Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

Warning: This story may gross you out at the conclusion. Consider yourself warned. My vomit streak may not rival that of Jerry Seinfeld's, but I mark the last day I upchucked as a significant one in my history as a football fan. On December 29, 2002 the Jets were in the final week of a multi-team AFC playoff mishmash involving the Patriots, Dolphins and Cleveland Browns, one caused by an awful loss against the Bears a few weeks earlier. The Jets were facing the Packers at the Meadowlands at 4pm but needed the right combination of results at 1pm to set up a scenario by which beating Green Bay would mean a postseason spot. It had been an exciting, up-and-down season, one in which Chad Pennington made his first impact on the New York sports scene, taking over as the team's starting quarterback early in the season and leading them to several impressive wins. My dad and I had gone to the Meadowlands a couple of times that season and he suggested we make another trip. I resisted, par...

So if we were having a vote as to which New York sports team has tortured its fans more over the years, could our butterfly ballot contain the pictures of Chad Bradford, representing the Mets, and Chad Pennington, representing the Jets? Bradford brings his funky, submarine style delivery to Shea Stadium this season and it's entirely possible that with the significant damage to his rotator cuff from the last two seasons that Pennington's best shot at throwing a football again might be to use that same motion. Anyway, the Bradford/Pennington references allow me to segue, ever so slightly to a football story, since it is the last week of the NFL's regular season, one that has been a total waste right from the start if you're a follower of the J-E-T-S. Let me say that of the four majors, football fluctuates between my third and fourth favorite sport, which probably has more to do with my distaste for violence over anything else. I never get pumped up for Monday Night Footba...