Jack Rocked

So my buddy Jack is having a tough time right now. You might have seen the commercial he did for the New York Knicks. If not you can see it here.

He's pretty convincing. The Knicks do sound "formidable" when he talks about them. And his rip on the Celtics is straight up "courtside jabber" from the asphalt courts of Harlem or the Bronx. "You know what formidable means, BITCH?" the kid yells as he does a 360 jam in the other guy's face.

It's all good, except for one problem. The Knicks may be the worst team in modern NBA history. They just lost to the Celtics by 50 points, which is something that rarely happens even in junior high basketball. So...the Celtics fans who don't know what "Formidable" means probably think it's synonymous with "sucks shit".

Not surprisingly, the barbaric Celtic fans have jumped all over my boy and mocked him...to the tune of 10,000 hits on youtube and counting.

Let's get real here. He did a commercial. He read the lines. Ok. Guilty as charged. But what these Boston Troglodytes don't know is the real story.

And if they did, they might be inclined to take it a little more easy on the guy.

On May 10, 1973, The same day that the Knicks won their last championship, Jack was born in a Brooklyn hospital. His parents, Irish immigrants, were forced to give him up for adoption because he wouldn't fit in their one bedroom flat; they already had 17 other children. A troubled kid, sent from orphanage to foster homes and back to the orphanage, little Jack never could seem to find a home of his own.

Then one day in 1980, he and his fellow orphans got tickets to go see the New York Knicks play the Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden. Michael Ray Richardson lit up the Celtics for 33 points and Bill Cartwright had 17 boards and the Knicks won by 7. Jack had never seen anything so incredible in his life. The colors, the crowd, the hot dogs and the music...he was enchanted. He knew then he had finally found a home.

So when they boarded the bus for Staten Island after the game, no one noticed that there was one orphan missing. As they pulled out onto 7th Avenue, Jack was already deep in the bowels of Madison Sqaure Garden. And there he lived.

Jack watched every Knicks game, every Rangers game, the Ice Capades, concerts...he ate hot dogs and pretzels and drank sodas...he learned to read and write by reading programs and the scoresheets. He knew every inch and cranny of the Garden and got to know all of the people who worked there: the ticket takers, the ushers, the guy who waxed the floor, the beer and soda vendors. Jack was like their own little kid, their mascot almost. But still none of them knew he actually lived there. Until one day.

He had been living in the Garden almost three years when one day Jack woke up in his usual spot, the luxury box at midcourt. He rolled up his blanket and collected his things. He waited until he heard the janitor move down the hall and he scrambled out of the box and jumped down to the seats just below. As he walked to the aisle he realized someone was watching him. It was Carl Jackson. The Organ player. He was sitting way up in his organ box, looking down at Jack. Jack ducked behind the seats but then heard the Organ's blast: Duh-duh-duh-DUH-DUH-DUH! The bugle line for "Charge!". On the last note, unable to stop himself, Jack stood upright and yelled "CHARGE!". He looked at Carl, who motioned him to come up to the box.

Carl got the truth out of little Jack; that he had been living in the Garden for three years, that he had no other home. So Carl took him home to live with him. Carl was a widower who never had children and he raised Jack as his son. He sent him to school and took care of him when he was sick and played with him on the weekends and summers. They went to every Knicks games together.

Carl was a good guy, but still, he wasn't Jack's flesh and blood. Jack would ask Carl about his parents and why they abandoned him. To make him feel better, Carl told Jack that they were sold into slavery by the Evil Red Auerbach, the President of the Celtics. They would be bound as slaves to Red until the day that the Knicks won a championship again. Then they could come home and they would live with Jack happily ever after. (It should be noted at this point that Carl, while a nice fellow, was also a schizophrenic.)

So Jack watched year after year, and waited for the Knicks to win a championship. He grew up, went to college, and became a successful musician but the Knicks never won their championship.

Poor Jack waited and watched and rooted for years...and then this season, just before the sexual harassment trial ended, old Carl Jackson died. They had long since replaced him with blaring rock music and a recorded organ and the Knicks didn't have any use for him anymore. Jack, who has since realized that his parents weren't slaves (Auerbach died last year and when his parents didn't show up after that, he put it together) went into a funk...now he was alone again. All he had were his Knicks.

So when the Knicks came knocking and asked him to do a commercial, he thought of Carl. He thought of his days living in the Garden. And he thought of his parents, enslaved by the evil Lord of the Celtics....so he made them big in his mind, legendary, unbeatable...FORMIDABLE....

Yes, he's crazy. Yes, he probably should be locked up. But it is that hope, that passion, that once in a lifetime chance mentality that makes us all fans of sport, fans of life...and fans of Jack.

You go Jack. Dream on. You are formidable! No matter what the New England yokels say.

And by the way, fuck the Patriots.