One time or another, everyone has encountered a celebrity.
I ran into Red Sox and Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Rice in the bank one day. I was standing in line right behind him. Well, he actually ran into me as he turned and left. He didn’t seem very nice. He didn’t even say excuse me.
Dave Cowens, the Celtics all-star center, waved at me as he passed in front of my car as I was stopping at a traffic light in Wellesley. I don’t remember if he was waving to get me to stop or just to say thanks for stopping. It was a long time ago.
My father-in-law once invited me to dinner and a Bruins game. We arrived at the old Boston Garden. We entered through a gate near the North Station train tracks, then walked down an abandoned concourse which was littered with beer bottles and trash. At the end of the concourse was an elevator, which opened into a mahogany-lined lift, which zoomed us up to another mahogany-walled reception area with oil paintings of Bruins and Celtics images lining the walls.
As my father-in-law bent over to sign the guest book, a voice rang out, “You don’t have to sign that Billy, I know who you are.” It was Milt Schmidt, Bruins and Hockey Hall of Famer. Apparently, he had beaten the pants off my father-in-law in golf the day before and had invited him up to the Garden Club, an exclusive, private dining area at the top of the arena that he managed.
Dressed in my jeans and sweatshirt, I looked more like someone who slept in the abandoned concourse than a guest in a fancy restaurant. They let me in anyway, and we had a very nice dinner “on the house.” Afterwards we exited through a private door into the arena to watch the game. Can’t say the seats were plush … it was the old Garden after all, but what a thrill all around.
My late friend Wayne Oliveira was a big hockey guy and a Bobby Orr fanatic. Wayne played hockey all the time on the cranberry bogs, at the Tabor Academy rink and in college. He started (along with Charlie Briggs of Marion) the Old Rochester High hockey team and was their first coach. He joined the Army and broke his leg in seven places skating just before he was to leave for Vietnam. Hockey kept him out of the war.
I visited him in the hospital. He was in a ward with eight or 10 other servicemen. A high-ranking officer came through, stopping to say hello to each patient. When he got to Wayne he asked, “How did you get wounded son?” I had all I could do not to laugh when Wayne responded… “Playing hockey, Sir.”
Wayne always wanted to meet Orr and years later did. In fact, he had lunch with him. A dream comes true.
I’ve met some TV personalities as well. If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you might remember the “Ellis/Pepper Bandwagon.” Tom Ellis and Tony Pepper shared the anchor desk on the WBZ-TV news back in the ’70s. The station had a promotion called “Sports Fantasy” dreamed up by their sports reporter Len Berman, who later went on to the big time in New York.
Viewers could send in their sports fantasies. Maybe you wanted to be goaltender for the Bruins or hit a baseball thrown by Luis Tiant, the Red Sox popular star pitcher or catch a football thrown by the Patriots quarterback. Steve Grogan. Berman would pick the most interesting fantasy and arrange for the viewer to live his or her fantasy.
I wanted to do the evening sports report. Berman called me and asked me to write a one-minute commentary. I was invited to the studio to tape it on the news set. They told me to wear a brightly colored sports jacket and tie.
I wrote: “The bullet train sped into Boston from Springfield in a half-hour to the new Boston Garden floating over Boston Harbor.” I also mentioned that Red Sox star Tony Conigliaro has just signed a contract for $10,000,000 per year (chump change now.) So much for my ability to predict the future.
I closed my remarks by saying, “Back to you Tony,” though I was the only one on the anchor desk. I didn’t see my one minute of fame (no videotape back then), but my bride said I looked like one handsome devil, resplendent in my red, plaid sports jacket looking like Heywood Hale Broun (a famous sports reporter who wore outlandish sports coats, had a handlebar moustache, and was bald.) I don’t think the Broun part was a compliment.
Coincidentally, Tony Pepper later moved to my town and, though he didn’t remember my star turn, we became friends.
To add a little class to this essay, I must tell you about the time I met Tom Wolfe, the famous novelist who always wore a white suit. It was at college. He was a guest speaker, and I was chosen to escort him to the auditorium.
That’s it. Were you expecting something more exciting?
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