You have been my favorite sports player of all sports since I went to my first baseball game. A little ballerina who played no “real sports”, my love of all things football, basketball, baseball and sometimes soccer began, and still begin, with you. I still own a scrapbook that I made of all the best newspaper articles written about you during my Jr. High & High School years. I hung a poster of you (your scary mug staring out over your mitt) in my room next to pictures of ballerinas in arabesque and my point shoes. You were my sports hero for your fastball and your size and your heart. I loved your genuine apologies while you rushed to the batter’s box when you would hit a guy – arms reaching out to him in apology after you hit him with a crazy, wild, Randy Johnson fastball that you couldn’t yet control.
I fell out of touch with baseball after I moved to San Diego for college (no Dave Niehaus on the radio there!), only going to the inter-league game to watch you hit (amazingly awkward!) when you were still a Mariner. Yet, I was heartbroken when you left the Mariners for the Astros, but I decided that I must now follow the Astros’ stats (though I had never heard of them prior, really), and then the Diamondbacks. By then I was heading to start grad school in Boston, living just across the Charles river from Fenway. I could hear Sweet Caroline from my window. My first week in Boston, I went to a Red Sox game (against the Mariners!) and once again my love of baseball was ignited.
You broke my heart again when you shot down any talk of playing for Boston, saying the only way you would ever play in Fenway was wearing pinstripes! By now I hated the Yankees with the best of them. So much so that for the 2001 Diamondbacks/Yankees World Series I drove down to Manhattan to watch Game 7 in the NYC bars just to root against the Yankees and root for you! My friend and I had to change to a new bar every inning so we didn’t make too many enemies. It was amazing! My sports hero fighting my most despised team! I just knew you would come in to close like you did for the Mariners winning the ALDS final game in 1995 against the Yankees! It was magical for this little girl. Even when you did end up in pinstripes for awhile there, I logically plotted a way to root for you – as long as you weren’t playing the Sox. Thank you, Big Unit, for opening my eyes to the wondrous world of sports. I have loved following you and your accomplishments as my sports awareness has expanded from my little girl world. My most treasured, childhood sports memories will always be of the Kingdome – you pitching to Dan Wilson, with Edgar, Buhner, Junior there and Lou having a conniption. Thank you for everything, Randy.
Woohoo! A crazy, weird, fun win! No Pierce, no KG, no Rondo, still no Quis and yet, the Celtics pulled out a W (96-103)! We got to see JR Giddens first NBA start. He was so excited! TA was awesome. All the kids, including a healing Baby, played like little colts (or like baby rhinos), still all wobbly yet gallumping along, trying to go strong to the basket. The young Cs created havoc with all their gangly, chaotic play. And this game felt like it was the longest game ever. The amount of whistles didn’t help. It was crazy slow. Interesting game… and a great win.
Another Friday Night Home loss (97-98) for our Celtics. Good Lord. We’ve attended 5 Friday night home games of the 6 they’ve played. They’ve lost 4 of the 6. Lucky for us, we attended their only 2 Friday night wins (Bulls and Raptors).
And our WAP (Win Attendance Percentage) took another hit. The Celtics have now played 25 games, 5 of which they have lost, and 3 of these we have seen. We are barely keeping our WAP alive with 4 wins (4/7) attended of their 12 home games.
No AI tonight either. We were excited to watch him play. We did see some other exciting things though. Some good, some not so good. Sheed got two super quick fouls, was upset that the ref was standing so close to the bench during a time out right after that and kept talking at him, got T’ed up and quickly tossed. From our vantage point it looked like he had to be held back from the ref. So that wasn’t great. But then, a regular Joe hit a one-try, half-court shot for $50,000 then act that he knew he was going to go in the whole time – he wasn’t surprised at all. Just bowed to the crowd. It was AWESOME. Truly.
We brought the nice camera to the game tonight and took some fun pictures. Can you tell there is a Garnettophile in our house? The pics are after the jump.
This was our 6th game (we’ve missed 4 now) and now our WAP is up even farther at 4 and 2. Even better, the Celtics are a respectable 12 and 4.
The game was a bit strange in parts. It was the first time we’ve ever seen “the wave” at the Garden. Not impressed. That is great at Fenway, but weird and out of place at a Celtics game. Maybe OK at Staples, but weird here. And another thing, Sheed is shooting 3s so poorly, but still taking so many, it’s starting to feel the same as when Cassell would just jack them up. But at least there is hope for the future with Sheed that it won’t always feel this way. Tonight we also saw our first huge fight in the balcony with the cops coming to escort the offender out. It actually lasted a LONG time before security got involved. It was a nice introduction for our friend who had never been to an NBA game.
