Red a once-in-a-lifetime find for Celtics By John Powers, Globe Staff, 6/12/2003 He was cast in bronze nearly two decades ago, sitting on a bench in the middle of Quincy Market, brandishing a stogie and a rolled-up program at the pigeons. Red Auerbach wasn't sure then how he felt about premature permanence and he's not sure now. ''It felt funny,'' says the eternal Celtic, now 85 but still living on cigars and Chinese food. ''In all the years it's been there, I think I've actually seen it maybe six or seven times. It makes me nervous.'' Auerbach, who is a decade past quintuple heart bypass surgery, long ago was granted as much immortality as he can use. His number (a symbolic 2, following club founder Walter Brown) was hoisted to the Causeway Street rafters in 1985, the same year his statue was unveiled. He was enshrined in basketball's Hall of Fame 35 years ago. He has an honorary degree from everybody but the Great Oz. Tonight, he'll be back in town to accept The Sports Museum's lifetime achievement award at the FleetCenter. ''This is probably the most remarkable story in all of sports,'' says Tom Heinsohn, the former Celtic player and coach who'll also be honored tonight along with former Bruin Phil Esposito, former Patriot Steve Grogan, former Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant, former women's professional baseball player Mary Pratt, sportscaster Don Gillis, and sports columnist Tim Horgan. ''Red came in 1950 and he's still here. One man with the same organization who wasn't the owner -- nobody else has ever lasted that long.'' Auerbach may spend almost all of his time in Washington, but he still holds the title of president and checks in frequently with the new Celtic hierarchy. He has outlasted nearly a dozen owners and as many coaches, more than 250 players and one demolished building. He's had chances to leave -- after he retired from coaching in 1966, during the bizarre franchise swap with Buffalo in 1978, and whenever a new owner came through the revolving door, most recently this season. But he never has. What Auerbach says was a five-minute decision has endured for 53 years. He came to Boston because he couldn't stay in the Tri-Cities (Moline, Ill., Rock Island, Ill., and Davenport, Iowa, if you're counting). Ben Kerner, who owned the Blackhawks, traded John Mahnken to the Celtics for Gene Englund despite Auerbach's objections, violating the Redhead's cardinal rule for front-office types: Thou Shalt Not Meddle. ''It was a terrible deal,'' Auerbach says. So he headed for the Hub. The beauty of the Celtics was that Brown, a hockey man, couldn't tell a basketball from a beach ball. He settled on Auerbach by asking a bunch of local sportswriters and sportscasters whom he should hire. Auerbach agreed to a one-year contract for $10,000 and a piece of the profits from a money-losing club. It was the best deal Brown ever made -- for one salary, he got an entire staff. ''What Arnold was doing for the Celtics is what 12 people are doing now,'' muses Bob Cousy, Auerbach's point guard for 13 years and six titles. ''He was the coach, the general manager, the traveling secretary, the head scout. He was a one-man gang.'' But Auerbach's biggest job was salesman, peddling roundball in a baseball and hockey town that dismissed basketball players as circus giants in sneakers. ''There were stories about pituitary freaks,'' he says. ''People thought all you had to be was tall.'' So Auerbach took to the road to hawk his product directly to the customer. ''We did a lot of clinics,'' he says. ''We had a portable court in the back of a truck and we'd go to supermarket lots.'' It wasn't just the citizenry that Auerbach had to sell -- it was the Boston press, who'd opined that the pros would have a hard time handling Holy Cross. ''Some writers would say, good college team, the Celtics are lousy,'' says Auerbach. ''So we scheduled a scrimmage with Holy Cross -- Cousy was a rookie then -- and we beat them so bad it wasn't even funny.'' If seeing was believing, Auerbach made sure everybody from Eastport to Block Island saw his ball club. ''We used to play 25 exhibition games before the season,'' says Heinsohn. ''We dedicated every high school gym that was built in New England for 15 years. We'd start out in Maine, then we'd meander over to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, western Massachusetts, Connecticut, then come back home.'' The caravan, four men to a vehicle, was led by Auerbach, his pedal to the floor. Rookies had to drive with Auerbach. None of the veterans would; Cousy even had it written into his contract. ''Arnold drove like a madman on these country roads,'' testifies Cousy. ''He's lucky he's still alive. He must have had three cars die right under him. They'd start smoking and he'd leave them by the side of the road.'' Once, Cousy remembers, he and several teammates had pulled off for an informal pit stop an hour outside of Bangor when they saw a cloud of dust in the distance. ''We said, only one person could be driving that fast on this road,'' Cousy says. ''We flagged Red down and told him we'd run out of gas and he drove off, cursing. We gave him a 10 count and went after him. He's at this one-pump station, talking to a farmer with a gas can in his hand. Well, we went by him at 70 miles an hour, honking the horn and loving every minute of it.'' As the titles began coming and the dynasty grew, Auerbach didn't need to play traveling salesman, but he still lived like one. His home during his coaching days was a two-room suite on the ninth floor of the Lenox Hotel in the Back Bay with a pull-chain toilet and a hot plate. ''We're not talking about the Waldorf,'' says Cousy. But for Auerbach, it sufficed. His wife and two daughters were living in Washington and most of his time during the season was absorbed by his multiple Celtic duties. ''My days were occupied,'' he says. ''I was in the office every morning. I'd go to practice, then I'd take off and do my own scouting, seeing as many games as I could.'' Auerbach had a season-by-season handshake arrangement with Brown, yet he says the idea of taking a richer, easier deal elsewhere never occurred to him. ''I never gave it a thought,'' he says. ''You're happy, you like the people, and you like the fans.'' Even after he gave the coaching whistle to Bill Russell, even after the club was bounced from owner to owner to owner (''I've had some humdingers'') in the '60s and '70s, Auerbach stayed put. The only time he got the urge for going was in 1978, when the franchise was swapped and John Y. Brown, the Kentucky-fried tycoon, took over. There was a four-year offer from the Knicks to be their hoop god, which he'd all but accepted, until the Bostonian-in-the-street (`Ayy, Red, stay!) made an impassioned pitch and Auerbach realized he couldn't see himself in the Garden as a visiting rival. ''It wasn't a question of money,'' he says. ''It was a question of where I'd be happiest.'' Then there was John Y. Brown's itch to play general manager, which brought back the specter of Ben Kerner. ''I couldn't get along with him,'' Auerbach says. ''He had this ego -- a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.'' Once Brown acquired a backup guard on his own for $50,000 and a first-round draft pick, Auerbach threw up his hands. ''I couldn't believe it,'' he says. ''That's when I knew that it would never work.'' Brown soon left, Larry Bird arrived, and Auerbach stayed -- and stayed. His name is still up high on the masthead, but the Redhead hasn't needed a formal title for a few decades now. The man who came for one year has become the symbol of Celtic permanence. ''The man played it the best anybody could ever play it,'' Heinsohn says. ''He is the premier survivor of professional sports.'' --

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