship or fake retire eleventeen times. Who does Favre think he is, anyway, Sugar Ray Leonard?

Turns out I'm not the only person in the Giants universe using Twitter, either. Antonio Pierce is an active tweeter, as is Steve Smith, who also maintains a lively Facebook profile. Jessie Armstead has recently joined the fray, too. From what I've been told by informed sources, the Eli Manning Twitter account is a fake, though. That's a shame, really, because it was fascinating. Oh, fake Eli. You're such a card!

Anyway, this is all just a roundabout way for me to say follow me. Those of you who have criticized me for writing posts that are too long (an old friend once told me the ideal blog post is 500 words or less) will be heartened by the knowledge that my tweets will limited to 140 characters apiece. And who knows? Maybe I'll say something interesting one of these days.

Edit 5/16.09: You can now also follow Sinorice Moss and Danny Clark.
Edit 6/3/09: Kevin Boss and Michael Strahan, too.
Edit 6/15/09: 2nd Eisen re-tweet.

The (Not So) Long Farewell

I got my first up-close look at New Shea last Sunday.

With an assist from the Bluenachick, I arranged for two seats in section 521 of the Promenade for the occasion of the Old Man's sixty-fifth birthday.

We met at the park two hours before first pitch, and after passing through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, we walked every square inch of the ballpark that we were permitted to walk with our Promenade Level tickets.

We walked the Field Level concourse twice, investigating every nook, cranny and food vendor we could.

The Old Man had been at the first game ever played at Original Shea forty-five years and two days prior, April 17, 1964. And as he bit into his succulent pulled pork sandwich from New Shea's outpost of Blue Smoke and drew from his healthy portion of box frites with creamy bacon sauce (I opted for the "Mama's Special" from Original Shea holdover, Mama's of Corona), I couldn't resist asking him if he remembered what his food options were like that first afternoon at Original Shea. Hot dog, he said. Beer, probably. Peanuts. Hell if he remembered, he was there to see a ballgame.

So were we, I said. The first Sunday afternoon game in the history of New Shea.

Eventually we found our way to our seats and gathered our bearings. Or at least we tried to. I located the out-of-town scoreboard, the starting line-ups (now with names!). But we had barely warmed our seats before we were approached by another father and son tandem, who kindly informed us that we were sitting in the wrong ones. Theirs, to be exact. And while this was something that never would have happened to us at Original Shea, we chalked up the minor embarrassment (we were sitting one section over from where we should have been) to our general unfamiliarity with the new park.

Five hours later, the park didn't feel any more familiar. Though the Old Man and I both appreciated the increased leg room, less treacherous staircases and wider seats at New Shea, none of those things made us comfortable. Instead, we felt like we were watching a game in an opponent's park, certainly not our home. With the exception of the inebriated woman seated a few rows behind us who insisted on yelling "I got it!" anytime a batted ball arced skyward, there wasn't anything about the experience that made it feel like Original Shea. I don't think I saw (or heard) Cow-Bell Man even once, come to think of it. But I did see several people sipping wine. New Shea's got quite the selection, from what I understand. It was all a rather the disorienting experience.

As the Old Man and I struggled to find our footing in the promenade and as I resigned myself to an understanding that the wine and corporate sponsorship was here to stay, it occurred to me that we only had about sixteen months before we'd be experiencing a similar bewildering feeling at New Giants Stadium, whatever it's eventually called.

Fans, for whatever reason, don't seem to make the same sort of emotional connection to football stadiums that they do with baseball stadiums, and there is little, I'll concede, about Giants Stadium itself that invites nostalgia. The place is, in essence, an endless slab of cold concrete. It's a soulless structure, devoid of all the things that make a ballpark feel like home. The concessions are horrendous, the bathrooms are almost as bad as those at Original Shea, and it can take you two hours to get out of the parking lot after the game if you don't know what you're doing.

And though the sign out front says Giants Stadium and the seats inside are blue and red, the Giants have never been the building's sole tenant. Rock concerts are held there. And papal visits. And soccer matches. Hell, the Jets have played there for more than twenty years now, albeit without distinction.

But despite all of that, Giants Stadium has always been a magical place to me. When I said that it's one of three locations on earth where I believe I'd feel at peace to die, I wasn't exaggerating. Ever since the September Sunday in my seventh year (1982) when the Old Man finally convinced my mother that I was old enough to go, it's held a special place in my heart.

