Bourque: “I always had a great relationship with the fans. It was all about respect.”

Ray Bourque is on the first day of the annual Jimmy Fund telethon (donate! They want to raise $4 million over the next two days.) right now, in a roundtable with the Celtics’ Glen “Big Baby” Davis and the Red Sox’ Curt Schilling (who says he’s heavily leaning toward retirement), and he was just asked a question about the support he got from Boston fans after he got traded to Colorado.

The above quote was part of his response. Now here’s something I have to say about that, because this is my blog and I get to bitch about things if I want to.

That’s one of the things I’ve always greatly disliked about that whole situation, and subsequently the dishonesty put forth by Bourque on this subject. A guy requests a trade out of town because he wants to win a Stanley Cup, which is understandable. But then his long-time team’s fans cheer for him over their home team despite the fact that he basically sold the team and city out.

Look, he was obviously never going to win in Boston, but he requested a trade out of town. Ray Bourque is obviously an iconic Bruin and one of the sport’s all-time greats but the Hub’s fans are total suckers for buying into this myth that he deserved better. If you’re going to claim you’re a Boston guy first and foremost, you don’t beg out of the city to play with a better team. It’s really that simple.

Even if he had let his contract expire and signed with a team, it would be totally different than asking for a trade. Did getting Brian Rolston, Sami Pahlsson and Martin Grenier plus the first-round pick that eventually became Martin Samuelsson help the Bruins? Kind of. Rolston scored 90-something goals in Boston over four seasons. Better than nothing, I guess.

If a beloved captain who played with the team his whole career and became an all-time great like Jarome Iginla asks to be traded out of Calgary so he can win a Cup, that’s his prerogative. But if he came waltzing back into Calgary with that Cup after a year and a half out of town, only a city full of fools would give him a parade. Boston did it.

I’ll never understand why Boston fans don’t feel hard done by over this. It just seems ridiculous. The way other beloved guys like Manny Ramirez or Antoine Walker were run out of town is in many ways regrettable, as an entire fanbase turned on them because of the way the front office handled the situation with the media. Quite the opposite with the Bruins and Bourque, though a lot of that probably has to do with the way Bruins ownership is perceived in Boston.

Bruins fans have a lot to gripe about in the team’s history, like the trade that sent Bobby Orr to Chicago or the nickel-and-diming Jeremy Jacobs is perceived to have done with the team from the mid-90s until the lockout, but the fact that this isn’t among them is baffling. It’s perfectly okay to love Ray Bourque and all he did for the team and the community, but if anyone else had done what he did, words like “traitor” would be thrown around liberally.

Top 5 Funniest/Most Embarrassing Off-Field Incidents

With Paul Pierce’s recent Las Vegas handcuffing, as well as a Patriots off-season that saw two guys get busted for pot and another found with enough Oxycontin’s to sedate ANYONE, we decided to look back on five of our favorite funny, embarrassing and sometimes both off-field incidents in recent Boston history.

**1991: Celtics center Robert Parish is arrested when the cops intercept two ounces off pot that had been Fed Exed to his house.

Can’t you picture The Chief sitting around with his buddies on the couch, ripping bong hits and just rewinding the video of him punching out Laimbeer over and over?

"Dude! Let’s watch it in slo-mo this time!"

The best part of this arrest is that Parish was freed after paying only a $37 fine.


**Nov. ‘97: While onstage during an Everclear concert at the Paradise, Drew Bledsoe stage dives into the crowd, lands on a woman and eventually pays her a reported 400K in the settlement—she’s since hired Mo Lewis as a personal bodyguard.

In a perfect world, I’d like to think Drew made this fateful leap to escape Everclear’s sweet SoCal sounds, but it appears he’s actually one of their biggest fans. Perhaps the funniest/most disturbing part of the story is that the incident happened only days before the Pats were heading to Tampa for one of the most crucial games of the year. The Pats ended up getting destroyed, but Bledsoe made it clear to everyone that the incident would not effect his play—he completed 13 of his 27 passes for 117 yards and threw two beautiful interceptions to compliment his zero TD passes.

