Finneran: Feeling Old

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Friday, May 03, 2019

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

The news hit hard the other day.

And suddenly a lot of people felt old.

The papers and the television stations carried the news of John Havlicek’s death, an event which shook and saddened many thousands of his admirers.

It was like tearing pages out of the yearbooks of our youth, with cherished memories of childhood obliterated by God’s shot clock. John Havlicek, the unstoppable Celtic, had finally been stopped. Let the record show that it was not the Lakers who stopped our friend.

Of the many tributes offered to his career and his character, three stood out.

Bob Ryan, the great basketball historian, and analyst, remarked that the 1969-1974 Havlicek was “the best basketball player in the world”, going out of his way to say that the world at that time had Oscar Robertson and Jerry West playing superb basketball.

The one and only Bill Russell, he of eleven world championships and the NBA Hall of Fame, stated that Havlicek was the best player he ever played with. Yes, Bill Russell, the legends’ legend, put Hondo atop Mt. Everest.

And Southie legend Brian Wallace shared the story of his years as a Celtic ballboy, when after night games at the Garden, John Havlicek, Celtics star, would give young Brian a ride home rather than have him take the T so late at night. Havlicek was a superstar without the ego, a Hall of Famer both in kindness and in character.

And so the news hit hard indeed.

AE Housman’s ode “To An Athlete Dying Young” comes to mind:

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down

Townsman of a stiller town…………….

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

 

John Havlicek has died……….and suddenly I feel very old.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio

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