Bill Walton Yearns for Boston?

September 2, 1985

A FEW TIPS FOR BILL WALTON

In my life, I have known all types of people, including some who couldn't be typed, but I have only two friends who had been Californians and have moved to Boston. One never can be sure, but both seem happy.

Every once in a while, almost compulsively, I ask these two people how they find Boston and whether they miss California. I ask this question more than I should. It's not that I suspect them of dishonesty when they say they are here to stay, but I wonder whether they are telling the truth. There is a difference.

I bring this up because of all the pictures during the last few days of Bill Walton in Boston and how much he says he wants to play here. I don't know if Bill Walton is the last person I expected to yearn for Boston, but he's not far behind Tommy Lasorda, President Reagan and E.T. Of course, yearning for New England in August and September is easy and quite common; February is half a year away, backward and forward. So is the slush.

When the press conference is held and Bill Walton is actually here, many questions will be asked of Celtics' pride, playing with Larry Bird and aches and pains, but I will merely endure those. There will be time for that talk in October when the season approaches. What I want to know now is how many times Bill Walton has been in Boston in the cold hollow of winter. Eight? Ten? Twelve?

I recall an interview with Fred Lynn just after he had left the Red Sox for the Angels, and when the baseball talk was done, Lynn spoke of Boston and what he missed. The interview, it should be noted, was held in February, but it was in Palm Springs. The sky was cloudless and the temperature was in the 80s.

"I know what I won't miss about Boston," said Lynn, who knew Boston only at its best, the warm months. "What I never got used to was those traffic circles - there are no traffic circles in California."

So it will be the small things. Walton has been going to work the last few years in San Diego and Los Angeles, punching in at bright, spiffy buildings, punching out to return home on the freeways, which take you from here to there. In this area, no roads take you directly from here to there unless you live atop Exit 17 on the Mass Pike in Newton and you wish to dine with a friend who lives atop Exit 18. Give yourself three years to learn the streets and highways.

And the few highways we have are not called freeways here, although they are called many names. They are always clogged, if not with cars, then with Jersey barriers for the repair work that, like a soap opera, never ends and never makes a point. And if the forecast is for rain, you must remember never to walk under the T tracks or park your car in the Boston Garden lot under the highway ramps. Water cascades down from those places during rainstorms, atop your car and head, much like Niagara Falls through a funnel.

Remember: Park your car under cover on clear days and in the open on rainy days. It sounds confusing, but you will be a drier man for it. And plunge through those traffic circles that Fred Lynn despised, glancing neither left nor right, the Boston way. Only tourists and clergymen hesitate at rotaries.

Be prepared for the fans. They are eager to make you a god and, while you already may have been one in Los Angeles during and just after those UCLA years and may be experienced in these matters, the Celtics already have one. This means that both you and he are expected to summon forth a championship on demand, much like UCLA. Boston is keen on the past, sometimes forgetting that time passes and things age. People, too. Understand.

Protect your feet. Always wear two pairs of socks, because there is ice under the Garden floor, except during the play-offs, when both the ice and the Bruins are usually gone earlier than the Celtics. And be very careful in the locker room because (a) it is small and (b) the Boston media is large, and you will be in imminent danger of having your toes stepped on after a game; the best advice is to practice the lotus position for a few minutes after practice, always curling your feet in and not out.

On your days off, go to Vermont; it's much like Oregon with snow. But on your nights off, do not go to Fenway Park and a Red Sox game unless it is early spring and the season has not yet ended. Theirs.

This is exciting. If the small things are handled well and not allowed to nag, this could be agreeable to all. Bill Walton in Boston, Horace Greeley in reverse, a Californian coming east. The common sociological cliche is that the restless and unsettled are most apt to migrate to California, and perhaps its opposite is also true - that the most settled leave there for here.