Spend 200-plus Sunday afternoons pretty much anywhere, and it'll be sure to leave a lasting impression on you. But spend 200-plus Sunday afternoons (and the occasional Monday night) in the same seat braving rain, snow and bitterly cold, swirling winds screaming your head off in support of fifty-three occasionally spectacular strangers dressed in blue, and the place is bound to become a part of you.

That said, I'm going to resist the temptation of dwelling endlessly on the death of Giants Stadium this season. Though I admired the yeoman's work done by the folks over at Loge13 last year, I really don't want to become their Big Blue counterpart. I don't want to be "Last Year of Giants Stadium Guy." While I concede that it would provide a nice framework for my writings this upcoming season, and a rudder with which I could conceivably navigate my way through to its final days, that's not my mission here. I've had some of the best and some of the worst days of my life in Giants Stadium, but as much as I love the place, it's not a museum to me. My memories aren't so much tied to the building as they are to the people who inhabit it, the Old Man and my knucklehead homies every bit as much as Harry and Rodney and Eli.

So even though The Fumble happened here. And Flipper Anderson. And even though Jimmy Hoffa may or may not be buried here, I'm not going to allow the 2009 season to become a funeral. Instead, I'm looking at 2009 as an opportunity to celebrate Giants Stadium. Because once the Giants move next door, gamedays in the Meadowlands will never be the same again.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Old Man and I have been encountering an increasing number of unfamiliar faces in Section 127 in recent years. Part of that is no doubt the result of the aging season-ticket-holding fanbase attending less games, especially in cold weather. Part of it is also due to the economic opportunism of those season-ticket holders who choose to take advantage of the lucrative re-seller's market, easily doubling or tripling their investments through sites like StubHub and Craigslist. But part of it is the sad truth that attending a pro football game is no longer possible for many of the working class folks who inhabited the stands in the days before ticket prices became outrageous.

The Old Man doesn't remember how much his tickets set him back in 1964, but considering how he was a twenty-year-old college student with a part-time job as an errand boy at the time, I doubt they were all that expensive. In 2009, though--his forty-sixth season as a season ticket holder--they'll cost him $85 a pop. Times ten times four, plus parking. From what we've been told, they'll be $120 a pop once the new building opens in 2010. And those will be on the relative low side, as tickets in the new stadium will range from $85 to $700 per game. And this is all on top of the cost of the Personal Seat Licenses (or PSLs).

Ah, yes. PSLs. Those will run Giants fans anywhere from $1,000 (Terrace 1 & 2) to $20,000 (Field 1 and Coach's Club) per seat for the right to purchase those exorbitant tickets in the first place.

The Giants, like the Yankees, are learning the hard way that in this troubled economy there is a limit to what fans are willing to pay to see their home team compete. For years there was believed to be a thirty-year waiting list for Giants season tickets. But with thousands of unsold PSLs in the Mezzanine Club levels still available at $7,500 and $12,500, the waiting list has all but evaporated. People as far down as number 50,000 on the list have been recently offered the opportunity to buy these PSLs, some of whom placed their names on the list only a year or so ago.

Eventually, one would imagine, the Giants will be able to unload these PSLs (and the $400 and $700 game tickets that come with them) to some corporate interest or worse, ticket brokerage agencies. This will ensure the Giants a handsome return on their investment, which is sizeable. It will also ensure, rather unfortunately, that the club level of New Giants Stadium will be full of suits and wealthy visiting fans of opposing teams. Awesome.

Back in the 80s, things were decidedly different. Section 127 was like a community, every week the same faces in the seats around us. The Old Man and I knew many of them by name. Others, we referred to by humorous nicknames. Friendships formed, to the point where some fans exchanged Christmas gifts. And many of those familiar faces were the old timers--holdovers from Yankee Stadium and The Polo Grounds--fans who had come of age during the Golden Age of Giants football (1956-1963), when the club appeared in six championship games in eight years. Loyally, they had stuck with the team through their fallow period, the seventeen year playoff drought from 1964-1980. And one of the most wonderful things about the 1986 championship season was seeing those old timers enjoy a sweet measure of redemption. Thirty years is a long time to wait for a winner.

Now, most of those old timers are gone. If they still hold tickets, we don't see them anymore. If they don't, there's a good chance it's because they got priced out. The few that still remain likely won't be able to make the move to the new building, which means the Giants will be losing what was once the heart of their fanbase. The folks who bridged Conerly and Simms, Huff and Carson, Robustelli and Marshall.

