A GIANT GIANT: Before ending his career with the Jets, Dave Jennings made four Pro Bowls in his decade with the Giants and returned to both franchises as one of the most respected broadcasters in the business. (AP)
At the risk of coming off as maudlin, if ever I’m diagnosed with a debilitating, incurable disease, I’d only hope to be able to handle it half as well as did Dave Jennings, who died yesterday from Parkinson’s disease. He reached 61 on June 8.
Jennings was beyond remarkable; he was extraordinary, as brave and as stoical as any innocent condemned to the gallows. And Jennings suffered — quietly, increasingly — from Parkinson’s for nearly 20 years.
“He never complained, not a word,” said ESPN broadcaster Bob Picozzi, tight with Jennings since 1977, when Jennings, the Giants’ fourth-year punter, began to seriously pursue a sportscasting career, co-hosting Picozzi’s Connecticut radio show.
“He just didn’t like talking about it. It was his problem, and no one else’s. He’d just say he’s doing fine, then politely change the subject. He’d make it easy on you.”
A fitness freak, Jennings was diagnosed at least 10 years before even his closest friends knew. It was at a college reunion — Jennings graduated St. Lawrence University — when he could no longer hide from pals that he was losing his balance and that his speech had become slightly impaired, an impairment that became tough to hide in his last season on radio, 2008, as a Giants’ pre- and postgame analyst.
But after his career as a superb punter for the Giants and then the Jets, and long before he revealed he had Parkinson’s, Jennings still was remarkable — remarkably unappreciated and unidentified by national TV NFL shot-callers.
Jennings was the most prepared NFL analyst I ever heard on TV or radio. He not only dutifully attended practices to find out what was up with the Jets (1988-2001) and then the Giants (2002-08), he went deep — he knew the NFL rulebook far better, I’m sure, than any radio or TV analyst — not that many bothered or today bother to learn then apply the rules to the games they work.
Jennings was my go-to guy for any and all rules. We’d talk rules for hours, especially those that made little sense or were most butchered by big-ticket network experts. He was so far ahead of the rest that it seemed insane that no national NFL TV network would hire him to work its games.
“It’s not my call,” said Jennings, who never — not even once — campaigned for a national TV gig through this column. On and off the air, he was a straight-talker, not a self-promoter.
Of course, no matter how well he might have served a network’s TV audiences, Jennings was a former punter, not a former quarterback. Quarterbacks get the girls, the endorsements and the TV gigs. Whether they’ll be any good at it doesn’t much matter because there’s no shortage of freshly retired QBs.
But that didn’t seem to bother Jennings. He’d just prepare for his next Jets’ or Giants’ radio gig. He’d ensure that he never had to embarrass himself by filling spaces with vacant nonsense or home team shtick on a stick.
It was as if he knew that life is unfair, and, other than your best, you can’t do a damned thing else about it.
phil.mushnick@nypost.com