We went to this game with four of our friends from MIT. We had a great time! And, of course, we all went to Beerworks afterwards. But beforehand, the two of us finally made it to the Grand Canal! In order to get so many tickets together just a week before the game, we used StubHub. We had to go to their pick up location wicked early before the game to get the tickets. Apparently that is at the Greatest Bar. Which is not, in fact, the greatest bar. It is SUPER meat head. But we had never been there before and are on a quest to try out new places around the Garden, so we had a drink there after picking up the tickets for the crew. Then feeling emboldened, we continued on and headed to the Grand Canal and had some dinner there. It was great! Really good food. Good ambiance. Good people, both working there and customers.
We didn’t feel like shelling out the extra cash to scalp Magic tickets. But, we wanted to still watch the game with other fans near the Garden. So we decided to branch out from our favorite, Boston Beerworks, and give some other Garden local favorites a try. We know that The Fours has historically been a favorite. We went, we tried, it was really, really lame. The food was barely adequate. No one was paying the slightest attention to the game. It is mostly empty. We decided to leave before the second quarter. We had meant to move on to the Grand Canal, another local great place that we had wanted to try for awhile, but we had to walk past Beekworks to get there. The draw was too great. The TVs, the fans, the great food and smells wafting out, the brews! We couldn’t pass it up. Maybe next time we’ll head over to try out the “new” place straight from the T so it doesn’t require passing our favorite place to get there.
We missed our first home game of the season Wednesday, but are going strong with a 5 of 6 home game attendance record!
Unfortunately, we also have the poor fortune of seeing what is their second loss (97-86) of the season so far. The C’s are now 8-2 and we have been in the Garden for both of their losses. We are going to start tracking our Win Attendance Percentage… of 5 games, we’ve we’re 3 and 2. Still above .500 so far.
Also, FYI, Ray Allen hates Diabetes. We got some posters and info about it. He is a good man.
97-87. The Celtics are 4 and 0! And we are 3 for 3 for home game attendance! We’re going to try to attend as many Friday night home games as we can from here on out. We are checking out all the different sections and seating possibilities, in hopes of getting season tickets next year. It’s been interesting to note the different personalities that congregate in different sections.
So Rajon got a little fired up, and seemed to let CP3 into his head – but it all worked out through the end of the fourth quarter – until the final handshakes, I suppose. Rondo is feisty! Some may not appreciate it, but it’s fun to watch – especially when we win.
Our seats were A-MAZ-ING. Thank you again, Charles & Lauren!
We are absolutely loving our Week of Celtics as the season begins. We are spoiled with getting to go to the first three home games of the season. We are getting spoiled with the wins. We are getting spoiled with Rondo’s assists, KG’s intact knees, Ray & his points, Perk taking Shaq, Sheed raining 3’s, the bench rounding out the team and stepping up, and Paul captain-ing this whole crazy good train – and getting to see this all from the Garden. We are loving it.
And, one more QikVideo just to show how great the seats were… the iPhone camera still can’t catch the Jumbotron doing bright green lights in the dark, but look how big it is when you are sitting at half-court!
So I took some iPhone videos last night of the super cool hype machine. I know they are ghetto, but you don’t have to watch them! I want to learn how to post video to the blog. I’ll try to google around and find a YouTube clip that is much better than what I have.
The Jumbotron/Hype/PR people started VERY early in the night – introducing the Celtics before they came out to warm up with with a really cool montage of all the banners & playoffs won before. It was sad because it almost felt wasted, as most people weren’t there yet trying to come from work (as evidenced by the still green t-shirted, empty seats. The montage has old Celtic legends and great quotations.
I apologize in advance for the very loud WOO girls sitting behind us (and DO check out that YouTube video if you are in of a definition of a WOO girl). They were incredibly annoying. And they were mostly there to discuss Kevin Garnett’s hotness. And only one of the girls knew which player Kevin Garnett was.
“What did we do this summer?”
“We reloaded!”
(Also, at the end of this one, is where they announce the team… You can hear that BBD doesn’t get a very loud cheer. I distinctly remember hearing boos, but the video didn’t pick that up. Some articles said it was awkwardly silent during his name call.)
And The Captain says Thanks to the Best Crowd in All of Sports and wants to hang another banner.
** Red’s Army has way better zoom on their “iPhone camera” not to mention way better access. Here is their YouTube video for both the team announcement and Paul’s Speech.
So, I will just link to it. 
