There will be the usual outrage about professional athletes whothink they can get away with anything. They make too much money andhave too much time, and nobody ever says 'no.' They get freesneakers, free meals and free drinks, and everybody laughs at theirjokes.
There will be the usual analysis of an inner-city (Washington)youth who rides basketball to a scholarship at a prestigious(Georgetown) university. Did he belong there? Did the school usehim? Did John Thompson and Mary Fenlon prepare him for the worldbeyond Georgetown? Did Thompson show him the deflated basketball,symbolic of life after basketball?
According to police, Charles Smith, a member of the BostonCeltics, was driving a van that struck and killed two female BostonUniversity students early yesterday morning. Hit and run. He wasarraigned in Roxbury District Court and charged with vehicularhomicide.
This news story crosses into sports because it involves a localprofessional athlete. But it is not a sports story for the parentsof those two young women. It didn't matter to the students standingon Commonwealth Avenue that the van was being driven by a BostonCeltic. When you are in the house of a victim, the scope of atragedy is not proportional to the name of the perpetrator.
Local athletes have been involved in deadly accidents before.Bruin Craig MacTavish spent a year in jail after he caused a death bydrinking and driving. Jim Craig, the US Olympic gold-medal goalie,was involved in an auto accident in which a woman died, but Craig wasacquitted of a vehicular homicide charge.
Charles Smith is 23 years old. He was a member of the 1988 USOlympic team and in 1989-90 had a brief run as the regular Celticpoint guard. In the Celtics press guide, under the Charles Smith'personal' section, it reads, 'Charles Edward Smith IV is single . .. enjoys viewing movies and shopping . . . likes all types of food .. . relaxes to jazz music . . . most memorable Christmas: all becauseof his religious faith . . . most influential person: his mom . . .lives in Boston year round . . . one of the few professional athletesto wear number 13 . . . shoe size is 10 and a half.'
We don't know much more.
'He has a good reputation,' Celtic Godfather Red Auerbach saidyesterday. 'There was never a hint of trouble, and I just reaffirmedthat in a phone call with John Thompson. He was a simple kid. Hegot his degree.'
It's hard not to notice some of the little details of this bigtragedy.
If this were last year, or any year before, Smith would alreadyhave been in Indianapolis with his teammates. Before the days oftheir private jet, the Celtics traveled to road games on commercialflights the night before. Now they go the morning of the game. AndCharles Smith was still cruising the streets of Boston at 1:45 a.m.,some 7 1/2 hours before his team's charter flight to Indiana.
If you're a faithful reader of the sports page, you know thatSmith was a couple of days away from the end of his second 10-daycontract. And he was probably going to play because Brian Shaw wasinjured.
This is a tragic, senseless story. It's not Roger Moret drivingunder a truck in Stonington, Conn., at 4 a.m., a few hours before hewas scheduled to start for the Red Sox. It's not Irving Fryarleaving Sullivan Stadium and driving into a tree during the secondhalf of a Patriots game. Two young women are dead and a member ofthe Celtics has been charged with mowing them down and then leavingthe scene.
Auerbach said, 'It could happen to anybody. That's the way I lookat it.'
Anybody means Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox, Patriots, you and me. Butthere is much we still don't know. And if you are parents of one ofthose young women, you do not shrug and say that this could happen toanybody. When the Celtics start the NBA playoffs, those two studentsshould be studying for exams. But they won't be studying for exams.
One horrible tragedy follows another, and each time we say maybewe've all learned from it. And then it happens again. People getcareless. People take chances. A moving vehicle becomes a deadlyweapon, and by the time anybody thinks, it's too late; someone isdead.
We all pay a little more attention when a Celtic is involved, butgrief and outrage pay no homage to fame. Two young women are dead.Power, fame and money can't bring them back.
