C's May Abandon B'nai B'rith Tap off

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/fitz06262000.htm

Celtics' net worth should be measured in loyalty
by Joe Fitzgerald 
Monday, June 26, 2000


Paul Gaston, the young owner of the Celtics, has never sought advice
from this address but he's going to get some anyway, free of charge.

Like all the Johnny-come-latelies now calling the shots for this storied
franchise, he professes great reverence for its tradition, a tradition
so unique a portion of the team's fabled parquet court sold for $331,000
in an online auction conducted by Sotheby's two weeks ago.

But talk, unlike memorabilia, is cheap, and word has it Celtics
management is about to terminate one of the most significant components
of that tradition, the B'nai B'rith Tap-Off Dinner, because, an
executive explains, ``It's time to move on.''

Really?

Things that can't be peddled have intrinsic value, too, a truth the
Celts not only understood in their glory days, but personified as well.

One of those things is loyalty, and what kept the Shamrocks loyal to
B'nai B'rith over the years was a remembrance of times when Sammy Cohen,
legendary sports editor of the old Boston Record, stood tall as one of
the few friends the franchise had, indeed one of the few who fought for
its creation and survival.

Cohen implored Celtics founder Walter Brown to acquire a franchise when
the league began in 1946 and four years later encouraged him to entrust
it to Red Auerbach, then 33. Along with his top columnist, Dave Egan,
Sammy championed the Celtics long before they dreamed of becoming
champions themselves.

``His support was critical in those years,'' Red recalled when Cohen
died in 1983. ``Sammy might have saved the team in this town.''

Sam's other great legacy was founding the New England Sports Lodge of
B'nai B'rith in 1952, modeled after a similar lodge begun two years
earlier in New York by his Journal-American counterpart, Max Kase.

Kase hoped to use sports to build ``a bridge of understanding between
the American Jew and his Christian neighbor,'' a mission Sammy's lodge
would alter to ``a better understanding between the races.''

At a brotherhood breakfast at Fenway Park some years later, former Red
Sox general manager Dick O'Connell, citing Sammy's vision, said, ``May I
suggest the best example is right down the street. There's a team over
there at Boston Garden made up of blacks and whites, Catholics and
Protestants, coached by a Jew, and they've been world champions for a
long time now. If you want a perfect example of what we're talking
about, just look at the Celtics.''

For 48 years now, Sammy's lodge has raised thousands of dollars for
youth and elderly programs, especially among inner-city residents, as
well as support of Hillel on college campuses. And since its
inauguration in 1975, the Tap-Off Dinner has been its primary source of
income.

Every year, the week of the home opener, Celtics past and present would
fill its head table and Auerbach would explain, ``These guys are busy
with lots of demands on their time, but I tell them if they go to only
one dinner a year, this is the one I want them at.''

Red never forgot what Sammy did, and right through the days of Bird,
Parish and McHale, his players were faithful in honoring that
commitment.

But in 1997, the dawning of the Rick Pitino era, everything changed.
Lack of enthusiasm for the event was manifested in foot-dragging,
aloofness and an insistence all proceeds had to be split 50-50 with the
club's own charitable foundation.

Now the lodge has been informed all interest is gone.

Let it be known one of the three non-Jews on the 27-member B'nai B'rith
board of trustees is the author of this column; it's the only letterhead
in town my name appears on.

But it's as a longtime admirer of what the Celtics used to represent
that Gaston is offered the aforementioned free advice:

Assert your authority and do the right thing, kid.

It's your chance to make a contribution to the tradition that really
matters, not the one hawked on the Internet.