It looks as though the Red Sox are not going to win the World Series … what? Oh, that’s over. Well, with a new Chief Baseball Officer, and new star players to be hired, it will be a sure thing next year. Right?
The less said about the Patriots the better. There is the Revolution, Robert Kraft’s other sports enterprise, if anyone knew they existed. They don’t seem to get much publicity. The Bruins and the Celtics are in the running toward a championship, as usual, but always seem to be one game or two short of the prize.
You may not know this, but there is an abundance of professional women’s sports teams in Boston, including the Renegades, a women’s tackle football team, four-time National Champions of the Women’s Football Alliance. The Beantown RFC is Boston’s women’s rugby team; they’ve been around since 1976 and have won six Women’s Premier League National Championships. There is also the Boston entry in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Boston United Women’s Pro Soccer and at least three women’s lacrosse teams, the Cannon, the Blazers and the Storm. Who knows how many more? I can’t keep up.
The Celtics have always been my favorite team. I go way back to the days of Bill Russell, Bob Cousy (“Mr. Basketball”), Tommy Heinsohn and later, John Havlicek. I even remember George Mikan, the league’s first “big man” at 6-foot-11 (short by today’s standards), who played for the Minneapolis Lakers. I liked him because he wore eyeglasses and so did I. I knew that Chuck Connors, who starred in the TV western The Rifleman, once played for the Celtics and the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. Yikes, I am old!
As a kid, I subscribed to all the basketball magazines: Sport, Sports Illustrated, Pro Basketball and Sports Forecast. I knew all the college players coming up, Larry Bird of course among them. I can honestly say I played intercollegiate basketball in college. Of course, it was an art school team consisting of players who were too short, too fat or were talented enough to be artists but not athletically talented enough to have their tuition paid with sports scholarships elsewhere.
When we lived near Boston, I’d watch every Celtics game. I yelled at the TV so much my bride used to think their center Robert Parrish’s name was Parrish Ustiff.
Our downstairs neighbor was a statistician for the team. Coincidently, I had his grandmother as a substitute teacher at Center School. Small world. He often gave us free tickets to the games at the old Boston Garden. They were right behind the team bench where a baker’s dozen of assistant coaches, “player enhancement coaches,” trainers and consultants now sit. Heinsohn was the coach (he had one assistant.) He would chain-smoke cigarettes and toss them on the floor for some poor ball boy to stamp out and pick up the butts.
The game has changed since those days. The players are bigger, taller, stronger and richer. Not like in Heinsohn’s playing days when he had to sell insurance in the offseason to make ends meet. The players get away with more these days. Since the advent of the 3-point shot, set plays are seldom used, and palming the ball, traveling and 3-second violations under the basket are ignored. Streetball style is not enjoyable for an old fan like me.
By the way, ball boys (haven’t noticed any girls) and towel boys apparently aren’t poor anymore. According to AS USA, a sports website, they earn enough to “own suburban homes and go to private schools,” plus they get good benefits, including health insurance. I think I missed my calling.
The website goes on to say that some water/towel/ball boys can make more than $100,000 a year, though the average pay is about $58,000, and no experience is required.
Do you think I’m too old to apply?
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado