Boston Sports Then and Now

Andy Brickley

Andy Brickley’s voice is familiar throughout New England and to those of us out-of-market fans who get the NESN broadcasts via the NHL’s Center Ice package. Brickley is the top TV analyst for Boston Bruins’ hockey games. Most fans know he was a part of Boston’s 1989-90 teams that reached the Stanley Cup Finals. What many fans may not know is how hard Brickley has had to work for everything in his career. To pay tribute to his effort and to acknowledge his tremendous contributions to the culture of Boston Bruins hockey is why he is BST&N’s Vintage Athlete Of The Month for April.

The need to prove himself to skeptics started right away in college. Brickley went to school at New Hampshire, but had to walk on the hockey team. He made the squad and played all four years, from 1979-82. By the end of his career he had made first-team All-American and led New Hampshire to the Frozen Four in his senior year.

Two years into his college career he was selected in the NHL Entry Draft, but by the skin of his teeth—Brickley was the final player chosen in a 210-player draft, going to the Philadelphia Flyers. He began his pro career there in the fall of 1982, but a year later he was traded to Pittsburgh, as part of a package involving multiple players and draft picks.

By rights, this should have been the point when his career took off. He scored 18 goals in 50 games, the highest goal output of his career and also had 12 assists. But he ended up demoted to the minor leagues for the egregious sin of breaking curfew. To put the early 1980s in perspective, this was a time when frequent reports of players’ cocaine addictions were becoming public—in all sports. Seen in that light, the idea of demoting Brickley because he broke curfew seems absurd beyond belief.

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Mel Parnell, one of the great lefthanded starters in Red Sox history passed away this week.

The focus of much of the sports world right now is on New Orleans, between the NFL controversy over the Saints bounty program and the coming of the Final Four in the Bayou next week. Red Sox Nation also cast its eyes to New Orleans, but for more somber reasons.  Mel Parnell, one of the best lefthanded pitchers in team history passed away there this week and BST&N takes this moment to salute him as our Vintage Athlete of the Month.

If there was one thing that marked Mel Parnell it was stability—he was born in New Orleans and he passed on there. He came up the major leagues with the Red Sox and he retired from there. His first big league season came in 1947 when he got mostly limited work. In 1948 he earned a regular spot in the rotation, won 15 games and began a string of six straight seasons of 200-plus innings pitched.

1949 was his best year when he won 25 games, and was a part of one of baseball’s great pennant races. On the Fourth of July that year, the Red Sox were twelve games behind the Yankees and left in the dust. The team rallied and closed to three games by the beginning of September. The surge continued through the final month and Parnell was a huge—perhaps that’s worth of an all caps—a HUGE reason why. In the month of September he went 5-1 and his season overall put him fourth in the final MVP voting. Teammate Ellis Kinder finished fifth, and together they put a shallow Red Sox pitching staff on their shoulders and carried them. The work of Parnell and Kinder is celebrated in the book Summer of ’49, the incomparable work of renowned author David Halberstam. Having read that book and studied that team, I found myself wishing last September that just one Red Sox pitcher would do what Parnell and Kinder did and just put a team on their back.

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Normand Leveille

BST&N has chosen former Bruins forward Normand Leveille as the Vintage Athlete Of The Month. The story of Leveille is one of lost opportunity and tragedy.

Norman Levielle was born January 10, 1963 in Montreal, Quebec. Levielle was highly touted prospect coming out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.  He broke the century point mark with 101 in his last year with Chicoutimi Saguenéens. The 18 year old scored 55 goals and tallied 46 assists in 72 games.

The Boston Bruins chose the gifted teenage in first round, 14^th overall of the 1981 NHL Entry Draft. Levielle had a very promising start to his professional hockey career. As a rookie with Boston, Normand had 33 points in 66 games with a plus 16 +/- ratio. The sky was the limit for the talented winger from Montreal.

“Norm Levielle was a star in the making” said hockey broadcaster and writer, Stan Fischler.

Levielle’s star dimmed prematurely. Just nine games into his sophomore season, a the Bruins budding star was hit into the boards by Vancouver’s Marc Crawford. During the first intermission, Levielle who still was learning English told Jean Ratelle that he felt dizzy. The Bruins team therapist and the Canucks doctor took a look at the youngster. They noticed something was very wrong.

Levielle was rushed to surgery. It was discovered that he had a defective blood vessel since birth. This defect was a time bomb that went off because of the thunderous hit. The nineteen year old suffered a major stroke, putting him in a coma for three weeks.

The stroke/coma caused major brain and motor function damage. His bright hockey career ended before it began.

