Dodging downpours while leaping from exhibit to exhibit, I came across a vegetable display that any Boston sports fan has to give major props to: The Boston Celtics in Gourd Form.

The Gourd Celtics (Photo by me)

A local Cub Scout troop submitted their autumn gourd Boston Celtics display to the vegetable diorama competition, and obviously won first prize. What better way to celebrate your defending Eastern Conference Champions than to make semblances of them in gourds?

Oh no! Kendrick Perkins is down. Out three weeks with a bruised pumpkin. (I don’t know how well you can see the writing on the “jersey,” but it did read Kendrick Perkins.)

Oops. Kendrick Perkins Gourd is down. (Photo by me)

Major kudos to this Cub Scout troop for giving us a great example of Sports in Unexplained Places. Congratulations on winning first place.

I had a great phone conversation with Gentry a few weeks back, and he agreed to be one of my first “Five questions with…” subjects. Here’s the interview!

Kat: Why did you found CPR Gear?

Ryan: I always wanted to have something to do with sports in New England. I’ve been a personal trainer for fourteen years, but haven’t had the chance to work with any of the professional sports teams. A friend and I had been toying with the idea (for the line) for a few months, and my son’s birth was the impetus for the creation of the company.

I wanted to pass onto him that being a New England sports fan is more than loving a team – it’s like a religion or family. Players always change, but the one thing that always stays the same are the fans. They are always there. Being a Boston sports fan is a real uniting factor – I have been in Machu Picchu and have met people with Red Sox gear on, and have been able to spark a conversation with them because they were wearing their Sox gear. I have been in a bar in the Caribbean and made a connection with the owner because he too was a Boston sports fan from my hometown of Lawrence, Massachusetts.  You can make a lot of connections with complete strangers because of the devotion of Boston sports fans all over.

I started to type a creed of what it means to be a Boston sports fan taking all of that into account, and that is what appears on the inside tag of all of our shirts. The acronym “CPR”  is just the acronym – there’s no slight intended to anyone, because at the end of the day, it’s about all New England sports, including Olympic and college athletes.

CPR Gear's Boston Bruins women's t-shirt - I'm giving one away (see the end of the interview!)

Kat: Like you, I am a fan of my hometown teams away from home. Living in California, how do you stay connected? Do you take pride in keeping up your devotion living so far away?

Ryan: I absolutely have more pride (living away from New England.) I can’t stand not being at home when big events go on in Boston sports. I rarely get to see any of the Boston sports teams live – I will go down to Anaheim to see the Sox, LA to see the Celtics, and sometimes I get to see the Patriots. I rarely get to see the Bruins here in California. When one of my hometown teams are playing here in California and I get to see them, it feels like one of those nice early spring days – you get all excited.

When New England teams are playing outside of California, I’ll go down to Sonny McLean’s to connect, which is a big sports bar for all Boston fans. At one point, I definitely went there once a week for four years.

Kat:  You talk about a “go to” shirt on your web site – your favorite shirt, the one you must wear to watch any of your favorite teams. What is your “go to” shirt now? What was it growing up?

Ryan:  Right now, it is a Patriots Vince Wilfolk jersey. You do not see a lot of Wilfork jerseys in New England, let alone in California. I really like him as a player. I also have a green Red Sox jersey that I wore during every important game in 2004. Growing up, I had a green Celtics shirt with all the 1980s players and numbers on it that I wore all the time. And then, I had these solid white Celtics warm up pants – 1980s style. They probably would be considered atrocious now!

Kat: CPR Gear has some awesome women’s fan wear, both in traditional team colors and in pink. What has been the response? With all the criticism around the “pink hat” fans, why did you choose to design some pink shirts?

Ryan:  Fan wear for women needs to be less cheesy. For the longest time, women were regulated to too oversized crusty jerseys that just didn’t fit their shape and were not flattering. CPR Gear is making shirts that are more refined and stylish, and that fit people, particularly women, well.

As for the pink question, before we designed the line, we polled women in Boston about what they were looking for in this line. Many voted for pink, so we included pink shirts in our line. But we have traditional team colored items for women as well.

