The week that just was in Boston sports featured loads of Bobby Orr talk. The greatest Bruin of all time, Orr played his first game for Boston 50 years ago last week, and he was back on Causeway Street Thursday, alongside the beloved Milt Schmidt, to drop the puck for the club’s home opener.
There’s no one like Orr, now 68 years old and still imbued with a grace and humility that was on vivid display Thursday when he sat with Schmidt and chatted with the media across the hall from the Bruins’ dressing room.
As Schmidt talked, his voice frail at times, Orr reached over and held his hand, something you do when your lifelong friend is 98 years old. Schmidt was in the rink the day the Bruins discovered Orr in 1960. The little kid from Parry Sound, Ontario, back then was 12 years old, and 56 years later, there they sat, proud pals and long-retired NHLers, reminiscing over their lifetimes’ works and joys.
“To be part of that was very, very special,’’ said Orr, when I asked him to recall his Black and Gold heyday, the Bruins winning the Cup in 1970 on Orr’s goal in overtime. “My dream was to be on a Stanley Cup team. I can see it like it was yesterday, with Chief [John Bucyk], the Cup over his head, going around Boston Garden. The parade. Unbelievable.’’
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Earlier that same day, I visited Sportsworld, the sports memorabilia emporium, in Saugus, where owner Phil Castinetti recently took in a vintage Bobby Orr Power Play pinball machine. Manufactured by Bally in the late 1970s, the Orr machine, one of 13,750 made by the Chicago-based company, originally retailed for around $3,000.
The model in Castinetti’s shop, in need of a tuneup and acquired from a Peabody ice rink that recently closed, can be had for $1,000. If Orr were to sign it, Castinetti said, the price would be “in the thousands.’’
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“You know what?’’ added Castinetti, who has spent a lifetime in the memorabilia business, “50 years later he’s probably as hot, if not hotter, as anybody in the business. In this area, Bobby Orr is still the king.’’
Orr’s time in Chicago was brief, so brief that many hockey fans, especially in this town, tend not to remember it, or blatantly choose to forget it. His knees banged up beyond repair, he played only 10 games with the Bruins in 1975-76, then departed in a contract squabble, signing on with Chicago as a free agent. He played only 26 games over three seasons with the Blackhawks, called it quits late in ’78, and stood inside Boston Garden on Jan. 9, 1979, to see his No. 4 hoisted to the rafters. He was only 30 years old.
The Bally machine features Orr in his blood red Chicago sweater, bearing down on a goalie dressed in a blue “Canada” sweater. Hard enough for a Bruins fan to see Orr as a Blackhawk. Imagine if he had been shooting at a Bruins goalie?
The image of Orr on the machine’s backglass also has him lugging the puck as a righthander. He was a lefty. The stinkin’ Hawks, they couldn’t even get that right?!
“That’s a famous backglass in pinball because of that error,’’ said Bowen Kerins, a five-time world champion pinball player who lives in Salem. “I don’t understand how that got by. I don’t know, but I assume whoever handled the artwork didn’t know Orr, and used a generic puckhandler.’’
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According to Kerins, the Orr pinball model was popular among players and most of the machines, he figures, are long gone to the pinball boneyard. The one in Castinetti’s shop, he said, is intriguing because the backglass, adorned with Orr’s image, is in excellent shape. Similar units often were placed in outside arcades, exposed to weather, their paint and mechanicals ravaged by the elements.
The NHL in Orr’s time was a brutal game, the league then still tolerating bench-clearing brawls, some of which would trigger bloody fights in the stands. The Garden in the late ’70s and ’80s had special security employees, many who resembled Boston College football players, who marched boldly into the stands, arms and fists flying, to bust up the fights. Pinball players can be a very competitive bunch, but Kerins doubted the Orr machine ever incited anarchy in the arcade.
“There’s still a few of the machines out there,’’ he said. “Thankfully, not all of them were destroyed in barroom fights.’’
The Orr machine, typical of the genre, stands nearly 6 feet tall at one end (backglass included), and is roughly 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. But if you want to find permanent space in your home for No. 4, be warned: The machines can be a tricky fit, mainly because the backglass portion is some 4-5 inches wider than the playing area.
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“Sometimes,’’ said Kerins, “people buy one of these games and they realize they have to remove a door to get them in their house. I have a game at home that is 29 inches wide and we had to take the door off one of the rooms to get it through. I plan never to move that game again.’’
Kerins can’t attest to seeing it, but over the years he has heard of Bruins fans taking to the Orr Power Play machine with black and gold paint and “editing’’ his uniform to Boston specs.
“They don’t think it’s right the way it is,’’ he said.
As every pinballer knows, you can take the superstar out of Boston, but you can’t take Boston out of the superstar.
Kevin Paul Dupont’s “On Second Thought” appears regularly in the Sunday Globe Sports section. He can be reached at dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeKPD.