June 11, 2008
All Together Now…
Boycott Boston

Enough already.  It’s boycott Boston time.  Were Beantown a pre-school student their parents would be receiving a note from the teachers, “Your child refuses to share.” Pick your championship in almost any sport except rodeo and a team from the Bay State always seems to be involved.  Right now it’s the NBA finals.  Celtics/Lakers.  Basketball’s storied rivalry renewed.  Memories abound with stories told ad infinitum of Magic versus Larry, West against Havlicek, Bill Russell dueling Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain.  But rivalry?  Not when it seemed the green clad Celtics always wound up hoisting the winners trophy. 

You know the situation is stage “critical” when one is forced to develop an emotional attachment to Kobe and his cohorts in hopefully denying a Boston team another championship.  Me, rooting for an LA team?  I’d rather cheer for the Dallas Cowboys, the Nebraska Cornhuskers or France.  Well, maybe not France but you get the drift. 

Since Boston insists on hogging the sports limelight a boycott is in order.  We’ll start slowly by no longer reading the works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson or Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Realizing avoiding the writings of long ago New Englanders is much like giving up okra for Lent, we have to start somewhere.  Should the Celtics have featured players with names like Oliver and Waldo rather than all time meanie “Jungle” Jim Loscutoff, the hoopsters in green would have won a lot less and I’d feel a lot better about the commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

But no, Boston insists on winning and winning.  So no longer should we listen to Aerosmith, attend Matt Damon movies, watch Jay Leno or eat Boston Crème pie.  

It’s not just the Celtics.  Only Budweiser TV commercials make more Super Bowl appearances than the New England Patriots and their cheating weasel head coach.  And who can forget how the “Evil Empire North” Red Sox rudely dispatched our Rockies, four games to zip, in last fall’s World Series, not that I harbor anything like a grudge. 

Don’t take this boycott of all things Boston lightly.  Eighty-sixed from my life forever are family rooms with a parquet floor (The black shoed Celtics of yesterday always won their NBA titles on the parquet floor of the now demolished Boston Garden), any movie starring Tony Curtis (he played the lead in “The Boston Strangler”) and all rock n roll oldies by Paul Revere and the Raiders.  True they hail from Portland, Oregon but the band’s name reeks of New England so they make the list. 

Bay State teams are the kings of greed when it comes to national titles.  In March, I sat with Big Gear Bob in the upper most reaches of the Pepsi Center rafters watching his beloved North Dakota Sioux battle for the NCAA “Frozen Four” hockey championship.  The Sioux, looking like the Rockies of college hockey had their collective heads handed to them by the eventual tourney winner; you guessed it, Boston College.  

Forget about the “Cradle of Liberty” talk.  With all this “Boston wins, Boston wins” were the Battle of Bunker Hill held today I probably would have been a Tory sympathizer.