Here’s the thing

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Take Jacobs, for example. He’s apparently annoyed about being demoted to the No. 2 running back role behind Ahmad Bradshaw. OK, fine. You and I would be annoyed too. Human nature, etc.

But Jacobs deserves to be demoted, based on the way he played last year. Bradshaw’s injuries severely limited his playing time, Derrick Ward was gone, the rookie they drafted got hurt and missed the whole year. Last year was Jacobs’ year to dominate — to stamp himself as one of the best and most reliable backs in the league. And he didn’t do it.

Jacobs ran carefully when he should have been aggressive. He whined about the way he’s used and perceived. He stunk, along with so many other parts of the team, and as a result he has lost his starting job.

For many, this would be a wake-up call. A sign that something has to change. That the way you went about your business last year wasn’t good enough and you need to look in the mirror and do something about it. But not for Jacobs.

– Dan Graziano, SNY.tv.

I was going to write about this today, but Graz took care of it. I don’t like to put too much stock in players blowing up at reporters, but answering questions is part of the job, and — like Dan says — while it’s human nature to be upset about losing his starting spot, Jacobs has a lot of nerve to be complaining. For all the reasons Dan mentions, but also this:

You’re playing behind a guy who has had injury problems his whole career on a team known for sharing carries. You’re going to get plenty of chances. If you know you’re better than a backup — and it sounds like you feel that way — make something of them.

Finally, I am listed alongside Luis Guzman somewhere

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I just got a review copy of Alex Belth’s Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories, a collection of essays from well-known and less-well-known writers about, well, their lasting memories of Yankee Stadium.

I haven’t read them all yet, but the book looks awesome. I’m obviously biased because I’m in there — near the back, in the section about the new stadium — but at the same time, often I’m disappointed with my writing when I go back and read it later and I’m pretty happy with the way my entry came out.

Of particular note, of the stuff I’ve read so far, are Tony Kornheiser’s piece about growing up a Giants fan — poo-pooing all Billy Crystal’s hoopla around Yankee Stadium — and Emma Span’s hilarious bit about Game 6 of the 2004 LCS in the Bronx.

You should probably buy this book, even though you’re probably a Mets fan. It’s got contributions from all sorts of famous writers and great baseball writers, plus from Luis Guzman and John C. McGinley, because that’s just how Belth rolls. Many, maybe most, of the writers involved aren’t Yankee fans. It’s just about the stadium, and baseball and memories and all that.

Plus it’s got me in there.

It ships in October but you can pre-order it from Amazon.com now.

All my rowdy friends are tuckered out from the work week and watching football in their own homes tonight

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Ryan and his staff have altered the way people look at the Jets and given the team an unexpected marketing boost as they move into the New Meadowlands Stadium, where the Jets will have a new identity even though they will still share quarters with the Giants. For the Jets, the promotional dividends produced by “Hard Knocks” have not been countered by a disastrous injury. The worst that happened was Ryan’s mother (and Tony Dungy) expressing consternation about the coach’s profanity.

And like a good cliffhanger, the hero of the tale, Revis, returned just in time to end the series.

– Richard Sandomir, N.Y. Times.

I’ve neglected the Jets for the last couple weeks here because, honestly, I find preseason football awful and the hype around it difficult to bear. It’s meaningless. Teams show very little in the preseason and the starters hardly play.

But I probably should have mentioned the Revis thing, which is legitimately huge. For no particular reason, I felt confident from the start that the Jets and Revis would get something hammered out, then grew nervous thanks to Hard Knocks and the media blackout.

Anyway, now football season is starting. It’s starting! Football season! Hooray!

Before that happens, two final thoughts about Hard Knocks upon its finale last night:

• Everything they aired only served to confirm/strengthen my feelings about Mark Sanchez. Clearly he’s hilarious and awesome and willing to wear Taco Bell hats. What a hero. It only helps that I think he might actually turn into a decent quarterback.

I also like the idea of having him call the offense for the last preseason game. Then I thought it was particularly interesting or funny, or something, that he called that little slip-out pass on the goal line for the touchdown. That’s a Madden play. It’s a good call, no doubt, and it worked, but that’s one of those unstoppable Madden plays.

And it struck me that Sanchez’s generation — hell, my generation — is now growing up and coming of age and impacting professional football, and we all came up playing that game.

Madden’s not exactly like real football, obviously, but it’s not a terrible simulation either — and it gets more accurate all the time. And it encourages players to watch and interact with the game in a way they never would have if they were just playing it then tracking themselves on film in some dark room the following Monday with the coach yelling at them.

And so I wonder how the game will continue to change as a generation of players who grew up not just playing the game, but coaching and play-calling and strategizing in a decently accurate simulation year-round, comes of age.

• I could do without ever seeing Mike Tannenbaum on camera again. I know Hard Knocks is reality TV and the idea is that they’re all supposed to be behaving the way they would if the cameras weren’t there, but there’s no way you could convince me that everyone involved wasn’t conscious of the cameras throughout.

