Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., 20-month-old son of Colonel and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh, was kidnapped between 8:30 and 10 o'clock last night from his crib in the nursery on the second floor of his parents' home at Hopewell, near Princeton, N.J.

Apparently the kidnapping was carried out either while Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh were at dinner, or soon afterward.

State police said they were seeking Adam "Pacman" Jones for questioning.

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It is either very hard to believe, or very easy to believe, that the authorities are once again interested in speaking to Pacman Jones. Some guys are just so unlucky.

This time, following a shooting outside a strip club in suburban Atlanta, police say they want to talk to Jones, the Tennessee Titans cornerback who already has been suspended for a year by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Police say that they don't believe Jones was involved in the shooting, but that he had been at the club with some of the fellas who were involved before leaving in a separate car.

(Oh, and just for fun, go ahead and Google "pacman shooting strip club." You only get 220,000 hits.)

Reportedly, no one was seriously injured — unlike the Las Vegas/NBA All-Star weekend edition of "pacman shooting strip club," which left a man paralyzed. After that one — and while Jones was at the club, he has not been charged in that case — the NFL took that incident and the rest of the Pacman laundry list and came down on him with the suspension.

Jones appealed the suspension, then dropped the appeal. And along the way, he purchased a full-page newspaper ad in Nashville that stated, among other things:

"To my family, teammates, coaches and fans, I recognize that I have lost the right to ask for your patience and understanding; however, I will do everything in my power to regain your trust and respect."

And, well, oops.

"In the past few weeks, I have learned a lifetime of lessons," he said in the ad. "First and foremost, I need to reorganize my priorities. As a grown man and a new father, my first priority is my daughter and family. Second, I have to not only meet the expectations of my coaches, teammates and fans, but exceed them in every respect, on and off the field. The first step in meeting these goals is for me to stop making the poor choices that have put me in this position."

And, well, oops.

To be fair, though, all possibilities must be considered. Perhaps he was out buying baby formula for the 4 a.m. feeding.

The presumption had been that Jones dropped the appeal in the hope that Goodell would reduce the suspension to 10 games once a pattern of good behavior had been demonstrated by Pacman. That would seem to be a bit of a stretch at this point, even acknowledging that police say Jones wasn't the shooter.

The fellas, the gun, the 4 a.m., the strip club — right there, that is the golden sombrero of poor choices. A man of ability is about to flush away his professional life, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, other than watch for the latest news flash.

It is a story as old as sports, of ability wasted, but it is a story of 2007 ridiculousness, too. The odds that Pacman Jones ever will step on an NFL field again decrease by the day, by the incident, by the wire-service bulletin.

It is tragic on one level. It is human slapstick on another. His nickname comes from an old video game and that is exactly what this feels like. It doesn't seem real. It is almost cartoonish, this careening from incident to incident.