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Buckley: You can go ahead and say it — ‘The Celtics are the balls!’
It was Johnny Most who gave us “Havlicek stole the ball!”
It was Ned Martin who gave us “And there’s pandemonium on the field!”
And it was the late, great Donnie Beardsley who gave us “The Celtics are the balls!”
If you’re a Celtics fan, no explanation is necessary. For the rest of our audience, I’ll be brief. Three years ago, when the Celtics were playing the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals, an archival swatch of video appeared on Barstool Sports showing an unidentified Boston sports fan speaking these words: “Who’s gonna win it? The Celtics! Because there’s no other reason why. The Celtics are the balls.”
The video went viral, as did questions about the identity of this spirited, sandy-haired Celtics fan. I was able to determine that the young man’s name was Donnie Beardsley. Sadly, he was only 51 when he died of a heart attack on Jan. 2, 2015, leaving his wife, Susan, and four kids.
As for those memorable words he spoke, Donnie had done his yapping to an ESPN camera crew way back in 1984 while nursing a beer at The Fours before Game 5 of the NBA Finals. He was a tick underage at the time, but that wasn’t the only crime he committed that day: A little later on, he and his buddy Dale Anderson found a way to sneak inside the old Boston Garden to watch the Celtics post a 121-103 victory over the Lakers. Donnie’s sound bite, long since digitized, was stored away in the ESPN library, never having been used during the 1984 playoffs. But then a star was born: ESPN discovered Donnie Beardsley and gave him a posthumous cameo in its “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies” miniseries that aired in June 2017.
Three years ago, after Barstool broke off the six-second sound bite and delivered it to social media, Donnie was recast as a sort of patron saint of Boston sports fans, forever upbeat, forever optimistic, forever cocky.
I wrote a piece about Donnie Beardsley in 2020, and another one last year. And there’s no other reason why: He’s part of Celtic lore. Now we have the Celtics again meeting the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals, and Donnie’s family is knee-deep in it all. Donnie’s brother, Andy, was at the Garden for the Celtics’ 110-97 victory in Game 5, after which he texted me as follows: “The balls!”
Ask Andy about his beloved brother and he’ll have you laughing and crying, because that’s the way it is with brothers. But his text — “The balls!” — didn’t have the same pizzazz. It couldn’t possibly recreate the magic of Donnie’s sneaky smile and an accent so seemingly Boston you’d think he was auditioning for “typical Southie guy” in one of those Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movies. (The Beardsleys are actually from central Massachusetts.)
Besides, Andy watched Game 5 from a, ahem, private suite as part of a group of plumbing contractors that had been invited by a local company. Sorry, it’s not the same as Donnie Beardsley and Dale Anderson sneaking into the Garden a couple of hours before Game 5 of the 1984 NBA Finals and then hiding out in the men’s room — standing on toilets — waiting to blend in with the paying customers after the doors were opened.
For Saturday’s Game 6, a busload of Donnie’s family members headed to Wells Beach in Maine. They’ve had a place in Wells forever, and it’s there that Donnie enjoyed some of the best years of his life. A typical family outing, said Andy, would include beach volleyball, cornhole, beer and food, not necessarily in that order. And then everyone would gather ‘round a TV and follow the goings-on of Boston’s pro sports teams.
Most Beardsley family members still frequently catch Donnie’s picture on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and so on. But Andy, still rockin’ an old-timey flip phone, doesn’t see much of it. But the Donnie Beardsley T-shirts? Yep, he sees those all the time.
“And it doesn’t even need to be basketball season,” he said.
Andy left his Donnie Beardsley T-shirt at home when he headed up to Maine. No problem: Rich Edstrom, a longtime family friend, showed up wearing his Donnie Beardsley T-shirt.
It was fitting that the Beardsley crowd was in Wells to watch the Celtics’ thrilling 104-103 victory over the Heat in Game 6, because, Andy said, “This was always one of Donnie’s favorite hangouts as a kid. The last time we all saw Donnie, as a family, was up here. It was my son Tyler’s wedding, back in 2014. That was such a great time.”
Andy was asked what the atmosphere was like in Wells after Derrick White’s shot went in. (Or, to be more precise, what the atmosphere was like after the officials confirmed it had beaten the buzzer.)
“Oh, it was wild,” he said. “Everyone was screaming.”
He was asked what he thinks of the Celtics.
“Celtics in the Garden, I can’t see them losing,” he said. “But, then again, I didn’t think they’d lose the first three games.”
Oh, come on, just say it,
“Oh, OK,” he said. “It’s gotta be the Celtics.”
Say it!
“Yeah, yeah, the Celtics are the balls,” he said, laughing a little. “But I can’t say it the way he did. I’m not him.”
True, there was only one Donnie Beardsley.
But a million Donnie Beardsley fans.
