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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Joe Namath is late. Promised for a twelve-thirty press "availability" in the lounge of the press box at Giants Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey--that vital place where the fulcrum of the First Amendment, free food, is celebrated by reporters for hours on end every Sunday morning when the Giants or the Jets are in town--Namath finally wanders into the noiseless, sealed-glass press box around one-fifteen, when the Jets' game against the Houston Texans is already under way. The crowd in the press box has to decide whether to stick with the dullish game or go out and meet the greatest superstar (O.K., the only superstar) this hexed team has ever produced. A small line of reporters hisses out of the press box toward the lounge, like helium leaking from a balloon.
The tiny, intent circle gathers around Namath, who, at sixty-three, has aged into a cartoon version of his younger self. His schnoz, always notable, has become more so; he now looks weirdly like Joe Pepitone, that other, lesser New York swinger of the sixties. His salt-and-pepper hair is swept back, his face, after years in Florida, is leathery, and he wears oversized chestnut-tinted sunglasses, right out of a disco movie. His slouch has become a full question mark of a slump, but his genial, barracuda smile is intact, as are the elaborate schoolboy manners that lead him to refer to the men who mentored him by both their names and their nicknames. "I think that, after my family, Coach Paul 'Bear' Bryant was the biggest influence on me," he says, or, "I think the credit for creating that image"--of the quarterback as playboy--"has to go to Sonny Werblin. I mean, David A. 'Sonny' Werblin."
Joe talks for a bit about his new autobiography, one of two he has published. ("I certainly had help with it, but I wrote most of it myself this time.") But the reporters are looking elsewhere.
"What do you think of Eli?" one asks.
"Well, I think Eli has everything going for him except maybe his facial expressions and the way he carries himself, " Namath jokes. (Eli Manning, the Giants' talented, inconsistent quarterback, has an unfortunate wide-eyed, golly-gee look for all occasions, like Opie, on the old Andy Griffith show, if he were to see Floyd the barber in a Halloween mask.)
"You don't think he has a leadership look?" the reporter says, leaning in eagerly.
"Now, I didn't say that." Namath laughs, seeing the approaching headline clearly and ducking it. "I think he's got all the talent--I just said maybe people misinterpret the way he looks."
I've been a Jets fan for forty years, and it's hard for me to believe this full hand of good fortune. Namath, beyond reason or even the bonds of fandom, got me through some bitter bits of my mixed-up adolescence. I loved him, we all loved him, not just for his famous upset win in Super Bowl III but for his slouch and his white shoes and his quick release--that upper body torquing around to shoot the ball out to George Sauer, Jr., never needing to have the back foot planted--and for the mildly Homeric drama of his career. Crippled early in his football life by bad knees of a kind the surgeons just don't make anymore, he would disappear for half a season, reappear to throw for four hundred yards and four or five touchdowns, and then disappear again into a welter of missed games and interceptions. As with Bobby Orr, his great on-ice contemporary, his fragility was part of his resonance.
Someone asks Namath if he believes that Chad Pennington is in a slump. Pennington, the Jets' current and gallant incumbent, is recovering from two shoulder surgeries and has had a couple of off games. Namath is suddenly intent. "No, he's a good quarterback," he says seriously. "I've only watched him this year as a fan, on television. I haven't had a chance to break down the passing game to see if Chad's going to the right spots or going to the wrong receiver." You sense that the distinction the old quarterback is making--between watching as a fan and actually watching--is, for him, larger than he can quite explain. It isn't just that he hasn't watched as attentively as he might have; watching "as a fan, on television," means that he hasn't really watched at all.
Pennington, it turns out, after everyone has traipsed back to the warm silence of the press box, is breaking...
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