The entire line is higher quality than normal fan gear. The t-shirt fabric of is a very high quality, very vintage and soft. The design isn’t loud. You can wear the shirts to dinner before or after the game without looking out of place. We are looking to make more of a lifestyle brand – fan wear that could go anywhere. I think women will appreciate that.

Kat: Where will you be taking the company in 2009?

Ryan: We will continue to sell CPR Gear online. I like the online aspect – it is like you got a shirt custom made just for you. You know you can’t just get these shirts anywhere.  We may expand into boutique stores, because of the lifestyle nature of the brand. This will help reach out to local Boston die-hard fans. I recently had a chance encounter with Jonathan Kraft (son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft) and gave him some shirts, and hopefully something may come of that. I hope to keep getting the word out and spreading the fan base, and uniting the Boston sports community.

The First SportsGirlKat Contest!

Thanks, Ryan, for the fun interview! I definitely enjoyed our phone conversation. CPR Gear has graciously provided me with three of their shirts from their women’s line to give away to my readers. I’ll give them away to those of you with the best comments surrounding the following question – What is/was your go-to sports fan wear item? Comment before Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at noon Eastern time to have your answer considered to win!

Last night, however, I became the most despised of all sports fans – the bandwagon jumper – and went to a local bar to watch Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Since I moved here, I’ve spent every potential championship game for a Boston sports team working an event on campus designed to keep the students from rioting. For the first time, a Boston team could win a championship and there were only a handful of students around, and thus no need to throw an arena-sized viewing party.

I invited a bunch of co-workers out to join me, and we gathered in the packed bar a few minutes before tip-off. Championship games make even the most college kid dependent of bars packed like the first weekend of classes, and I was lucky to score one bar stool, which we kept rotating throughout the evening. We made quick friends with those around us, one of whom was a devout Celtics fan – a single mom who had raised her teenage daughter to be a Celtics fan, and only a Celtics fan, since she was a toddler. Even through the rough times, the mother said, they attended a dozen or so games a year because the team used to be great, and they would eventually be good again. The exact opposite of a bandwagon jumper, if you will.

The first quarter was touch and go – the sloppiness of the play on both sides was nauseating, and I anticipated being in for a long evening. But just like that, it became a blow out. It was fun to watch the one sidedness of it, because unlike a ton of important games, by the end of the 3rd it was a given that the Celtics would win. With layup after three pointer, the score grew, the Lakers looked more disheartened, and the bar cheered louder and louder. It entered a constant state of cheer and applause with 2 minutes left in the fourth that did not end until David Stern was shown handing over the trophy.

The single mom next to me cried. The foursome next to me clinked their beer mugs. The last of my colleagues left at that point started hugging everyone behind us. People held up their cameras high above their heads and took random shots of the bar – whether they actually got any semblance of a good picture, who knows.

I never felt badly for the fans in LA – hey, it’s LA, they seem devoid of emotion and use sports fandom as a means to see and be seen – but I did flash back to my friend Elissa’s house back in January of 1994, when I was on the other side of a blow-out, and had nothing to celebrate for. All dressed up in our Bills gear and nowhere to go. What 11 year old me would have given for the cheering, hollering and debauchery that I was taking part of as a 26 year old.

So I drank it all in, and realized that there is absolutely nothing better than watching your city’s team onto victory. For one night, everyone knew everyone else, everyone was having a great time, and everyone was happy. There were cars beeping down the street, and pedestrians cheering and waving their Celtics shirts. The T was crowded – masses of green shirted people on the Green Line – but no one cared. It was one of the coolest experiences one could ever have as a sports fan.

And now, I’ve gone through this elation four times. Since moving here in May of 2004, I have watched Boston win four professional sports championships. It’s fun every time – although the first time was absolutely amazing, as I wrote about in one of my most favorite posts ever in 2004 – and I hope it never ends (although I expect differently – it’s the sports pessimist in me.) I am ready to pronounce myself the best luck charm that ever was – when the Sports Girl who never knew winning growing up and the city that values its sports before everything else in life got together, we clicked and our respective luck changed for the better. And I couldn’t be happier.