Brick by brick, fan by fan, the Giants history is disappearing. Their first home, the majestic Polo Grounds of Harlem (1925-1955), was demolished in 1964. Their second home, Yankee Stadium (1956-1973) will be torn down later this year. The Yale Bowl still stands and was declared a national historical landmark in 1987, but considering how the Giants compiled a 4-23-1 record in their two seasons there (1973-74), I'm not sure that's the part of the franchise's rich history they'd want preserved. The Giants also played one season (1975, the year of my birth) in Original Shea, before establishing residence at Giants Stadium the following year. Original Shea has already been reduced to a pile of rubble in New Shea's parking lot and Giants Stadium awaits a similar fate. It's progress, I guess, but at what cost?

I'll be out at New Shea again tonight, and I'm hopeful that it'll feel more like home. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But one thing I'm sure of is that it won't feel like Original Shea. I've got sixteen months to prepare myself for the eventuality that New Giants Stadium will feel the same way. That's a long time, I guess, but after twenty-eight years in Section 127 it's really not a long time at all.

At least I'll have eight more looks at that cold slab of concrete, perhaps more if the Giants earn a home playoff game. And maybe the nine new players the Giants brought into their fold this weekend can help contribute towards a grand send-off for the Stadium. Hopefully, in doing so, some of its magic will rub off on them. Another Super Bowl championship, and maybe I won't begrudge the folks in the club level their wine and cheese. After all, I'll just be there to see a ballgame.

2009 Schedule Announced

Sunday, Sept. 13 vs. WASHINGTON, 4:15 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 20 at Dallas, 8:20 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 27 at Tampa, 1 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 4 at Kansas City, 1 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 11 vs. OAKLAND, 1 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 18 at New Orleans, 1 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 25 vs. ARIZONA, 8:20 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 1 at Philadelphia, 4:15 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 8 vs. SAN DIEGO, 4:15 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 15 BYE
Sunday, Nov. 22 vs. ATLANTA, 1 p.m.*
Thursday, Nov. 26 at Denver, 8:20 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 6 vs. DALLAS, 4:15 p.m.*
Sunday, Dec. 13 vs. PHILADELPHIA, 8:20 p.m.*
Monday, Dec. 21 at Washington, 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 27 vs. CAROLINA, 1 p.m.*
Sunday, Jan. 3 at Minnesota, 1 p.m.*

*Times subject to change due to NFL’s flexible scheduling system.

R.I.P. Brad Van Pelt, 1951-2009

I had a whole post planned for this week about Lawrence Taylor turning fifty earlier this month, about how the news of his reaching the half-century mark signalled the official end of my youth. It was going to be a really funny post, with references to LT's wild extra-curricular exploits and jokes about his Wrestlemania appearance, Punch cigar ads and forthcoming national humiliation on ABC's Dancing With the Stars. If LT could be fifty, I reasoned, then time will run us all down eventually. Just like LT ran down opposing quarterbacks. Time is relentless like that.

But this morning, when I learned about the untimely death of LT's "Crunch Bunch" teammate Brad Van Pelt from an apparent heart attack at age fifty-seven, it put the mortality issue--both my heroes' and my own--into a new perspective for me.

This wasn't like the passing of Roosevelt Brown five years ago at the age of seventy-one. As a teenager I had observed Brown limping along the sidelines at Giants training camp at Fairleigh Dickinson University and was amazed when my father told me that this man, then nearing sixty, had once been one of the game's most dominant tackles. Time (and the game) had certainly taken its toll on Brown's body. He grimaced with every step he took, and looked to be closer to eighty than sixty. But because I had never seen Rosey Brown play--because I had never cheered for him, collected his football card or hung his poster on my wall, I didn't feel his passing personally the way those of my father's generation surely did. I didn't feel it because I couldn't touch it. By the time Roosevelt Brown entered my consciousness he was already a relic. It never occurred to me that the young gladiators he was helping to coach might one day walk like him, or, worse, fail to see their fifty-eighth birthday, as Van Pelt did today.

Van Pelt is different. Though he was already nearing the end of his Giants career by the time I began attending Giants games with my father in 1982, he was still one of the the team's most beloved players. Van Pelt and Harry Carson had provided the majority of highlights for some of the worst Giants teams ever assembled in the 1970s. As the Giants amassed a putrid 24-52 record from 1976-1980, Van Pelt made the Pro Bowl all five of those otherwise miserable seasons (he was joined by Carson on the NFC team in 1978 and 1979) and in doing so captured the hearts of the fans. Despite never playing on a winning team in the 1970s, he was voted the Giants player of the decade.

