As you all know by now, the Red Sox game on Thursday was postponed due to the lovely weather we are having here in the Northeast. What you probably didn’t know was that the game on Thursday was also supposed to be the Red Sox tribute to the late Boston Celtics legend, Red Auerbach.

The Red Sox were supposed to don their green uniforms usually reserved for spring training. The Red Sox had hung some of the Celtics championship banners from the Monster but they were taken down when the heavy rain started falling. There was many former Celtics legends, coaches, and current players on hand for the festivities including Bill Russell, Frank Ramsey Jim Loscutoff, Jo Jo White, Dana Barros and Danny Ainge. Also present were five members of the current team including injured forward Paul Pierce and head coach Doc Rivers.

Bill Russell met with the Boston media members during a press conference and had some great words about Jackie Robinson.

“You may or may not know that I was a pallbearer at Jackie Robinson’s funeral.”The interview room at Fenway Park became silent.

“The day after he died, Rachel Robinson called me to ask if I would be a pallbearer,” Russell recalled. “When Jackie broke into baseball, I was in junior high school. To all of us, he was our hero, and here she was asking me to be one of his pallbearers.”

This, quite naturally, puzzled Russell.

“I remember saying, `Can I ask why?’ And she said, `You were his favorite athlete,’ ” Russell said. “How did I get to be Jackie Robinson’s favorite? He was a hero to all of us.

“Whenever I hear his name now, I’m very touched by that,” he added. “When I was growing up in the projects one of the reasons he was such a hero to us was because he was regarded as a scholar and an athlete.”

All I can say is WOW!!! One of baseball’s pioneers favorite athletes was Bill Russell. That tells you a lot about who Jackie Robinson was.

I haven’t seen anywhere whether or not the Red Sox will try to redo the tribute. I would think they would considering how much Red Auerbach has meant to the great city of Boston. Current Celtics coach Doc Rivers agrees,

“He was bigger than just basketball, and especially in this city,” Rivers said. “I think he belongs everywhere in the city — in all the arenas. He meant that much.”

Russell also had some great words about Auerbach,

Russell discussed Auerbach’s social influence on the city, which was then struggling through a period of deep racial division.

“He had no preconceived notions of what a player looked like,” Russell said, adding that Auerbach’s attitude extended to all different kinds of physical prototypes. “All he was interested in was results.”

The Red Sox are a class organization and I know the Red Sox brass will do the right thing and set up another day to honor him.