DOERR’S INFLUENCE RECALLED, VALUED BY AINGE
With the passing of Red Sox legend Bobby Doerr 13 days ago, we go back to a piece we wrote for the program when the New England Sports Museum honored Danny Ainge at The Tradition in 2015.
Ainge had committed to staying in baseball with the Blue Jays even after being named college basketball’s Player of the Year in 1981. Then the Celtics drafted him in the second round and he had second thoughts. The problem is he had grown close to then-Toronto hitting coach Doerr, who lived near Ainge’s hometown of Eugene, Oregon.
“Pat Gillick was our general manager, and I felt very close to Pat and to Bobby,” Ainge said for the story. “Both of them came to my house, and we had a discussion with my wife. They were trying to convince me to stay and play baseball and saying that I had a great future.
“That was a hard thing to tell them, because Bobby had invested a lot of time into me and my future. I’ll always be grateful to him. His wife was ill at the time, and so Bobby would sort of be on two weeks and off two weeks. And when he would come back and someone had been messing with my AINGE swing, he was just livid. He was great.
“Ideally what I wanted to do was take one year and try the NBA. See, I didn’t love the NBA as a kid coming out of college, and that’s why I signed a baseball contract. Baseball to me was bigger and better, and you could have a longer career. But I did love the Celtics and the Lakers. I wasn’t really that excited about most of the other teams in the NBA at that time. Major league baseball was more appealing to me.”