“He was destined to be a really, really great player” said Bruins GM Harry Sinden who drafted Leveille.

The Bruins made it all the way to the Wales Conference Finals in 1983 and many thought their run was fueled by Levielle.

Normand Levielle has remained part of the Boston Bruins family. He attended the “Last Hurrah” at the Boston Garden in 1995. There was not a dry eye in the house as Bruins greats Terry O’Reilly and Ray Bourque helped Normand skate on the old Garden ice one more time.

“100 Things Bruins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” By Matt Kalman was a resource used for this article.

Three years ago this month, Jim Rice got the call from Cooperstown.

January is the month when the Baseball Hall of Fame announces its newest inductees. No former Red Sox players got the call this year (the only new member will be Cincinnati shortstop Barry Larkin, soon to be one of Terry Francona’s broadcast compatriots on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball). But it was just back in 2009 that former Red Sox slugger and current NESN analyst Jim Rice was inducted into Cooperstown. So in the spirit of Hall of Fame Month, BST&N honors Rice as its Vintage Athlete of the Month for January.

It was the end of the 1974 season and the Red Sox were ready to move Carl Yastrzemski from left field to first base, to rest the legs of another future Hall of Famer. Rice was called up for a cup of coffee in September and then got the opportunity to start the season in left for 1975.  The rookie came out guns blazing and put up big numbers. He slugged .491, and drove in 102 runs. He hit over .300 and finished third in the MVP voting, while the Sox ran away with the AL East.

There was only one “problem with Rice’s big year and it’s that he was overshadowed by his own teammate. Centerfielder Fred Lynn was also making his big-league debut and he electrified the Fenway Faithful with his hitting and his aggressive defense in the outfield. Lynn won the MVP award. A crueler blow for Rice was a broken hand in September. He had to sit out the postseason and with the Sox ending up just one run from a World Series title it’s not exactly a stretch to say that injury cost the team a championship.

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Dennis Johnson

Another NBA season is set to begin on Christmas Day and the Celtics tipoff against the Knicks at noon EST will usher in the shortened year. Boston takes the court looking to see if they have any juice left after three years of coming up short in the playoffs and time ticking on the careers of the Big Three.

In the 1980s the Celtics were coming off two years of missing the NBA title with their Big Three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. While that version of the Big Three was younger then than our current trio of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett is today, there was still a sense of urgency. With Magic Johnson and the Lakers also at the top of their game, opportunities had to be seized to win championships and Boston had not even reached the Finals in the two years following their 1981 NBA championship. Backcourt defense was seen as the big reason why. Boston was soft in this area generally and it was being exploited by Sixers’ guard Andrew Toney, known as “The Boston Strangler” for his production against the C’s. Red Auerbach made the bold move necessary to get someone in who could help. He traded power forward Rick Robey to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for guard Dennis Johnson. The result? Four straight trips to the Finals and two NBA titles that ensured the Bird era wouldn’t be remembered for what might have been. As we get set for another NBA season, BST&N honors Dennis Johnson as its Vintage Athlete of the Month.

Johnson grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and after high school he played juco ball at Los Angeles Harbor College. It was here that he developed the leaping ability—specifically the speed in which he elevated off the ground—that enabled him to rebound at a level well beyond what his 6’3” frame would have suggested. Following junior college he went on to Pepperdine and after two solid years was drafted at the end of the second round by the Seattle SuperSonics (today’s Oklahoma City Thunder).

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Patriot linebacker Andre Tippett was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2008.

As the Patriots’ season hits the stretch drive the question looming over New England is whether the team can find consistent defensive play and a steady pass rush. There’s one player of recent Patriot lore, inducted in the NFL Hall of Fame in 2008, who would have had no problem solving both problems. Linebacker Andre Tippett was the defensive leader of the first really good stretch of Patriot football in the mid-1980s and this November he is BST&N’s Vintage Athlete of the Month.

Andre Tippet came of age in the NFL when the linebacker position was starting to be redefined. The classic linebacker up to that point was one who stayed at home, filled the gaps, read plays correctly and allowed the defensive front and the defensive backfield to make big plays—in short, a linebacker who fit the 4-3 scheme. As passing games were becoming more potent in the early 1980s defensive coordinators were adjusting. The 3-4 scheme was becoming more popular, but while it enabled an extra player to be dropped into coverage it also meant one less pass rusher. The answer to that was to create a hybrid—a linebacker who could be moved around and bring pressure on the edge and play either stand-up or in a three-point stance. Tippett was suited to the task.

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