Sports Illustrated Opens the Vault...
April 7, 2008
… and produces gems like this, a 1988 article that relates a story about how Larry Bird viewed an earlier Boston legend, and one of the heroes of my youth, Bobby Orr.
At the Boston Garden when the national anthem is played, Bird gazes to the heavens. Everyone assumes that he’s looking at the Celtics banners, but ironically, he began to fix his eyes on only one banner—the retired No. 4. But not retired by the Celtics. The No. 4 belonged to the Bruins’ Bobby Orr. Bird has stared at the black and gold banner so many times, he can see it in his mind’s eye. He knows every stitch, how many lines pierce the circle around the capital B. “Eight. Don’t bet me,” he says.
Bird had met Orr only once and had never seen him play, but he had heard how great he was as a player and had learned how much Boston admired Orr as a person. Bird had been too bashful ever to tell Orr this, though, and revealed it only last month in his speech at the Sports Museum dinner, where Orr was on hand for the unveiling of Bird’s statue. When Orr heard Bird speak of him, the breath went out of him in a whoosh, and there were tears in his eyes.
“My god,” Orr whispered in the dark. “My god.”
Posted by Bill Trippe at April 7, 2008 6:55 PM
