Gameday with Michael

Yeah, the Jets lost AFC Championship Game to the Colts on Sunday, but is wasn't as bad a day for me as you might think. One thing that made the day really nice was that Michael watched most of the first half of the game with me. He's not really ready to start following a game yet, but he is starting to ask some questions about the game, and it's fun to have him around.


He lost interest by the second half ( which is a way was good, because the Jets were winning 17-13 at halftime, but lost 30-17 ), but he was really fired up for the game earlier in the day. As I noted on my facebook page, he asked me to get him a Mark Sanchez football when we were at the mall the day before the game ( He's holding the football in the photo above. BTW, The bear's name is Boozer, after the Jets' Super Bowl III hero Emerson Boozer. ). On the morning of the game, he crawled into my bed to wake me up at about 6:30 AM. When I asked him why he was up so early, he told me "We have to watch the Jets game today, Daddy!". I told him we didn't have to rush, because the game wasn't until 3 PM.
Later that day, he was playing with Peter in the basement at about 2:45. I reminded him the game was starting at 3:00, and I headed upstairs to watch the game. At 2:59, I heard his little feet sprinting up the stairs in order to make sure he didn't miss the game

So yeah, parenthood is hard at times, but it's times like Sunday afternoon that make me really happy to be a Dad? :)

BTW, I decided to post the photo below just to give you an idea of what I look like from behind when I watch football with my "lucky" football on my head. Unfortunately, the football hat didn't work as well as it had last week.


Oh, one more story about Michael and the football game. When I was putting Michael to bed, he asked me why the Jets had lost. I told him the Jets had lost because a lot of their players had gotten hurt. Michael looked at me with a face full of concern as said ...

"Who hurt them?"

He's such a sweet boy. :)

BTW, the photos below are a good representation of how he falls asleep each night. He tends to read in bed until he falls asleep. Click on the photo at the bottom to see what he was reading that night.

Superstitious Sunday

I don't really intend to make this into a sports blog, and considering that one of my most loyal readers is from Australia, and another is from Canada ( Plus another from New Zealand who used to comment a lot, but seemed to stop following this blog after my YouTube presence started to fade away. :( ), if I was going to blog about a sport regularly, it certainly wouldn't American football.

However, I'm going to have to touch on American football a least a little bit here, because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to tell you the odd story of superstitions and my birthday party.

As you probably already know, I turned 40 just a few days ago. On Sunday a few friends and family members gathered for my birthday party ( And I do mean "a few". I really didn't want to make a big deal out of my birthday. However, Ruth insisted on throwing a party, so we invited a few family members a few friends from the "old neighborhood" ). However, the focus ( at least on my part ) wasn't on my birthday, but rather on the football game that would be played at 4:40 that afternoon.

As I mentioned in my last post, a really BIG Jets games was being played that weekend. Well, at least it was big from a JETS fan perspective. The New York Jets won the Super Bowl ( the championship game of American football ) on January 12th 1969. From that point on, it's been almost been nothing but misery and frustration for Jets fans ( I was born January 15, 1970, and I started following the Jets in 1977 ). The Jets have not even advanced to the Super Bowl ( let alone won it ) since that day in 1969. They've made it to the AFC championship game ( the game they would have to win to make it to the Super Bowl ) twice since then, but they suffered crushing defeats each time ( In January of 1983 and 1999 ). On the day of my 40th birthday party, they were playing for the right to go to the AFC championship game. So, from a Jets fan perspective, this was a HUGE game. Nobody really expected the Jets to win this game, but we were all hopeful ( The Jets went 9-7 in the regular season. They advanced to the playoffs by winning their final two games against teams that were not really trying ( In the Jets 15th game Jets they beat a 14-0 Colts team which rested all their starting players in the 2nd half of the game because they had already wrapped up the best record in the conference ( Which means the Colts would automatically advance to the 2nd round of the playoffs, and would get to play all their playoff games at their home stadium ( except for the Super Bowl, which is always played at a neutral site ). In the Jets' 16th game, they beat a 10-5 Bengals team which had already wrapped up a playoff spot, and could not really improve their playoff position by winning. ). So, it the opinion of most people in the sports media, the Jets were gift-wrapped their playoff spot by the Colts and Bengals, and didn't even deserve to be in the playoffs. The Jets surprised those "experts" by beating the Bengals in the first round of the playoffs ( I bet the Bengals now regret helping the Jets get into the playoffs by not really trying to beat the Jets in the last game of the regular season! ), but they now had to travel to San Diego to play a Chargers team which had finished 13-3 by winning their last 11 games in a row. ).

