TD

Not since Joe Namath was slinging footballs for the New York Jets in the '60s and early '70s has New York had a quarterback with a playful nickname. Joe was of course known as Broadway Joe, hard partying, hard loving quarterback who was out at all hours before a game and never seemed to suffer for it. He was partners in a New York watering hole called Bachelors III, a swinging place, whether he was there or not.

One titanic upset in the Super Bowl and Joe's reputation was sealed. Eventually, however, something caught up to him. He was tossing 6 interceptions a game and was eventually traded to the Los Angeles Rams. Goodbye Joe. We loved you when we knew you.

Enter Tommy DeVito, the Cinderella quarterback for the New York Giants who has won the last three games for the woeful Giants that he's started. He has injected excitement into a chameleon franchise that this year basically stunk at the outset.

Politicians can only dream of being as popular as Tommy Cutlets, so named because at 25 he still lives at home with his parents in New Jersey and loves Mom's cooking. You won't find a more wholesome lad than Tommy DeVito, who barely looks old enough to drive the family car. Between home games he probably helped his plumber dad decorate the outside of the house for Christmas,

In case you've been just getting back from the Space Station, Tommy DeVito is the hottest sports celebrity to hit New York since Aaron Judge for the Yankees. He was an undrafted third-string quarterback that got the starting assignment by attrition. Daniel Jones and his successors couldn't stay uninjured or hold the job.

He's hit the covers of the New York Post—front and back. We're getting headlines like: LIVIN' DeVITO LOCA: GOOD FELLA! His Italian heritage is quite a hook for the papers. He's the most popular unindicted Italian American since Fiorello La Guardia. 

Even the usually sedate New York Times has a piece on him. Not in their outsourced Sports Department The Athletic, that can't seem to find where Madison Square Garden is. No, the NYT piece is on the front page of this morning's print edition, lower right corner. I had to check is twice to make sure I was really seeing it.

There is a twin bylined piece from two NYT senior reporters who are allowed to write about things New York and New Jersey, Corey Kilgannon and Mark Bonamo. If Phil Rizzuto were alive he'd have tears of joy dripping into his cannoli to be reading a story under the headline:

'Passing Paisan' Wows N.F.L.; And Thrills Old Neighborhood

Tommy didn't just suddenly start playing football. He grew up in Cedar Grove, NJ a town 10 miles from Giants Stadium. He went to all-boys $19,000 a year Don Bosco Prep High school in Ramsey, New Jersey where he lead his team to a state championship. Phil Simms's son went o Don Bosco, as did a nephew of my son-in-law. (He didn't play football however.)

Tommy went to Syracuse University and the University if Illinois. We wasn't a draft pick, but showed up for a try-out and was signed as an undrafted player, destined to ride he bench.

Lou Gehrig entered the New York Yankee lineup when Wally Pipp was injured. Lou then never left the lineup until he died.

Until reading the NYT piece I didn't know that the 9.6 million people of New Jersey's population, 1.25 million identify as at least being of partial Italian descent.

New York attaches a lot of cachet to celebrities who can tout their ethnicity. And don't think for an instance that just because Tommy D grew up in Jersey he's not seen as a New York product. He plays for a New York team that just happens to be playing its home games in North Eastern Jersey now for nearly 50 years. Yeah, so? Where are the New York Giants incorporated?

When it suits a New Yorker, New Jersey is just another outer borough, connected by a few bridges and a tunnel. 

It probably hasn't happened yet, since the season is still playing out, but my guess is Tommy DeVito will be invited to Rao's in the Bronx to break bread with Bobby De Niro and Bo Dietl. You have arrived if you dine with those two.

If he's of the same personality as Frank Gifford and Broadway Joe, there won't be a watering hole in New York City that won't he happy to serve him a drink—on the house. In Golden Boy Gifford's heyday there wasn't an East Side saloon that didn't welcome him as a customer. (Or the bookmakers inside) Al Schacht's and Toots Shor's were famous for sport and mob figure hangouts. My friend's father introduced my friend as a very young man to Frank Costello at Toots Shor's

Italians are unavoidably associated with being mob connected, fair or not. The New Jersey based Tony Soprano Bada-Bing strip club characters hang heavy over Tommy's head. It is not helped by how Tommy's agent dresses, who is seen on the sidelines in a black pinstripe suit, black turtleneck with a rakish fedora. Such peacock strutting might fit the TV image but will do little for Tommy DeVito's emerging image. 

Sean Stellato should remember that Tommy Dorsey thought he had Frank Sinatra's  singing contracts locked up until the story goes the business end of a handgun was pressed against Tommy Dorsey's temple.

Sport figures and celebrities of all stripes have graced New York restaurants and watering holes. There was of course Elaine's on 2nd Avenue, and Ponte's on the extreme West Side of Manhattan where Joe Torre never waited for a table. Those places are gone. And while the horse I'll Have Another didn't grace Bamonte's on Withers Street off the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in Brooklyn, his owner, Vinny Viola of St. Elias Stables, still can be found there. Vinny of course was Donald Trump's Secretary of the Army for about two weeks until he resigned,

Sit at the right table at Bamonte's and you can see the small plaque on the wall amongst all the photos that is "FROM THE BOYS".

Hopefully it's not a sign of foreboding that Al Lombardi, the owner of Lombardi's, a restaurant down the street from where the DeVito family lives in Cedar Grove, is quoted as saying of Tommy DeVito, "he's the don now.

"An N.F.L. quarterback and a mobster, there's no difference. Any day, it could be over."

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