Some Boston Garden Seats Stay in the Family

They are the most prized seats in Boston Garden, closely guarded and sometimes handed down through generations of Boston Celtic fans. But they do not come risk free.

Ask Leila Brogna of Milton, Mass., who for 39 years has sat at courtside and had basketballs, or members of the Celtics, fly into her lap.

“Larry Bird knocked my glasses off,” she said with a touch of pride. “I had to be taken to the first-aid room. He was at center court, flew out, and all I could see were these two green sneakers.”

Her face was cut by the frame of her glasses. Dazed, she was led away by two attendants.

“I didn’t need any stitches, but I missed half the game,” she said with regret.

Another time, Hall of Famer Bob Cousy, who retired in 1963, landed in her lap, “but that was a few years ago.”

Recently, Brogna said, she watched the game from a friend’s posh skybox hanging high over the Garden among 15 championship banners. But, she said with disdain, “All I could see were the tops of their heads.”

There’s no danger of that with a courtside seat, where eye-level is center Robert Parish’s navel, and spectators whose eyes stray from the court may get whomped by a flying ball.

Brogna sits at center-court in one of five dozen seats unobscured by the teams, sportswriters and officials who ring the court. There sit the die-hard, old-time Celtic fans.

“Those people have been with us for years and years,” said Duane Johnson, the Celtics’ assistant sales director. In the five years Johnson has held the job, none of the courtside seats has become available.

“The people sitting in those seats will pass those down from generation to generation before they’ll give them up,” he said, explaining that the previous year’s ticketholders get first dibs on the seats.

Unlike Philadelphia or Los Angeles, Johnson said, tickets for the front row cost the same as the rest of the section. In Boston, the price is $20 a seat per game during the season, or $1,520 for a pair of season tickets. With playoff tickets included, the price tag is $2,390 a pair.

Front-row seats at the Forum go for $115. The next-best seats go for $37.50. As in Boston, all front-row Forum seats are held by season ticketholders.

Johnson says courtside seats are the most prized in the Garden, which has a capacity of 14,890. Everyone wants them. But in Johnson’s opinion they do not provide the best view, because they are too close to watch entire plays.

“You can hear the grunting and the groaning. You get a feeling for how big these guys really are, but I wouldn’t choose to sit there,” said Johnson, admitting he’s a rarity.

“If I offered that front row to 99% of the people on my list, they would take it.”

Courtside fans can see the beads of sweat on Cedric Maxwell. They hear the players’ obscenities, and get a splattering of blood when one does a nosedive into the parquet floor.

And courtside fans are also among the first to jump up and scream “foul.” They see some of the shoves that go undetected by a referee.

“My two boys grew up in this row,” said Brogna, adding that she’d never give up the seats obtained when her husband was a sportswriter for the old Boston Record-American newspaper. “You feel as if you’re in the game more.”

Just down the row, Eric Gordon’s family has had a pair of season tickets on the front row for the past 13 years. A relative newcomer, he says he values the seat’s view of the game’s “human element.”

“They’re not just robots,” said Gordon. “They’re human beings and you see them as such.”