So, we were all hoping that the Jets could get the Promised Land of the AFC Championship Game, but we also all ready to have the Jets rips out our hearts again. We could all see the Jets playing a great game, getting our hopes up, being on the verge of victory, and then crushing our spirit by losing in heartbreaking fashion. This kind of thing had happened far too many times in the past for us not to expect it. It happened the last time the Jets were in this position 5 years ago, and it happened in an extremely excruciating fashion back in January of 1987 ( more on the later ).

So despite being an extremely rational and scientific person, I decided that Sunday would be a great day pull out all the weapons in arsenal of sports superstitions. Perhaps we couldn't really do anything to impact the outcome of the game ( OK, I KNEW we couldn't ), but goddammit, as long as we were all watching the game together, I thought it would be fun to make ourselves feel like we could affect the outcome of the game.

So, the first item to considering in my bag of superstitious tricks was my Mo Lewis # 57 jersey. I has worn it for many big Jets games, but it didn't really have a great track record ( After all, the Jets don't have a great track record ). However, I like that jersey ( this should be obvious to all you MoLewis57 followers out there ), so I was trying to think of a way to mix it up to make the Jersey more effective.

I decided that because Mo Lewis was a defensive player, I would wear my Mo Lewis jersey when the Jets were on defense, and I would take off the jersey when the Jets had the ball. I also decided that when the ball was punted (Possession of the ball changes when one team punts ( kicks ) the ball to the other team ), I would need to put the jersey on or take the jersey off while the ball was in the air. Eventually, my brother Craig showed up to the game wearing a Wayne Chrebet #80 jersey. Chrebet was an offensive player, so I immediately told Craig that he needed to keep the #80 jersey on when the Jets had the ball, and take the #80 jersey off when the Jets were on Defense. Of course, he was also required to put the jersey on or take the jersey off during punts.

So, picture the following:
Two grown men ( 40 years old and 36.5 years old ) with wives, kids, and Engineering degrees, frantically pulling football jerseys on an off ( each time I was putting my jersey on, Craig was taking his off, and vice versa ) each time the ball was punted in the game, in some delusional attempt to help the Jets win. Ruth actually took a video of this, so you might see it on YouTube someday, but for now, just try to picture how ridiculous that must have looked.

While the jersey changing was fun, it didn't turn out to be the focus of our superstitious attempt to change the Jets' luck. The focus turned out to be a little football - or rather, what was left of it. For years I've had this little mini Jets football. It's about the size of a Nerf football ( about 9.5 inches ( 24 cm ) from tip to tip ), but it's actually inflatable ( like a real football ) with a synthetic leather surface and laces. Three quarters of the surface is a fake-leather brown color, while one quarter of the surface is green and white with the Jets logo. I've never really seen the football as superstitious object, but I like to nervously fiddle with the ball ( spinning the ball in my hands; flipping the ball in the air and catching it; lofting passes to myself across the room during commercials ) while I'm watching a football game.

About a week before the Jets/Chargers game, I noticed that the mini football was getting a little bit flat. So a took the football over to a little hand-held air pump I keep in the garage and pumped it full of air until it felt rather firm. Actually, it felt a little bit too firm after I pumped it, but I figured it would lose a little air pressure in the week before the game.

So, I think you know where this is heading. We are about one minute into the Jets/Chargers game on Sunday when the mini football explodes open in my hands. Well, it didn't really explode - it just kinda burst at one of the seems. All inflatable footballs have 4 panels of leather ( or in this case, synthetic leather ) running lengthwise along the axis of the ball. The 4 panels surround a rubber air bladder, and the panels are stitched together at 4 seams that run the length of the ball. Well, the stitches at one of the 4 seams spontaneously gave out, and the air bladder popped out of the opening and became twice as big as it had been when it was being held in place by the 4 panels. You can see what I mean in the photo below.


It wasn't as if I was doing anything unusual with the ball at the time. There had been another game on earlier in the day, and I had been fiddling around with the football for at least 4 hours.

Then, all of a sudden, just a minute into the Jets game, it pops open like that in my hands.

Well, we all figured that this had to be some kind of an omen. We weren't sure if it was a good omen or a bad omen, but it was definitely some kind of a sign. I didn't really didn't ponder the meaning of the exploding ball for more than a about a minute, because I was too busy focusing on the game. All I was feeling then was a little disappointment that my little toy ball was broken. It just wasn't as much fun to fiddle around with the thing now that it was roughly the shape of a basketball. Eventually, I handed the ball off to my brother-in-law Orion ( Debby and Orion had flown in from California to spend the long holiday weekend ( Monday was MLK day ) at our home. Ruth's Dad was staying over too, so we had a little family reunion that weekend. ). Orion told me he wanted to see if he could peel the rest of the synthetic leather shell of the football off the air-bladder. I figured "Why not?", the ball wasn't going to do me much good anyway.