**October ‘06: The Celtics Sebastian Telfair has a $50K chain taken from him outside Diddy’s restaurant, Justin’s.

A rumor then circulates that Telfair was seen making a phone call roughly an hour before rapper Fabolous was shot outside of the same club. Telfair voluntarily surrendered his cell phone records to police, and is not under investigation for any involvement, despite rumors to the contrary.

Anytime a crappy point guard is potentially involved with the shooting of a rapper outside of a restaurant owned by Diddy, the world takes notice. But as ridiculous as this story was, the fact that Telfair was involved made it completely reasonable. Nothing that happens with him surprises me.

But then again, maybe we’re too hard on the kid. I mean who among us hasn’t accidentally taken our girlfriend’s gun-filled pillow case with us on plane? Can any of us honestly say that we’ve never been driving 30 mph over the speed limit in our new Range Rover (with an expired Florida license even though we’ve never lived in Florida) and forgotten that there was a loaded handgun hidden under the passenger seat?

Some say Bassy has problems. I say judge not lest ye be judged.

**March ‘08: Boston Red Sox scout Jesse Levis is arrested after allegedly masturbating from the balcony of his Port St. Lucie, Fla. hotel room. The balcony overlooked the hotel’s pool where young girls were swimming.

Here’s the actual transcript of a conversation between Levis and Port St. Lucia’s lead detective after Levis was busted in the room:

Detective: Jesse, what were you doing?

Levis: Going over some prospect evaluations.

Where are they? Geez, i don’t see them.

They’re in my briefcase.

How could you be reading documents when they’re in your briefcase? … That’s a mystery. Jesse, were you watching "Spank-tro-Vision"?

Ok then, let’s hit it!

Hey, there are some dangerously young girls down there.

Good for them!

Geez, i wonder if any of their dads play for the Yankees?

**April ‘08: Now former New England Revolution players Gary Flood and Joey Franchino are tossed out of Fenway Park for wearing Yankees jerseys. (Oh yeah, and they also got absolutely gonzo’d, were wildly obnoxious to other fans and took a piss on the floor in the Home Plate Pavilion.

The big question here is this: Do we think these two tried to play the Revolution card with the cops?

If another random athlete like say, Manny Delcarmen or Wesley Britt ever got busted for something like this, I feel like at some point the conversation would turn to, "Listen guys, I play for the Sox (or Pats). I messed up big time and promise it won’t happen again. How bout just letting it slide and allowing me to go help bring another title to Boston." And it might even work. But probably not in this case.

Do professional soccer players in the US have the same "I can do whatever I want because I’m a professional athlete" mentality that football, baseball and basketball players have?

I’m betting some of them do, although in reality, I think "Excuse me, do you know who I am? I’m the guy who writes a barely read column about five random things in the Boston sports world" would work better than "I play for the Revolution."

Busy B's

After a very quite month following the first day of free agency, the Bruins made head ways yesterday by signing one, releasing one, and trading for another. Boston inked defense man Dennis Wideman to a multi-year deal. Wideman had a career year last season setting career best with 81 games played, 13 goals and 23 assists while posting a +11 ratings. Nine of his goals came on the powerplay. He also played in all six of the Bruins playoff games, picking up three assists.

Terms of this deal were not disclosed. However, the signing of Wideman meant the end of the line for forward Glen Murray in a Bruins’ sweater. The Bruins placed Murray on waivers yesterday. No team has claimed Murray and now the B’s have 48 hours to complete a buyout. The 35-year old who has one-year remaining on his contract at $4.15 million, had 17 goals and 13 assists in last season’s injury plagued campaign that saw him play only 63 games. The buyout would save the B’s approximately $2.7 million against the cap.

The Bruins were also busy swapping minor league forwards who both saw NHL time last season. The B’s acquired forward Martin St. Pierre in exchange for forward Pascal Pelletier. St. Pierre played five games with the Blackhawks last season. He spent most of the year with AHL Rockford and led the team in scoring with 88 points (21-67) in 69 games. Pelletier played in six games last season with Boston. He scored 71 goals in 206 regular-season games with AHL Providence between 2005-08.