In 1981 Van Pelt, Carson and Brian Kelley (chosen 313 picks after Van Pelt in the 1973 draft) were joined by wunderkind Lawrence Taylor and together they formed "The Crunch Bunch", one of the more formidable linebacking corps in the NFL at the time. The Giants made the playoffs that year for the first time in seventeen seasons, beating the rival Eagles in the Wild Card round before losing to the eventual Super Bowl champion Forty Niners, and a new, promising era in Giants football was suddenly underway.

That offseason, "The Crunch Bunch" released the iconic poster seen below, which my father purchased for me as a gift. I slept under it for most of my childhood, and I can only assume that I was but one of thousands of young Giants fans who did the same. "The Crunch Bunch" were like gods to me, untouchable. They looked (and played) every bit as tough as the John Deere bulldozer they sat on for that photo shoot, and it would only be a matter of time before they'd be champions. Well, at least LT and Harry would.

"The Crunch Bunch", L to R: Taylor, Kelley, Carson, & Van Pelt

Unfortunately, Van Pelt (and Kelley) didn't stick around long enough to partake in the glory of 1986. Kelley retired after the '83 season, and when the Giants selected Van Pelt's fellow Michigan State alumnus Carl Banks with the third overall pick in 1984, Van Pelt's days in blue were over. He was just thirty-two years old at the time, a year younger than I am now, but Giants GM George Young felt he needed a young, pass rushing outside linebacker to complement Taylor, and after selecting Banks traded Van Pelt to the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for fullback Tony Galbreath.

Van Pelt refused to report to the Vikings, and was subsequently traded to the Raiders, for whom he started twenty-three games over the next two seasons. By 1986, though, when the Giants became World Champions for the first time in thirty years, Van Pelt was serving in reserve duty for the Cleveland Browns, his last year in the NFL. That year he would suffer the final professional indignity of being on the defense that allowed John Elway to drive the length of the field and beat his team in overtime in the AFC Championship Game in Cleveland, on the same day his former Giants teammates celebrated their first Super Bowl berth in franchise history with a shutout.

That wasn't the way things were supposed to go for Van Pelt, the former Maxwell Award winner who had turned down a contract from baseball's St. Louis Cardinals to sign with the Giants. A player of his ability and character probably deserved a better send-off into retirement. But Van Pelt's contributions to the Giants throughout the 70s and his mentoring of young Lawrence Taylor helped lay the groundwork for the team's renaissance of the mid-to-late 80s, a fact not lost on his former teammates.

"We had success as a group," Carson told Tom Rock of Newsday about those 1970s Giants linebacking corps. "As a team we did not have it. But we took great pride in the way that we played the game together."

"[Brad] was one of the main reasons why the Giants always had a signature defense," added George Martin, a teammate of Van Pelt's from 1975-1983.

A few years back, I took a meeting with Carson, my boyhood idol, to discuss a book project he had been working on. In the meeting Harry shared with me that the life expectancy of an NFL player is only fifty-three years, the same number that appeared on his Giants uniform. It was a difficult bit of information to process at the time, but thinking about it now, in the wake of today's news, it's staggering. Fifty-three is only twenty years older than I am now, and it's eleven years younger than my father is. And neither of us was a two-time All American safety. My old man is overweight and diabetic, and I'm so out of shape I can't run to the bathroom without getting winded. Granted, neither of our bodies have had to endure the kind of punishment an NFL player's does, but it still begs the question: if the average life expectancy of a top-conditioned athlete is only fifty-three years, then what chance do the rest of us have?

Van Pelt had joined Carson and LT on the field at Giants Stadium back in 2007, when the Giants honored Harry for his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in a halftime ceremony. Van Pelt appeared to be in fine shape that night, and he received a tremendous ovation from the home crowd, a crowd who remembered and appreciated his contributions to the team at a time when there was little else to cheer for besides him and Harry.

Today, Giants fans cheer for Van Pelt again. Rest in peace, #10. You will be missed.

Exclusive Bluenatic Interview with Author Murray Greenberg

When the talk around the tailgate turns to the subject of the greatest quarterbacks in New York Giants history, the conversation invariably turns into an argument over the respective merits of Charley Conerly, Y.A. Tittle, and Phil Simms. Eli Manning, fresh off his Super Bowl MVP award, also receives some consideration, (mostly from the tailgate's more junior attendees) as does Fran Tarkenton among those die-hards who came of age in the Giants "wilderness years." But rarely, if ever, is the name Benny Friedman uttered. And that's a shame, because as biographer Murray Greenberg points out in his fascinating new book Passing Game: Benny Friedman and the Transformation of Football, Friedman may very well have been the best of them all.

