Bye-Bye Boston

Celtics and Bruins may leave

Boston may be the home of the bean and the cod, but it is no longer the home of the Braves or the Patriots. Come 1983, it may not even be the home of the Bruins or Celtics. Boston pioneered the art of losing the modern baseball franchise in 1953, when the Braves jumped to Milwaukee. In 1971 the football Patriots skipped to Foxboro, Mass., an hour's traffic jam away. Those shifts brought murmurs of resistance from Bostonians, who consider themselves the nation's most rabid sports fans. But now the locals are truly aghast. Because of a dispute over replacing Boston Garden, the creaking 52-year-old arena, the city's hockey team is likely to become the Salem (N.H.) Bruins, and its glamorous basketball team may be playing in Revere, Mass., or elsewhere in New England.

The city has waffled for 20 years on demands from the two teams for either a renovated Garden or a new one. In 1977 a committee named by Mayor Kevin White won agreement from the Bruins and Celtics to play in a proposed $40 million South Station sports complex. The project was torpedoed, largely by a state legislature loath to help White in his successful bid for reelection.

Now the Bruins have threatened to move to Rockingham Park, a fire-gutted race track in Salem, 37 miles from Boston. Delaware North Companies, the firm that owns both the Bruins and the Boston Garden, offered to rebuild the track and install the Bruins there in an 18,000-seat arena, in return for tax breaks and the right to begin dog racing.

Salem voters approved the dog racing, but the New Hampshire legislature wants a closer look, partly because of Delaware North's cloudy past. The company is a successor to the defunct Emprise Corp., which throughout the last decade was investigated by federal officials. In 1972 Emprise was convicted along with several organized crime figures for concealing interests in a Las Vegas casino.

The Celtics, who need a place to play if Delaware North razes the Boston Garden, are muttering about a sports complex in nearby Revere, though Celtics President-General Manager Red Auerbach says Worcester, Hartford and Providence are also possibilities.

Boston still has the baseball Red Sox, who are losing neither their park nor their home town--merely their players. Mostly through trades and management bungles, the Sox have given up most of their major stars, including Catcher Carlton Fisk, Outfielder Fred Lynn and Shortstop Rick Burleson. But the good news is that, like other victims of great disasters, the Sox do not want to move just now. qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.