JadeVlog

If you’re a Celtics fan, and even if you aren’t, you’ve probably seen the video clip.

It’s on Barstool, it’s on Facebook, it’s on Twitter, it’s on YouTube, and because of that it’s definitely on your mind. And if you’ve watched it once, you’re watched it 100 times, maybe more. You can’t help yourself.

Game 6 pic.twitter.com/lEUYGyxlJL

— Dan Greenberg (@StoolGreenie) September 27, 2020

Never mind that it’s clearly from another era. Or that it’s only six seconds in duration, which makes it a shortie even by TikTok standards. For what we have here is a textbook example of how brevity, when combined with the proper words, delivered by the perfect performer, can send a message of such power and heft that it flies into your head and stays there.

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In the video we see a passionate Celtics fan, just a kid really, sitting at a bar, decked out in a bright green shirt, his eyes wide, his face glimmering with enthusiasm as he talks about his favorite team.

Off camera, somebody presumably has asked him some variation of the who-do-you-think-is-going-to-win question, a staple in the television news industry whenever reporters are sent to local sports hotbeds to gauge fan reaction to whatever Big Game is on tap.

Our young man in green answers the question this way: “Who’s gonna win it? The Celtics! Because there’s no other reason why. The Celtics are the balls.”

But it’s the way he answers the question that has turned the video into a … wait for it, wait for it … viral sensation. The young man’s Boston accent is thick and twangy, so much so that it’s easy, too easy, to assume he grew up in a triple-decker on L Street in Southie.

Yes, you could assume that. But you’d be wrong. The young man in the video is Donald N. “Donnie” Beardsley, and he grew up not in South Boston but in central Massachusetts, in the postcardy little town of West Boylston. We’ve been able to determine that the video was shot during the 1984 NBA Finals, Celtics vs. Lakers, and that it was used in ESPN’s epic three-part “30 for 30” documentary, “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies,” that premiered in June 2017.

Alas, Donnie Beardsley never lived to see himself become a part of the Celtics’ storied history. He was just 51 when he died of a sudden heart attack on Jan. 2, 2015, leaving a wife and four children.

“He was, my gosh, he was so full of energy,” said his widow, Susan Beardsley. “He would light up a room. He’d walk into a roomful of strangers and by the end of the night he would know everyone. He loved to have a good time, within reason.”

Donnie’s younger brother, Andy Beardsley, 54, describes his older brother as “ … a vivacious, loved-everything-about-life kind of guy. He was always in the moment. Let’s put it this way: If you went to a function, you never had to ask yourself the next day if Donnie Beardsley was there. You always knew. He was always the guy at the wedding who was dancing on the table. Not in a bad way, either. He was just a fun guy to be around.”

Andy is certain the video was shot either before or after Game 5 of the 1984 NBA Finals, in which Larry Bird scored 34 points to lead the Celtics to a 121-103 victory.

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The reason Andy is certain is because Donnie attended the game that night.

That Donnie didn’t actually have a ticket apparently wasn’t a problem.

“He was with a friend and they snuck in,” said Andy. “Somebody led them through hallways and tunnels and buildings, I don’t remember if they were carrying provisions or what. But somebody got them in a back door and told them, ‘OK, you’re in the Garden, now go find a place to hide.’ They went in a bathroom and then stood on the toilets for a couple of hours. And then when the fans started coming in they just blended in with them.”

The series moved to LA for Game 6, the Lakers emerging with a 119-108 victory to force a Game 7 at the Garden on Tuesday, June 12.

When it was over, the Celtics had secured their second championship of the Bird-McHale-Parish era, toppling the Lakers 111-102.

“Donnie and his pal went back to The Fours for Game 7, but they were not able to get into the Garden” Andy said.

Andy said he has a vague memory of his future mother-in-law seeing the video from The Fours appear on a local television station. But nobody else ever mentioned it to him before the “30 for 30” documentary aired. According to Jim Podhoretz, who directed “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies,” the clip was culled from the NBA Entertainment library.

“I knew they covered those Finals pretty intensely, and they sent field cameras out to get the flavor of the city for different things,” he said. “A lot of those tapes still exist. They’ve just been digitized.”

The clip of Donnie Beardsley talking up the Celtics works perfectly, Podhoretz said, “because we were trying to capture what the rivalry was all about. The Lakers were much more cosmopolitan, and the Celtics were looked upon as kind of blue-collar. You see a guy like that in a bar in Boston who’s clearly stereotypical Boston when he says, ‘We’re the balls.’ Come on. It’s such a great expression, and the way he said it, with such enthusiasm and passion. He really meant it. You believe him. You can feel it.”

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Donnie is not identified in the documentary. Nor was his family aware it was going to be used.

“My wife flipped it on one night and I was watching it from bed, and I’m kind of falling asleep,” Andy said. “All of a sudden I heard his voice and I said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s Donnie!’ It was so quick, but I looked at the screen and saw him for like two seconds.

“And then my phone starts ringing. And it’s all his high school buddies and his college buddies, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, did you see your brother just now on TV?’ And I’m yelling, ‘I did! I did!’ It was so exciting. And then I laid there in bed the rest of the night crying, because I miss him.”

Susan Beardsley had a similar reaction.

“I didn’t see it at first, but I heard about it when everyone started calling,” she said. “Everyone was saying, what, is that Donnie? And my kids, everyone was calling them and saying you have to turn this on, you have to turn it on.

“It was so who he is,” she said.

Donnie and Susan met in Medford, and at, of all things, a St. Patrick’s Day party.

“It was a friend of a friend, and he was trying, this is a silly story, he was trying to fix me up with someone else,” she said. “And I was like, oh no, that’s not happening.

“And then I saw Donnie sitting in another room, and we just started chatting. You know what he did? He wrote his number on a pizza box and said, ‘Call me sometime.’ And the rest is history.”

What a history! Donnie and Sue have four kids — Hannah, John, Jenny and Bobby. They bought a house in Essex. Donnie worked for a family-owned finance company.

And now, nearly six years after his untimely death, he has emerged as a symbolic spokesperson for his beloved Celtics. It’s Donnie Beardsley who’s telling us the Celtics have balls.

“We were taught to work hard and play hard,” said little brother Andy. “And he was a great friend. More than I thought. Sometimes you don’t know those things about a person until you’re at his wake. I never realized how many lives he touched.

“He had wonderful kids, and they’re still wonderful. And they’re doing great. They miss their dad but there are no other hardships in their lives. Donnie and his wife raised four great kids. More than anything, that’s what he’ll be remembered for.”

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