My two sons Andrew and Alex are continuing a proud Hoffman tradition next Sunday, they are going to watch the Jets get their "Taints" handed to them by Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos. This great tradition of being inconvenienced at very high prices, only to watch "gang green" find a way to lose, in what is most likely, the most painful way possible, was begun by my Father many years ago. For almost 20 years, my father had season tickets to the New York Jets. There was only one problem. He wanted tickets to the New York Giants. My father like most New Yorkers was a huge Giants' fan. For those too young to remember a time when New York City had three baseball teams and one football team, the Giants were the only game in town. In fact, before the A.F.L began in 1960, the Giants were not only New York City's team, they were the team of Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate New York, and all of New England. My father, like all good Giant fans wanted season tickets, the problem was, they didn't turn over very often.
In the late 1960s my father called up the Giants' ticket office asking for season tickets. They very politely told him that he would be put on a waiting list, and they would call him when his number came up. They told him he was only about 10,000th on the list. Several years went by, and he called the Giants back, (actually, now that I think of it, it was probably my mother doing the calling since my father almost never, ever, spoke on the telephone. Quick reacreation of every time the phone rang in our house and my mother wasn't home: ahem ahem, "RING", "Robbie, turnoff that God-damn "Gumby and Pokey" and answer the phone". "Ok Dad, it's for you". "Ok, tell whoever is to go to hell"!) So more likely, my mother would ask if in fact, we had moved up the list. Well, the news was all good, he had, in fact moved up. He was now no more than 9990th, so it was looking up. Keep in mind by the early 1970s, the Giants hadn't even been to the playoffs since the early 1960s, yet their fan based seemed as zealous as ever. At this point, my father did what a lot of Giants' fans did...he sent away for Jets' season tickets. He was told politely that he was about 10,000th on the list, but that the Jets would be happy to contact him when his number came up. The following year we had Jets' season tickets. I guess many Jets' fans felt that one season was more than enough to enjoy the particular form of entertainment that the Jets provided.
At first we only had two tickets, so myself, my father, my two brothers, and my mother all would get to go to several games. Since I was only 11 at the time, I got to go with my father and both my brothers. My first Jet game ever was with my brother David. It was one of the those rainy days where it seemed like it was raining sideways. Joe Namath, the future Hall of Fame Quarterback, good old "Broadway" Joe, proceeded to turn the ball over six times and the Jets lost to the Dolphins 43-0. My next game was with my father and they lost to the Baltimore Colts 45-28. The piece of resistance' however came against the Bills, this time attending with my brother Mark. With the Jets up by six, they decided to go for it on 4th and one in Bills territory instead of going for a game clinching field goal. They ofcourse didn't make it, and that famous alleged double murderer O.J. Simpson took a swing pass on the next play and went 70 yards for a touchdown and the Jets lost 24-23. I wouldn't see the Jets win a game until the next season when they shut-out the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs it should be noted didn't win a game all season, so for some "negative Nellies, it didn't call for much of a celebration.
Many times today you hear that going to football games, or really any "event" is marred by "twenty-somethings" getting exceedingly hammered, starting fights, and basically not even acknowledging that there is an event to watch. Most of this type of element seems to think that they are part of the event and not just a spectator. Everyone (including yours' truly) shows up in the team jersey as if the coach is going to look into the crowd and say, "You, yes you, with the D'Brickashaw Ferguson jersey, the fat guy who just turned 50, Calvin Pace just twisted his ankle and somebody has to step in, now gear up and go get 'em!" The question is, was it always like this? Well sort of.
In the 1970s when we first started going to games at good old Shea Stadium, the crowd was older, but probably not more sober. For those who've forgotten what a football game at Shea Stadium was like, imagine lots of broken bathrooms, cheap yet overpriced beer, mixed with a lot of losing. There were a ton of fights, and for some reason, a lot of rolls of toilet paper being hurled. I believe the Jets' slogan in those days ran something like:
COME FOR THE DRUNKEN FIGHTS..STAY FOR THE DISAPPOINTMENT!
It seemed that in those days, people would come to watch a football game, and then as things went downhill, usually sometime in the 1st quarter, they'd start hitting the "sauce" pretty hard. Today people come to get drunk, and if they're only semi-comatose, actually see parts of a football game. My brother David who inherited the tickets when my father couldn't take it anymore says that some people go to the game in big campers, have a huge cook-out, and then watch the game on their televisions without ever going in to the stadium. Now I know there's a word for that, and I'm pretty sure it's "stupidity"!
Maybe the Jets' management has just stopped trying. When the Jets played at Shea, the halftime shows were real entertainment. There was the "Punt, Pass and Kick" competition, where kids 7-12 would compete in all three categories. There was nothing funnier than watching the crowd boo some poor 11 year old who' just shanked a punt, or get booed for having their hometown be somewhere in New Jersey. Sometimes, and I'm not making this up, the halftime show was a guy, his dog, and a frisbee. He would throw the frisbee way down field and the dog would chase it and ideally, catch it. When the dog dropped it...you guessed it, the crowd booed! Of course most of the crowd was smushed into the bathrooms where you could find some warmth and get a reprieve from the cold in the wide open wind swept Shea Stadium. The problem was that there was only five urinals, and two were always broken. You could use a stall, but they looked like they had been rejected by the porto-potty foundation after Woodstock II.
But the creme'-de-la-creme' of halftime shows took place in 1979, and you can look this up. The Jets were playing the Patriots, and I think they lost on a missed last second field goal by the great Pat Leahy. (Who never met a clutch kick he couldn't miss) A "performer" came out with his very large model airplanes. He flew a couple around the stadium and the crowd, barely looking up from their hot chocolate and scotch, scarcely offering up some light applause. Then, the Public Address Announcer took to the microphone and announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever, a flying lawnmower"! The contraption flew around the stadium to more intensive applause, after-all, this was history in the making. At first it flew around without incident. Then it appeared to be heading straight for the far goal-posts, as if he was trying to kick a field goal. (A field goal, ironically the Jets would later need but would fail to get) It went through the uprights (It's Goooooooood!) and landed in the Loge seats. To say we laughed our asses off would be an understatement, we were in hysterics. Fast forward a few seconds, and the ambulance arrived on the field. Apparently it was far less humorous to those in the Loge seats since the now formally flying first time lawnmower hit someone in the crowd and ended up killing him. As an aside, it should be noted that this ended the reign of the "Flying Lawnmowers", but for 2 glorious minutes, they ruled the skies.
Sadly, my brother David gave up the seat this season. Whether it was the outrageous ticket prices, the parking fee, the losing, the traffic going to New Jersey from Bellmore, the traffic leaving the stadium, or going home on the highway, or the losing, or the drunks and their vile racist rants, or the losing, or the 12 dollar beers, or the losing, or paying for pre-season games, or the losing, etc...
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