Celtic pride

Dear Boston Celtics,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for winning the NBA championship. And not just winning it by a little, but by a crazy, crazy margin of greatness. I mean, not like you did this for me personally, but still, I am quite pleased. And now that there’s not going to be a game 7, I won’t have to spend another late night glued to a television before trying to pry myself out of bed the next morning, so that’s a plus.

The other day I was dining at Veggie Planet in Harvard Square. (Kevin Garnett, if you ever need a break from all those PB&J sandwiches you eat before every game, I highly recommend the pizza with squash and goat cheese.) Anyway, I was eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table (because the tables are so close to each other and I’m just a natural eavesdropper) and it seemed that the young couple there was on some sort of date. (Maybe a first or second date—you could feel the awkwardness.) The guy asked the girl if she followed Boston sports at all (a reasonable conversation-starter) and she responded that she avoided all of that nonsense and “didn’t base [her] identity on anything external.” Um, that’s all fine and good (albeit kind of snotty and sort of a pseudo-intellectual thing to say, in my opinion), but if waving a giant, green, foam finger in the air and cheering on the home team is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

The Celtics were a significant part of my childhood. I spent summers at Kevin McHale Basketball Camp on Cape Cod and checked out from my local library every book on Larry Bird I could get my hands on. When we were learning about the concept of biographies in language arts class, I wrote one on Red Auerbach. The Celtics were (and still are) a link between my Dad and me. He was as much a fan in his childhood in the glory days of the ‘50s as I was in the glory days of the ’80s. He coached my basketball teams, always cheered me on and we cheered on the Celts together. Now we e-mail or call each other about the latest games. Like every true Celtics fan, he takes the good with the bad. All those dark years, when the team barely won, he kept watching. He kept the faith.

The last time the Celtics won the NBA championship, I was ten. I was waving some plastic green and white pompoms wildly in my family’s living room. I no longer have the pompoms (the foam finger is actually kind of cooler, I think), but I am just as excited, perhaps more, than I was then.

Best regards,
Cantabrigie

P.S. Kevin Garnett, my apologies for my criticism when you missed those foul shots in game 5. I certainly missed a few back in the day.