Friday

The Daily Mark Sanchez to Canton Watch: Wonderboy!

Seems like The Sanchise is ready for a new nickname. The Jets’ QB showed up to Friday’s news conference sporting a black T-shirt with “Wonderboy” written across the chest and a lightning bolt slicing down next to the letters. Yeah, kinda gay, but with the beard he pulls it off.

While no one is going to start calling Mark Sanchez “The Natural”, it’s clear that he’s focused on greatness. Wonderboy, of course, was the name of the baseball bat used by Roy Hobbs in the Bernard Malamud Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Robert Redford film from 1984.

Sanchez admitted to wearing the shirt in public before. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard of him dating any supermodels lately. But he is a win away from becoming the first rookie quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, so we shouldn’t knock his fashion sense.

It just might take a Hobbsian effort to knock Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts out of the playoffs. The Jets enter Sunday’s AFC Championship Game as 7.5-point underdogs at Lucas Oil Stadium, where they beat the Colts’ second-stringers 29-15 on December 27.

This time they get the A team and Sanchez will have to contend with two of the best pass rushers in the game in Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis. Like last week against San Diego and the week before against Cincinnati, the kid is going to have to deliver in the clutch in order for the Jets to advance.

Will he knock one out of the park?

Possibly.

But before Sanchez or anyone else gets too carried away with analogies to “The Natural”, they should remember that Roy Hobbs was also shot in the stomach and almost couldn’t finish circling the bases because he was near death. But we shouldn’t stick too closely to the storyline, we guess.

AFC Championship Game: Jets at Colts, Sunday, 3 p.m. ET (CBS); point spread: Colts by 7.5; over/under: 39.

Jets Super Bowl XLIV odds: 7/1
Colts Super Bowl odds: 6/5
Mark Sanchez odds to win Super Bowl MVP: 5/1

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*The DMSTCW forecasts Mark Sanchez will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2030 after an 18-year career during which he will accumulate: 111,186 passing yards (he was born on November 11, 1986); 6 Super Bowl championships (to go along with his uniform number); $1 billion in endorsements (including several deals involving teeth-whitening products); 11,550 panties (same numbers as the zip code of the Jets’ headquarters in Hempstead, New York, which incidentally, will be renamed Sanchezstead upon his retirement); enough pats on the behind from Fireman Ed to make him feel uncomfortable; and 1 kiss from Suzy Kolber (willingly given).