Young Fan Mails Brandon Jacobs $3.36 To Return To New York Giants
The young fan emptied his piggy bank and Jacobs tweeted about the letter.
June 7, 2012 — -- When 6-year-old Joe Armento found out that Brandon Jacobs was leaving the New York Giants after the team's Super Bowl win, the dedicated young fan decided to take matters into his own hands and wallet—or, in his case, piggy bank.
Joe sent Jacobs all the money he could get out of his piggy bank—$3.36—in an effort to get Jacobs to come back to New York.
Months later, Jacbos received the letter and it has gone viral after he tweeted about it this week. While Jacobs is not coming back to the Giants, Joe might have a trip to Chuck E. Cheese with his hero in his future.
"I can't believe it. I'm shocked," Joe's mom Julie Armento told ABCNews.com today. "He's just a huge Giants fan. He knows all the players."
In March, Joe heard that Jacbos had left the team and signed with the San Francisco 49ers and asked his mother to explain why.
"He asked me about it and said, 'How come?' They had just won the Super Bowl so he couldn't understand it," Armento said. "He said, 'I want to write him a letter and ask him to come back.'"
Joe went off to his playroom and came back with a letter scribbled on a scrap of paper and $3.36 from his piggy bank. He had written: "Dear Brandon Jacobs, So you could go to the Giants, here is my money. Love, Joe"
His mother assured him she would try to send it to Jacobs, but explained to him that fan mail often goes into piles and sometimes doesn't get answered.
"I had no idea where to send it. I literally sent it to Candlestick Park," Armento said with a laugh. "I sent it honestly thinking nothing would ever come of it."
Months passed and Armento did not hear anything about the letter and assumed it had been lost among many others at the stadium. At school, Joe picked the number 27 for his flag football jersey so he could match Jacobs.
But early this morning, she got a call from an excited neighbor who told her, "'You've got to go online. [Jacobs] tweeted about it.'"
Armento got on the computer and was shocked to see Jacobs' tweets and a newspaper story about the letter. "Read this note and tell me what u think," Jacobs tweeted on Tuesday.
He continued to tweet about it throughout the day. "I almost cried, I am still trying to hold it in," he wrote. "I may have to pay him a surprise visit."
Jacobs said the letter was the "best ever" and said he would give Joe $3.36 back, but not the same money. He wanted to keep the money the young fan sent him.
When fans pressed Jacobs on Twitter about what he was planning to do for Joe, he tweeted, "Here's what I am thinking for the kid, I have a 5 year old, I will go and pick Joe up at his home in jersey and take him and my son 2 chucky cheese [sic], what y'all think about that."
Armento said she tried to explain what was happening to Joe this morning before school and said that he is "smiling and all excited," though he does not fully understand what is happening.
At first, Armento didn't want to tell him about Chuck E. Cheese so he would not get his hopes up if the trip didn't happen, so she skipped over that part when reading the news to him. But clever Joe recognized the words on the paper and asked her about it. Jacobs promised Twitter fans that he would post pictures when the visit happened.
An excited Joe went off to school this morning with a promise from his mother that he could take copies of the news stories written about him and Jacobs to school with him tomorrow to show his class.
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