Who are you? Who, who, who, who...

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

>From: Douglas342@aol.comt.

>    So who are the rest of you?  

That's the spirit, Doug.  Although I didn't really mean to say that I 
had a problem with e-mail pseudonyms.  I would only say that I wish 
people posted AS IF we knew them, and they were accountable for the 
things they say.  I can see why some people wouldn't want to broadcast 
who they are (and where they live).  You never know what kind of nuts 
are out there.  Let's just say I wouldn't feel too comfortable at the 
urinal next to Ode after he shared that pearl of wisdom his 
father-in-law gave him!  However, since I guess I started this spirit of 
total disclosure, here's my story...

My name is Jim, and I'm a Celtaholic.  I'm Kevin McHale, going on Larry 
Bird, so I was born in 1966 (get it?).  I grew up in SE Mass.  As a kid 
I was a baseball fan.  No one I knew really even mentioned the Celtics.  
At some point, it started to hurt when I got hit with a baseball, and I 
grew a lot, so I started playing a little basketball.  Around that time 
I had heard that the local team, which was "wicked bad", had acquired a 
young man from Indiana State University who was going to save them.  I 
started following them, and got really hooked in the '81 championship 
year.  I haven't regretted it ever since.  I went to college, became a 
computer programmer, tore my ACL and started to get fat.

I took a detour on the road to #17 when I got married and moved to 
England in 1991.  I was there for 6 years and had very little NBA news 
at all.  Other than that, it was terrific.  I had no cable or satellite 
TV or internet access, so I was pretty much limited to grabbing an 
occasional USA Today.  I moved back to the Boston area on April 12th 
1997.  I got to witness exactly one game of the ML Carr regime; the win 
at Philadelphia.  While I was abroad, Larry and the rest of the Big 
Three, retired. A guy named Michael won a couple of rings, retired, 
failed at baseball, came back bigger than ever and won a couple more 
rings.  Akeem became Hakeem and won a couple of rings himself.  Reggie 
died.  The Celts got Dominique Wilkins (What?  That can't be right.) The 
Garden was replaced, although I got to see it as a pile of rubble, with 
the balconies exposed to the elements.  Absolutely one of the saddest 
moments of my life.  And, the light shone at the end of a long, long 
tunnel when the Celtics landed Antoine Walker.  Let us not forget where 
they would be without him.

The couple of years since then have been interesting, to say the least.  
The C's got serious and hired a real coach.  Tim Duncan became Kenny 
Anderson and Ron Mercer.  My knee doesn't let me play hoops, really, so 
I've taken up cricket!  Players have revolved in and out of the Celtics 
feverishly.  And almost every game has been played with passion, if not 
always consummate skill.  

In a way, I think the last dynasty came so easily our expectations are 
unreasonable.  Two years after being a laughing stock, Boston were 
champions.  Now, it's been two years and we'll be lucky if they crack 
.500.  Rather than bitch and moan about how bad things are, I think we 
need to understand how lucky we were in the past to have had what we 
had.  We can not expect success to come as quickly this time.  There are 
no guarantees that, just because these are the Boston Celtics, that they 
will even ever reach that point.  But, at least, after years of being a 
joke, they are serious about trying to get back to that point.  They are 
once again a team with pride, a team we can be proud of.  That's what 
being a fan is all about, isn't it?

Jim

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