Friedman, the Giants quarterback from 1929-1931, never delivered a championship to the city of New York. But as the game's first great passer and the league's top gate attraction, Friedman's outstanding talent and popularity may have single-handedly saved both the Giants and the National Football League from financial ruin and premature extinction.

Bluenatic recently had the good fortune to conduct an interview with Greenberg over email. Here it is below, unedited and in its entirety.

* * * * *

MW: To begin, a somewhat embarrassing disclosure: I am, by trade, a book editor. And despite being a proud graduate of the University of Michigan, a Jew, and a lifelong New York Giants fan with a historical bent, I passed on this project when it crossed my desk a few years back. I told your agent at the time that it was a terrific proposal and precisely the kind of book I'd love to read as a fan, but not one that I could ever convince my bottom-line oriented Publisher to take on. Considering how Benny Friedman, as you wrote in the book's introduction, has been "largely forgotten" by history, I can't imagine that I was the only editor to respond in such a manner. So my first question for you is, how difficult was it for you to find a home for Passing Game, and how did you manage to finally convince the good people at Public Affairs to take it on? For what it's worth, I'm glad they did.

MG: Benny Friedman's story is more than a football story. It is a human interest story -- a story of the rediscovery of a genuine American innovator and a huge celebrity in his day who had become lost over time, a man who during the Roaring Twenties revolutionized football with the forward pass while becoming a hero to the American Jewish community. I've always felt that readers would be fascinated to learn of Friedman's groundbreaking career and remarkable life. A number of publishers, perhaps concerned with Friedman's relative anonymity, declined my proposal. I'm most grateful to PublicAffairs for the opportunity to rediscover the story of the sensation that was Benny Friedman.

MW: The first thing that struck me while reading Passing Game was the incredible depth of the research. The book contains perhaps the most extensive bibliography of any sports book I've ever encountered, and it's remarkable how detailed the book is considering the lack of living sources. As a first time author, how did you go about approaching the research phase of the project, and how did you manage to pull it all together? I imagine it must have taken years.

MG: I reviewed a great deal of material and it did take several years to research and write the book. But the work gave me the opportunity to indulge my love for sports and history, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process.


MW: Though you expose some of Friedman's faults, most notably his oversized ego, it is hard for you to suppress your admiration and respect for your subject throughout the biography. That said, you are careful not to speculate too much on the cause of Friedman's exclusion from the Pro Football Hall of Fame until 2005, more than twenty years after his death, or his general lack of recognition among the greatest athletes of his era. Looking back now with a fully informed perspective, why do you think Friedman's incredible career and contributions to the evolution of football offenses have been so overlooked? After all, this is a man whom Paul Gallico once called "the greatest football player in the world," and whose record for touchdown passes in a season (20) stood for 13 years. How much of this do you think can be attributed to anti-semitism? How much to the brevity of his pro career? And how much to the perceived stain his suicide might have left on his legacy?

MG: Occasionally, for various reasons and, sometimes, for no discernible reason, people who have made important contributions in their fields and attained great celebrity become lost over time. Friedman was one such man -- perhaps due to the fact that he played so long ago, perhaps for no discernible reason. Or perhaps due to anti-Semitism, though I've not come across any hard evidence to confirm that. Nor have I come across any hard evidence that would establish that anti-Semitism kept Friedman out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. However, anti-Semitism can be subtle. Given that, and given Friedman's singular contributions to the game and his peerless ability as recognized by the writers and players of his time -- the great Red Grange called Friedman the best quarterback he ever played against -- it is not unreasonable to consider anti-Semitism as a possible factor. That said, Sid Luckman was elected in the Hall's third class.

Some Hall voters may have felt Friedman didn't play long enough, but by the standards of his time, his career wasn't overly short. I don't believe Friedman's suicide -- which in any case occurred 19 years after the Hall's first class was inducted -- was a factor.

MW: The New York Giants have had some pretty darn good quarterbacks in their history. Charley Conerly, Y.A. Tittle, Fran Tarkenton, Phil Simms, Eli Manning, etc. Where do you think Friedman ranks among them?

