With a big-time Game 7 coming up, and with the commitment so many involved with this wonderful community have toward this beloved Celtics team of ours, it helps sometimes to take a step back to appreciate just how much we care (especially when we occasionally have to communicate with the intrepid skeptics who don't understand).
That in mind, the time appears ripe to bring to you the following bit of commentary from renowned writer Roger Angell, as referred to me by my close friend Mays:
"It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift." -Roger Angell
Just seems to fit the moment.
No matter what Game 7 against Cleveland brings, it's been a heck of a ride thus far.
Here's hoping there is more to come. Go green!