Rex Ryan and Mike Westhoff were really good at playing themselves, it seemed, but Tannenbaum’s performance seemed the most forced, like he was overacting the role of exasperated football GM.

Plus it just didn’t sit right with me that they filmed guys getting cut. That’s a major life event. If I’m a 23-year-old kid trying to make it in the NFL, there’s absolutely no way I want that documented and broadcast to a million homes or whatever.

Dave Singer on the whole Walter Reed thing

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I’ve avoided this issue so far because I don’t care to perpetuate it, there are people on the Internet who think I hate America, and I don’t want to appear a knee-jerk Carlos Beltran defender. Plus I’m honestly not sure how I feel about the whole thing. But I think Dave Singer makes a great point, plus I think he’s got pretty strong evidence that he does not, in fact, hate America. 

Sandwich of the decade

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“Where you are going — this is a good neighborhood?” the cabbie asked as we sped south, past the crush of skyscrapers, the chain stores giving way to empty storefronts, then empty lots.

“I don’t know, man. You tell me.”

“I don’t usually come so far south,” he said as we pulled up alongside a few concrete, cylindrical, vaguely Soviet apartment towers pocked with evenly placed circular windows.

This part of Chicago didn’t make the guidebook. Underbelly. A promising sign, perhaps. I didn’t come here for a tourist’s sandwich.

It’s not hard to spot Ricobene’s once you reach 26th st. Its glowing red neon sign hangs between a freeway overpass and Chinese live-poultry market, the squawking audible as you walk by. Across the street stands a massage parlor and a dive bar with a few happy-hour revelers huddled outside around cigarettes. Inside is a pleasant dining room, a clean well-lighted place brimming with nostalgia and black-and-white photographs, bursting with warm smells. An oasis.

The sandwich: Breaded steak from Ricobene’s, multiple locations in the Chicago area.

The construction: Thinly sliced steak, breaded and fried, on Italian bread with hot peppers, marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese and giardiniera — a type of pickled vegetable relish, here consisting of peppers, olives and celery.

The peppers and mozzarella cheese were optional. Obviously I opted for both. The woman asked if I wanted “hot or sweet.” I assume she was referring to the peppers. I went with hot.

Important background info: Cerrone faded by Sunday, sick with a sinus infection, but I still wanted to try more Chicago specialties. I settled on breaded steak because it was breaded steak, and Ricobene’s because it was open. The tip came via the excellent Jan and Michael Stern of the Road Food book series, which I could not recommend more heartily. Those people are heroes.

What it looks like:

(My apologies, this picture sucks)

How it tastes: You might know by now that I’m prone to hyperbole. But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the breaded steak sandwich from Ricobene’s is the pinnacle of human achievement.

Holy hell. Every single flavor I could want on a sandwich was on this sandwich. The beef was tender like veal, and the breading savory. The sauce was sweet and flavorful. The bread was sturdy enough to hold the thing together, but soft and delicious as well. The cheese was heaping, moist, cheesy. All those aspects added up to something like the best veal parmigiana hero I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of veal parmigiana heroes. Some really, really good ones, too.

But what put this thing over the top were the giardiniera and hot peppers. The former added a tangy flavor, plus crunch from the celery. The latter set my mouth on fire, and amplified all the other amazing flavors in this sandwich.

The thing probably weighed about a pound and a half, but I wolfed it down, possessed.

When I finished, I stumbled out to the curb, dizzy and delirious. A couple of cops pulled up, and instinct told me to run — I felt like I had just done something illegal. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the front of the restaurant.

I knew I had to leave Chicago the next morning, but I tried to consider ways I could have another breaded steak sandwich before I did. I thought about walking back in and ordering another right then even though the coma was already setting in.

Not knowing what else to do, I tweeted a few nonsensical things. Playing with my phone gave me an excuse to keep standing there.

It started raining. I kept standing there. I knew I probably looked like a crazy person. I didn’t care. I was a crazy person. I was standing outside a restaurant, right next to a live-poultry market and under the freeway overpass, in some odd area of a city I don’t know because I couldn’t tear myself away after eating an inconceivably good sandwich.

Finally I approached the crowd outside the bar. I wanted to accost them. I wanted to say, “good lord! What in hell are you doing at this bar, don’t you know what they’re serving across the street? Why are you wasting space on beer when that sandwich is available to you right there? You maniacs!”

But instead I collected myself and asked them where to find a cab. They pointed me to a depot down the block and I headed back to the hotel, forever changed.

What it’s worth: This sandwich cost like $6 or something. The cab rides were about $10 each way. This was easily worth $26, plus I’m always down for a sandwich adventure anyway. I could have taken the El train there, too, I just got lazy.

Hell, if I were working with a larger sample I’d say you should probably travel to Chicago for this sandwich, but since I’ve only had one I don’t want to send you packing on the possibility of an outlier. This was a sandwich worth traveling for, though.

The rating: 99 out of 100, and only because I’m not sure I’m willing to give out 100s. Best sandwich I’ve had in years, though, and since there’s no Chicago baseball player that makes for an appropriate comparison, I’m just going to have to go for it: The Michael Jordan of sandwiches.