Joe Klecko shares his Hall of Fame day with Jets fans
Former NFL player Joe Klecko, left, and former teammate Marty Lyons unveil Klecko's bust during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday in Canton, Ohio. Credit: AP/Dave Richard
CANTON, Ohio
Frank Curry, a lifelong Jets fan from Rocky Point, was at an event a few years ago and had the chance to meet his childhood football hero, Joe Klecko. He gushed about the memories of watching Klecko dominate the line of scrimmage from three different positions, the way he fought through double-teams and shattered the backfield. Of course, he got an autograph too.
Then Curry asked about Klecko’s prospects for the Hall of Fame. Curry was optimistic. Klecko? Not so much.
“It’s not looking good,” Klecko told him with a sigh.
As they walked around Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, Curry and his friend Jim Cassidy, also from Rocky Point, remembered that exchange on Saturday morning an hour or so before Klecko was proved wrong in his prediction and finally, after 3 1⁄2 decades, inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Klecko had to wait a long time for this day.
His fans, most of them a sandwich generation of Jets backers who were too young to fully appreciate Joe Namath and the Super Bowl III team and already jaded from disappointment by the time Curtis Martin and Darrelle Revis brought some respect back to the franchise? They had to wait a long time, too.
But they made it here, all of them did, the player and the masses of late middle-agers who couldn’t allow themselves to miss this event. They soaked it up in the green and white 73 jerseys they pulled from the backs of their closets, an army marching on achy hips and replaced knees.
Many were first-timers at the enshrinement. Some of them had vowed to never come until their guy got in.
They certainly outnumbered the 24s who came out to honor Revis.
Maybe that’s because Revis was always a shoo-in, an obvious Hall of Famer even as he played his career, and he would have been enshrined at some point even if it hadn’t been this year on his first ballot. Klecko, on the other hand, had to grind for this. Suffer for this. Be overlooked for so long.
That wait only added to the intimate connection Klecko has with the fans who grew up watching him. They bumped into each other on lines, in airports, swapping stories all weekend.
They talked about seeing him play for the underwhelming teams of the late 1970s, leading defensive stops to the point of exhaustion and having to trudge right back onto the field moments later after the offense turned it over.
They remembered how he would have to wrap his ankles thick as casts after games, not be able to practice all week, then show up on the field the following Sunday.
They called him the soul of the vaunted “Sack Exchange,” not as flashy as others on that crew but the most important member.
They loved the grass and blood and infield dirt that stained his taped-up bear paws and torn shirt, remnants of a game before artificial turf and artificial toughness.
Namath wore the Jets jersey with more style. Martin wore it with more class. No one in Jets history ever wore it with more grittiness than Klecko. He wore it the way the fans themselves, the plumbers and cops and lunchboxers, like to think they would have if they could have.
“He was just a regular guy,” said Anthony Palmeri, 72, who grew up in Queens going to those games at Shea Stadium, now lives in North Carolina and came to Canton with his son. “As a fan, you could look at him as a guy you could meet on the street and instantly be friends with him. He didn’t seem like ‘I’m a football player and I’m better.’ It was more like ‘You have your job, I have mine.’ He had an incredible work ethic and it was all about his team and not him.”
Saturday was about him . . . and those who always saw themselves in him. Saw him in themselves.
“I know Joe has waited as long as just about anyone, but it feels like we’ve waited just as long with him,” said Rob Morgan, 57, of Cortland, who was only 3 when the Jets last were champions. “This is as close as it gets for me to winning a Super Bowl that he gets this recognition that he is so deserving of.”
Klecko gave the “faithful Jets fans” the last shout-out of his induction speech and was serenaded off the stage to “J-E-T-S” chants.
They traveled all this way to see Klecko on his special day, to cheer for him with the second-loudest ovation in this induction class (Cleveland Browns lineman Joe Thomas, who played just up I-77, received the biggest roars). But what would they say to Klecko if they had the chance? What is it they would want him to know?
“I probably couldn’t speak,” said Joe Lisiewski, 56, of Staten Island, who imagined himself shrinking back into shy boyhood at the sight of his football hero. “But I would try to say, ‘Thank you for the memories.’ ”
Cassidy said he would tell him this was “long overdue.”
“Thanks for all the hard work” is what Kevin Serpico, 59, originally from Brooklyn, said he would tell him.
Morgan’s message for Klecko perhaps got to the crux of the Klecko fandom the best.
“I would tell him he made watching the Jets fun,” he said.
For a franchise that has had a mostly sad and frustrating history, that’s saying a lot.
These are pretty heady days for the Jets. They had two of their players inducted on Saturday, have two reigning rookies of the year on their roster, and now have a quarterback who someday soon will be here in Canton himself. They have optimism. It’s been an agonizing wait for that, too.
As recently as a few years ago, Klecko was telling his fans it wasn’t looking good for him and the Hall. It was a long shot. He may even have started to give up hope.
They never did.
They’re Jets fans.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