In the meantime, the experiment with taking the jersey's on an off was having mixed results. The Jets were playing great defense ( The Chargers would only wind up scoring 7 points in the first half ), but they were not doing anything on offense ( Which just goes to show the power of Mo Lewis, and why it was wise of me to name all my websites MoLewis57 rather than WayneChrebet80 ). By about the middle of the second quarter, the Jets still hadn't gotten a first down ( Non-football fans: Believe me, zero first downs in a quarter and a half of football is very bad ), and I was trying to think of what superstitious adjustments we could make at halftime to help the Jets out ( OK, I know that sounds insane, but 33 seasons of suffering as a Jets fan will do that to you ). Just about that time, Orion announced that he had finished peeling off the outer shell of the mini football. He handed me the shell, and suggesting that I could try wearing it as a hat.

GENIUS!!!

It's no surprise that the guy is an MIT grad.

Orion's idea was pure genius . Of course, why not wear the shell of the football at a hat? Nothing else had worked yet, so why not try that? You can look at the first photo in this blog post for a close-up look of how the "hat" looked on my head. I decided to wear the Mo Lewis jersey without the football hat when the Jets were on defense, and wear the football hat without the jersey when the Jets were on offense ( It just made a stupid kind of sense to wear the football hat on my head only when the Jets had the football ). After I did that, the Jets started to move the ball a bit ( they actually got a few firsts downs ), but they still were not able to score in the first half. They Jets were losing 7-0 at halftime. When the first half ended, everybody rushed to grab some dinner at halftime ( Ruth got a bunch of hero ( submarine ) rolls and roasted all sorts of meats. She made some pulled pork ( the pork cooked in a crock pot all day ) that was OMFG-level good ).

I actually didn't get to make my sandwich until the first commercial after the second half started. Trying to be a good host, I let everyone else get their food first. I had just cut open my hero roll and was eying the pulled-pork when I noticed that the second half was about to start. The Jets were going to receive the 2nd half kickoff, which meant the Jets were essentially going to be on offense to start the second half. So, I rushed back to my seat, and quickly threw on my football hat AND my Mo Lewis jersey. Of course, the Mo Lewis jersey was for defense, so I should not have put it on, but in my haste to get back to my seat before the 2nd half kickoff I got a little bit confused.

In any case, before I realized what I had done wrong, the Jets received the 2nd half opening kickoff an ran it back about 40 yards. This was the best the Jets had looked moving the ball all day. About a second after that, Craig asked me why I was wearing my Mo Lewis jersey when the Jets had the ball. I told him it was an accident, but considering the results that accident "produced", I decided on new strategy for the 2nd half. I would wear my Mo Lewis jersey for the rest of the game, and wear the football hat when the Jets had the ball. Craig would immediately stop wearing the Wayne Chrebet jersey that had failed to produce results in the first half. Our strategy was set for the rest of the game. The photo below shows roughly what the room looked like for the rest of the game ( Well, kinda. Ruth and my Great Aunt Loretta ( standing in the back ) didn't care about the game, and were just posing for a photo Ruth insisted we all take ( she set up a camera with an automatic timer next to the TV ( from the camera's perspective, the TV is to the right )) during one of the more crucial moments of the game. As you might notice, my eyes are focused on the TV rather than the camera. )


While you may certainly be justified in doubting the power of the football hat, the game certainly turned around in the second half. The air was pierced with the high-pitched sound of my scream when the Jets took the lead 10 - 7 with a touchdown early in the 4th quarter ( Note to non football fans: American football consists of 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. A touchdown plus an extra point is worth 7 points, so the Jets touchdown early in the 4th quarter turned a 7-3 Jets deficit to a 10-7 Jets lead ). The touchdown happened about 10 seconds after the picture above was taken.

With 9:27 left in the game, the air was pierced with my scream again when the Jets scored a touchdown that would give them ( after the extra point ) a 17 - 7 lead.

Now, the Jets were really in the driver's seat. Their defense had dominated the Chargers all day. The Jets defense has been so good that a 10 point lead might as well have been a 20-point lead. Almost nobody watching the game though the Jets had a chance to lose the game.

... but I could stop thinking about January of 1987.

