Some of you know I am at times critical of Bob Ryan, but I thought
this was a very fine column.  As some have wondered what the Beanpot
was about, and since I consider Bob's column from yesterday to be a
good introduction to it, I offer the column here for your edification.
 
It also serves as sort of the first tolling of the death knell for the
Garden.  I am sure there will be many more of these over the next few
months.
 
 
Taken from the Boston Globe, Tuesday, February 7, 1995
 
A SPECIAL TOURNAMENT, FIRST TO LAST
by Bob Ryan
 
Gulp.  We have now officially turned over the hourglass on the Boston
Garden.  We have had the first real Last.
 
When linesman John Jones dropped the puck at approximately 6:05 last
evening to start the Boston University-Northeastern game, the final
Beanpot Hockey Tournament in the Garden had begun.  We are talking about
a serious athletic milestone.  Boston Garden means the Bruins, the
Celtics, ice shows, the circus, wrestling, boxing, schoolboy hockey,
postseason college hockey and, yes, the Beanpot.
 
The Beanpot is, in fact, no worse than third in the Garden pecking
order, following the Bruins and Celtics.  When this tournament reaches
its conclusion next Monday night, a vibrant part of the building's
history will be concluded.  If an edifice can be said to have reached a
stage of mortality, then let the word go forth that the Boston Garden
has now begun its legitimate Death Watch.
 
"This really is The End," says Garden vice president and Beanpot
tournament director Steve Nazro.  "I have seriously thought about the
ramifications for some time now.  It's not really, by the way, sad.
None of this is sad.  It's just time."
 
They've been playing Beanpot Hockey in the Boston Garden since 1954.  In
order to realize how the tournament has grown, consider the attendance
at the first-round doubleheader that first season in the old barn on
Causeway Street: 711.
 
"Seven-eleven," laughs Nazro.  "Isn't that something?  If people were
gamblers, they might have stopped, then and there."
 
There was, of course, an asterisk attached to that figure.  Boston had
been hit by a serious snowstorm.  Many other events had been canceled on
that blustery evening, including a wrestling card at the Boston Arena.
[now Northeastern's Matthews Arena.  - mike]
 
The tournament had been given birth the year before at the Arena.  What
was true then is equally true now.  There was, and is, only one city in
America that could stage a college hockey tournament featuring four
big-time schools loacted within a 2-mile radius of each other.  The
mystery might be not that such a tournament exists, but, rather, that it
took so long for the idea to be implemented.
 
Walter Brown cooked up the idea for the "New England Invitational"
tournament.  It quickly became nicknamed the "Bean Pot" (yup, two words).
The inaugural was played at the Arena for two reasons, the first being
that the Garden was booked on the night they wanted the tournament to
begin (Dick Buttons and the Ice Capades had dibs).  The second was
Brown's wish to highlight the Arena as a hockey venue.  He was upset
that the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs was subsidizing the NCAA
hockey tournament.  "The Arena would already be saved if the NCAA
tournament were in Boston," he fumed.
 
But that was it for the Arena and the Beanpot.  It was moved to the
Boston Garden in 1954, and it's been there ever since.
 
The date of that first Garden Beanpot doubleheader was Jan. 11, 1954.
"King of the Khyber Rifles" was at the Metropolitan.  "Guys & Dolls"
was at the Shubert.  The Errol Garner Trio was playing at Storyville.
Rogers Peets was pushing a sale on men's overcoats for $67.50, $77.50
and $87.50.  You could buy a new Hillman Minx automobile at any one
of a dozen area dealers for $1,699.  And a headline in the Daily
Globe read as follows:
 
                     OPENS BUSY SPORTS WEEK
                           AT GARDEN
                        BEAN POT HOCKEY
                        TOURNEY TONIGHT
 
The Beanpot was not yet a civic institution.  Readers were advised that
"the biggest event of the week is the basket ball game between Holy
Cross and Notre Dame at the Garden Friday night."
 
Let history record that Jimmy Duffy of Boston College scored the first
goal in the Beanpot's Garden history.  The Eagles would go on to record
an 8-5 vistory over Northeastern.  The next night (another twist) BC
knocked off Harvard to win the tournament.  Duffy picked up 7 points in
the two games, but teammate Bobby Babine beat him out for the MVP award.
 
Who could have possibly foreseen what this tournament would become?  Who
could have known that, within a very short period of time, the alumni of
the four schools would seize upon this two-night hockey summit as the
flashpoint for their individual rivalries?  Who could have imagined that
a ticket to the Bean Pot, soon to be Beanpot, would become one of the
great prestige symbols Boston had to offer?  Who could have foreseen a
circumstance in which the biggest storm of the century would not be
enough to keep 12,000-plus loonies away from the Garden on the first
Beanpot Monday of 1978?  Yet all this came to pass.
 
It has always been the quintessential *Boston* sporting event.  Why,
just this past weekend, a New York sports type, someone ranking in the
upper 1 percentile of informed and sophisticated sports enthusiasts,
when apprised that a man from Boston would be covering the Beanpot,
inquired, "Beanpot?  What's *that*?"
 
"It always has been our little secret," agrees Nazro, "but that's
changing."
 
The Garden is a chic item in the eyes of the national sporting press
in this final year of operation, and so, too, is the Beanpot.
 
"People have called us up to come who have never been interested before,"
Nazro points out.
 
Even happenin' ESPN2, a.k.a. "The Deuce", was on hand to broadcast
last night's games.  The truth is that in a week in which the Garden
will be the site of three Bruins games and a Celtics game, the marquee
event will nevertheless be the Beanpot.
 
The eyes said there was nothing to distinguish last night's Beanpot
scene from any other.  As always, there were no more than a thousand
people in the stands when the first game began.  And, as always, the
building was 90 percent full for the start of the second period.  It
never changes.  One minute the place is near-empty, and the next minute
you look up and the place is almost full.
 
But the heart knew what the eye didn't.  The heart knew that the
Beanpot was beginning its final lap in the best hockey building America
has ever known.  The heart knew that the Beanpot and the Garden are
an entry.  The heart respectfully disagreed with Mr. Tournament Director.
 
The heart knew it was looking at its first meaningful Garden Last.  The
heart was very sad indeed.
 
END
 
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Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93