MG: Friedman was the greatest quarterback of his time by a huge margin and, certainly as a professional, was widely considered the greatest football player of his time, period. He was unequaled as a field general, and his statistics surpassed his contemporaries' by such wide margins -- as for example in 1929, when he led the league with 20 TD passes while the great Ernie Nevers was second with six --that it was as if he was playing a different game. And he was. As football's first great passer at a time when the forward pass was usually used only in desperate situations, he changed the way football is played, launching the game toward the modern pass-happy era and grooming the path for the great passers -- including those you mention -- who followed him. Though Friedman's tenure in New York was shorter than that of other Giant quarterbacks, he must rank very high in the team's quarterback hierarchy.

MW: In 2005, less than a month before Friedman was finally inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Haaretz published a list of the twenty greatest Jewish athletes of all time. Friedman did not make the list. Sid Luckman did, as did a South African cricketer and two table tennis players. Where do you think Friedman ranks in the pantheon of Jewish athletes?

MG: In answering this question I would reiterate my answer to your previous question and add that Friedman helped save a fledgling NFL that was reeling in the midst of the Depression, as fans flocked to see him display his sensational talent. And at a time of rising anti-Semitism in America, a time when many young Jews looked to sports, particularly football, to smash stereotypes and gain a place in America's cultural mainstream, Friedman was a major hero to the American Jewish community. All of this surely earns him a place high in the Jewish athlete pantheon.



MW: You mentioned in the book that both Penn State and Ohio State passed on offering Friedman a scholarship coming out of Glenville High School in Cleveland, reporting that Penn State's Glenn Killinger ultimately decided that Friedman was "too small to play." But why did Ohio State pass on the local hero? Even Michigan, for whom he would go on to become a All-American, didn't offer him a scholarship. Was it just because of his size? I don't want to harp on this unnecessarily, but do you think it's possible that anti-semitism played a role? Could that also have contributed to Friedman being buried on the bench for so long at Michigan? You wrote that in 1925, Benny was one of only two Jews on Michigan's entire varsity roster.

MG: As I said in a previous answer, anti-Semitism can be subtle, but I did not come across evidence that anti-Semitism directly impacted where Friedman did or did not attend college. In the book, I discuss Friedman's view of the role of anti-Semitism in his struggles to crack the Michigan lineup.

MW: It's unclear, from reading the book, why Friedman chose to hang up his cleats after only eight seasons. Was it truly just the lure of a coaching job, of a more secure future? Or were there other considerations as well?

MG: Again, Friedman's career wasn't overly short for its day. That said, although Friedman's sensational play and drawing power had helped the struggling NFL stay afloat, he had reservations about its viability. Those reservations, his desire to coach, and perhaps some weariness of the wear and tear that his skills and prominence brought him -- opposing players usually saved their most physical play for him, and fans eager to see him play wouldn't tolerate his removal from games for a breather -- likely hastened his retirement.

MW: In chapter fourteen, you write about how Friedman's star power helped turn around the economic fortunes of the New York Giants, the increased gates bringing them from a $54,000 loss in 1928 to an $8,500 profit in 1929. "It is no stretch," you wrote, "to say that in 1929, the sensation that was Benny Friedman very likely saved the New York Giants from extinction." Fascinating stuff. The NFL was still a fledgling league in 1929, and it is hard to imagine the league surviving without a franchise in the nation's biggest market. So if it isn't a stretch to say that Benny Friedman saved the New York Giants, is it a stretch to say, by extension, that he also indirectly saved the National Football League?

MG: Given Friedman's importance to the Giants, his sensational skills, and his magnetic fan appeal throughout the league, I believe Friedman played a crucial role in helping the NFL survive.

MW: In chapter twenty one, you write of how Friedman was openly critical of some of the "modern" pro quarterbacks of the 1960s and seventies: guys like Namath, Bradshaw, etc. How do you think Friedman would look upon the great quarterbacks of the present day? The Peyton Mannings and Tom Bradys of the world? Do you think he would be pleased with how the quarterback position has evolved?

MG: Friedman, not one to hesitate to offer his views on football, had some interesting views of the evolution of the quarterback position that I discuss in the book. Regarding present-day quarterbacks, Friedman admired great passers, and admired outstanding field generalship even more. Referring to the two quarterbacks you mention, I believe Friedman would think very highly of Brady and Manning, both of who are outstanding passers as well as outstanding field generals. They are also tough and (at least until this year in Brady's case) have avoided serious injury without sacrificing toughness and intensity. Friedman believed that too many quarterbacks -- such as Joe Namath, to name one -- unnecessarily expose themselves to injury.