In January of 1987, the Jets were playing for a chance to go to the AFC Championship game. If the Jets mad it to the AFC championship game, they would have played the Denver Broncos, a team that had beat handily earlier in the year. With 4 minutes to go in the game, the Jets were leading the Cleveland Browns 20-10. I thought the game was all but wrapped up. I though we were going to win the next week and go to the Super Bowl.

But hey, I was still 12 days shy of my 17th birthday. Despite the 14-0 disaster of the AFC championship game 4 years earlier, I was still to young to really understand what it meant to be a Jets fan.

4 minutes of game time later, I understood.

Somehow, against all odds, the Jets manages to give up 10 points in those last 4 minutes. The key play in the those last 4 minutes was a stupid roughing-the-passer call against Mark Gastineau ( stupid, not because it was a bad call - stupid because I'll believe to my dying day that Mark Gastineau is an idiot who cost us a chance to go to the Super Bowl ) which extended a drive which led to Cleveland tying the game. The game went to overtime ( Note to non-football fans: Overtime in the NFL is sudden death - the first team that scores wins ). The Browns wound up setting up for an easy field goal to win the game and MISSED. Were things finally going the Jets way? No. It just the the football gods wanted to give us on final glimmer of hope so they could rip out our hearts and show it to us ( like those villians in Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom ). A few minutes later the Brown made a field goal to win the game 23-20, and I finally understood what it meant to be a Jets fan.

So, let's turn the clock forward to January 17, 2010. The Jets have a 10-point lead late in the 4th quarter, but I can't help thinking about what happened 23 years earlier. With 3 minutes and 36 seconds left, the Chargers get the ball trailing 17-7 and start driving the ball the field.

They start driving the ball REALLY quickly and easily down the field.

Oh God! Not again!

Not again!

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! NOT AGAIN!

This can't be happening! This can't be happening!

Chargers score a touchdown with 2 minutes and 14 seconds left.

Jets 17, Chargers 14.

The Jets get the ball back.

The Chargers have 1 time out left and the two minute warning will stop the clock.

The Jets need to get one first down to wrap up this game. If they can get one first down, they can run the clock out. If they don't get a first down, the Chargers will get the call back with about 70 seconds left and a legit shot to tie the game.

Heck, if Chargers get that ball back, they WILL tie this game with a field goal. There's no doubt in my mind. Heck they might even score a touchdown to win the game, and if the don't win in in regulation, they'll certainly win the game in overtime. This is gonna be January of 1987 all over again, unless the Jets can get that first down. This is going to be January of 1987 all over again, unless the Jets can gain 10 yards in the next 4 plays. Did I think they could do it? Well, take a look at the picture below ...


The Jets gain 9.5 yards on the next 3 plays.

There are 69 seconds left in the game.

It's 4th down and half a yard to go. The Jets need to get this much ...


... on the next play to win the game.

Did they get it?

Well, take a look at the picture below.

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jets 17, Chargers 14.

GAME OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

( Apparently, I screamed so loud, that I scared some of the little kids. Ruth had the camera on me while this was going on. I won't make any promises regarding YouTube clips, but don't be surprised if you see something on the YouTube site ).

A few more pictures to wrap this up ...

( Left to Right: Craig, Me, and my buddy Tom enjoying the win. BTW, Tom's superstition is to not wear Jets stuff during Jets game. He'll be wearing that Ranger's shirt next Sunday and I'll have that football on my head again. )


( Posing by my birthday cake after the win ).

Just one final note. I like making lists, and after letting this win sink in, I've decided that Sunday's game was the greatest Jets win I've every experienced, and the 5th greatest win I've every experienced as a sports fan.

The top 5:

1) Mets: Game 6, 1986 World Series
2) Mets: Game 7, 1986 World Series
3) Mets: Game 6, 1986 National Leauge Championship Series.
4) Knicks: Game 7: Eastern Conference Finals
5) Jets: January 17, 2010, Jets 17, Chargers 14.

I know I don't have a lot of sports fans who read this blog, but if you are a sports fans, please leave your top 5 list in the comments. C'mon Neil, considering that Canada immediately makes me think of Hockey, I'd be really curious to see if you'd list 5 Hockey games.

BTW, if the Jets beat the Colts next week, that victory would take the number 3 slot on the list above.

Yes, they are playing the Colts next week.

They are playing the team that pretty much lost on purpose ( and ruined the integrity of the game while up the change to have a perfect undefeated season ) to let the Jets get into the playoffs.

Can anyone say "Frankenstein's Monster"?

Can anyone say "poetic justice"?

