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There will be more than a few football Giants fans, most of them fathers, who sadly will hide their beloved 56 jerseys in the back of their closet, and some may even burn them, if they haven’t done so already. Maybe in six years, if he can avoid the trouble that has relentlessly chased him the way he once chased quarterbacks, they can wear those 56 jerseys proudly again and not have to explain to their children that the hero they worshipped as LT is a sex offender.
In the meantime, across the next six years, Lawrence Taylor will be wearing a Scarlet Letter, one he knitted himself inside a dark Room 160 of a Holiday Inn in Montebello, N.Y., on May 6. He will be 58 years old when his probation is scheduled to end, when those fathers will decide whether it is safe to wear 56 again.
The shame of it all is Taylor had fashioned a Hall of Fame comeback, from dancing with the demons to “Dancing With The Stars.” He married again. He played golf, every single day. Life was good.
I co-authored his second book: “LT: Over the Edge” … tackling quarterbacks, drugs and a world beyond football. His first book was “Living On the Edge.” He would fly in from Miami and I would meet him for two hours at an apartment in Hackensack. Then he would be on his way to Newark Airport, until our next session months later.
I considered it a privilege. I always try to find the good in people, and even when he could be nasty, and even belligerent, during his drug-fueled days as Bill Parcells’ Terminator, I found plenty of good in Lawrence Taylor. You could walk out of the Giants’ locker room with him and he would bark and scowl, and you kept walking with him to the parking lot and he would be as insightful and colorful as anyone. He was bright. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He could be charming and charismatic on those occasions when he wasn’t obsessed with flaunting his fearsome Superman image. I liked him more than most of my colleagues did.
The hard edge slowly began to chip away as he grew older. Much of the anger inside him had left. He never had the time or patience for endorsements. In his wild, out-of-control youth, maybe you could have gotten him to be a spokesman for golf courses as detox centers. But Lawrence Taylor for NutriSystem? Lawrence Taylor as Fred Astaire?
Then came the next unsavory chapter: The Pimp and the Underage Prostitute. Or the Pimp and the Victim. Or The Rape Charge and the Plea Bargain.
The girl, now 17, was identified yesterday outside the Rockland County courthouse by her lawyer Gloria Allred as C.F. How’s that for irony? C.F. told LT she was 19 when she was really 16. LT paid C.F. $300.
“I was a victim,” the Bronx runaway said. “I didn’t want to have sex.”
LT was accompanied by his wife — he must be thankful she didn’t sack him — and lawyer Arthur Aidala, who reiterated his side of the he-said-she-said sordidness.
At his Hall of Fame induction in 1999, he concluded his moving speech talking about what he wanted his legacy to be:
“Life, like anything else,” he said, “can knock you down, it can turn you out. … You have problems every day in your life … and no matter how many times it knocks you down, no matter how many times you think you can’t go forward, no matter how many times things just don’t go right … Anybody can quit. Anybody can do that.
“A Hall of Famer never quits. A Hall of Famer realizes that the crime is not being knocked down, the crime is not getting up again.”
I sincerely hope he gets up again. But if you don’t see as many 56 jerseys in the stands at New Meadowlands Stadium this season — and there will be a football season, trust me — you’ll understand why. And, for as long as saddened Giants fans look at him now not as LT but as S.O. — sex offender — so should he.
steve.serby@nypost.com
Rap sheet
A look at some of the legal transgressions of Hall of Fame Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor:
1996
S.C. arrest for attempting to buy crack from an undercover officer.
1997
Pleaded guilty to filing false tax return from 1990.
September 1998
N.J. arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia.
October 1998
Arrested in Florida for allegedly attempting to buy crack from undercover officer.
2009
Arrested in Florida for leaving scene of traffic accident.
2010
Arrested for statutory rape of 16-year-old prostitute.