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!!!

Rich

40

I'll turn 40 in a little over an hour from now.
Happy freakin' birthday to me.

I know I don't sound excited ( and I'm not ) but let me assure you that I have no negative feelings about turning 40. It's honestly just another day to me, and in this case, it just might turn out to be a crappy day for reasons that have nothing to do with how long ago I was born. You see, I got called at home from work tonight, and just looked into a lot of work issues from home. Tomorrow is gonna be a REALLY crappy day at work. Sucks, but what can you do.

I was actually going to write a post about the significant moments in each of the 4 decades of my life, but now I'd would just like to veg-out a bit before going to bed.

The really big day for me in Sunday when the Jets play. Hopefully they can give me a delayed birthday present. But if they don't, that's okay. The best three gifts I've had in my life are all sleeping upstairs. Life is good. :)

Rich

P.S. EZ, your gift arrived today. Thanks

The Drought

Over the last year or so, my online activity has decreased dramatically. At first, my YouTube time was just being replaced with blogging time, but now I find that my blogging time is being replaced by IRL. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like to take some steps to keep my online life from slipping away completely. However, the very process of scaling back the time I spend in the online world is kinda self-perpetuating. The less I blog and make videos, the less people pay attention to my blogs and videos, and when I find that I'm not getting any comments on my posts/videos, I kinda lose the motivation to make them. I guess I could turn this all around my really putting a lot of energy and enthusiasm into my online life, but frankly, I don't feel any strong compulsion to do that. I really don't feel drawn to the online life the way I used to be. Why is that? Well, the answer might surprise you. In fact, for those of you who only know me online, the answer might seem a little silly. However, if you've known me IRL for years, the answer might just make perfect sense.

Perhaps this won't seem shocking coming from a guy who wears a football helmet in his online icon ( God! I've been away from the online world so long that I've completely forgotten the two-letter abbreviation for the photo people use to represents themselves on social networking sites - can somebody help me out here? ), but I'm a HUGE sports fan. I won't bore you with any details, but those who know me really well can tell you that HUGE doesn't begin to describe how big fan I am.

This may seem silly to you, but I think the fate of my favorite sports teams ( The New York Mets ( baseball ), the New York Knicks ( basketball ), and the New York Jets ( football ) ) has had a big impact on the way I've conducted my life. I didn't start taking serious steps to court the opposite sex until after my favorite team ( The Mets ) won the world championship in October of 1986 ( Note: This is the only time any of my 3 teams have won the championship since I started following them in about 1976 ). It wasn't as if I wasn't attracted to girls prior to October of 1986, but until Mets won that title, I was far more focused on the Mets than girls each Spring and Summer. If the Mets had failed to win that title in 1986 ( It was miraculous victory - see the video below ), I seriously think I'd be an unmarried obsessed Mets fan today. I think that the Mets victory in 1986 really allowed me to go on with my life and stop being a social outcast.



Anyway, how does this possibly all relate to my online life? Well, as I type these words I find myself in the middle of a drought. Not a drought in my online life, but a drought in my sports life. One January 7, 2007, the New York Jets played ( and lost ) a playoff game against the New England Patriots. None of my three favorite sports teams have played a playoff game since then. It's been more than 3 years. I think I became aware of the concept of "the playoffs" in about 1976, and since then, this current 3-year span has been the longest I've ever gone without one of my 3 favorite teams playing in a playoff game. It's been quite a drought, and it's left a bit of a void in my leisure life. Unlike years past, there have been times when I've really wanted to find ways to keep from thinking about the fate of my sports teams ( Especially when the Mets collapsed at the end of the season to fail to make the playoffs in September of 2007 and 2008, and the Jets did the same in December of 2008 ), and YouTube and Blogger were a great outlet for me.

However, I've had a hard time thinking about YouTube and Blogger lately, because in a little more than 15 hours from now, the drought ends. The Jets will be playing a playoff game at 4:30 PM Eastern time on Saturday, and I am STOKED! I'm REALLY REALLY STOKED! More stoked than a nearly 40-year old guy with two kids really should be - but hey - I'm been waiting for this for a long time.

I can't wait. :)

I've been thinking about this game at work all week.

Yeah, they might lose, but that playoff excitement is really going to be great. :)

Yeah, I know this is silly and immature, but that's the way I roll.

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!!!!!!!!!

Rich

P.S. And hey, if they lose in heartbreaking fashion you can all probably look forward to a prodigious amount of blog posts and videos from me over the next few months.

Edit: JETS 24, Bengals 14. WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!