The sad chaos of the past several months has required adjustments and even cancellations to traditions across so many aspects of life.
Empty ballparks and arenas and abbreviated schedules are our reminders of the COVID-19 pandemic’s ongoing effects on the sports scene, even as the teams and leagues play on.
So it should come as no surprise that the pandemic has affected another tradition — The Tradition itself.
The Tradition is the Boston Sports Museum’s annual celebration of the legends of Boston sports, and in its 19 years has grown into an eagerly anticipated event on the local sports calendar.
Last year’s honorees during the ceremony at TD Garden included Manny Ramirez, Michelle Kwan, Matt Light, Paul Silas, and Zdeno Chara. Over 100 Boston sports legends have been honored in its 19 years.
The Tradition, through ticket sales to the event as well as advertising sold in the program and on the NESN broadcast that usually airs a couple of weeks later, also serves as a fundraiser for the non-profit and its educational causes, including Boston vs. Bullies and Stand Strong.
“In a normal year, we have our live event at the Garden,” said Rusty Sullivan, who has been the executive director of The Sports Museum since 2015. “We’d have 1,500 people there, and we’d honor seven individuals. They’d all be joined on stage with the presenter in sort of a talk-show format.
“In a normal year, the live event is great, right? I mean, it’s great. Great food. It has great drink. It’s really a family reunion of the extended sports and business community.
“No speeches, but it involves getting everyone together jam-packed on the arena floor of the Garden. And that, obviously, is not possible during the pandemic.”
So The Tradition, like so many of us, has come up with a way — a two-part way, actually — to adjust its traditions while raising money for its worthy causes.
First is “The Tradition” television program that will air on NESN on Dec. 16 at 8 p.m. Because there is no event this year, Sullivan, the Sports Museum, and the network came up with a different way to pay tribute to Boston sports and raise needed funds.
Rather than honoring individual legends this year — Sullivan said it didn’t seem right to do since the virtual experience wouldn’t be the same as honoring individuals in person — the show will focus on Boston’s greatest championship teams from the 12 that have won titles this century.
Hosted by Tom Caron and Jackie MacMullan, the program will feature conversation with three personalities from the 2001 Patriots, the 2004 Red Sox, the 2008 Celtics, and the 2011 Bruins. Among those participating are Patrice Bergeron, Terry Francona, Doc Rivers, and Richard Seymour.
“We recruited three guys per team to represent each of the teams. And it’s the same traditional formula, even if the structure has to be different," said Sullivan. “It’s all about the storytelling and the conversation, getting the stories to fly. That’s what’s happened here, built around the four legendary teams instead.
“The stories we got on these Zoom sessions that will make up the special, I think people will really, really enjoy watching them on NESN. There is so much we forget about what actually happened, since there have been so many incredible things that have happened over the last 20 years in Boston sports.”
The second aspect of The Tradition this year is a particularly creative way of filling that fundraising gap. Sullivan and the Sports Museum reached out to several of the athletes that have been honored in the past and asked if they would do individual Zoom sessions with sponsor groups of 10 people willing to pay a set price for a private conversation and Q&A session.
Twenty-eight athletes, including Raymond Bourque, Roger Clemens, Drew Bledsoe, Bill Walton, and Ty Law agreed to contribute two or three Zoom sessions apiece to what the Museum is calling “A Legendary Cocktail Party.”
“We knew there were some organizations that might simply sponsor out of the goodness of their heart," said Sullivan, who acknowledged that at the beginning of the pandemic they were still hoping to have the traditional event in December. “But we knew we needed to provide them with something more because they don’t get the 10 tickets to show up at The Tradition like in a normal year, the 10 tickets to go to the event at the Garden.
“So we came up with this, a more intimate way to connect with alumni of The Tradition.”
Sullivan, who hosts the sessions and sparks the conversation between the athlete and the participants, had done more than 60 “cocktail parties” from early October through mid-December. I recently sat in on one with Bruins great Rick Middleton, and it turns out he’s more than nifty with an anecdote.
“They’ve all been great about it. The stories that we’ve heard … we actually stopped taping them fairly early on because the athletes were telling us stuff that we would not want out on social media. Just really backroom stuff about guys they had played with, that sort of stuff.”
Doug Flutie showed off a replica Batmobile he spent a year restoring. Gerry Cheevers gave goaltending advice to the 12-year-old son of one of the sponsors. And a question about what Bourque has for memorabilia led to an impromptu tour of his trophy case.
“Bourque was asked what he kept from his playing days," said Sullivan. “And he said — he’s sitting at his living room table in front of a laptop — he said, let’s go take a look.
“And so he stands up. He walks down the stairs, and he walks us into this room. He said, ‘Here’s all my trophies.’ And he has got the six Norris Trophies lined up and the replica Stanley Cup. And he’s got photos with Larry Bird and so many other famous people. He gave us a five-minute unscripted tour of his trophy room. It was unbelievable.”
Sullivan acknowledged that the funds raised from the individual events won’t cover the revenue the Sports Museum lost during the pandemic.
“We’ve had to adjust expenses," he said. “Many, many people have been generous this year. Without them, we probably wouldn’t have made it through. The museum is still closed because the Garden is still closed. We’ve lost all that admissions revenue. It’s not nearly as lucrative. There’s nothing like the live event.
“There are a lot of people, a lot of sponsors taking the year off and saying we’ll be back in 2021 because they just loved the live event. There are others that would have loved to participate, but can’t, because they’ve really taken it on the chin during the pandemic. So we knew that going in, we weren’t going to raise nearly as much money. But we needed to raise some money. This has enabled us to do that.”
The sessions, which The Sports Museum plans to continue in 2021 in some fashion, are guaranteed to last a half hour. They almost all go twice as long as that, Sullivan said, and it’s satisfying to see how happy the athletes’ candor and friendliness makes the participants.
“If you’re a nonprofit in this environment, you need to get very creative and this is what we turned to,” he said. “I will say it makes me feel very gratified as I’m conducting these sessions. I’m not a professional host. I’m not Tom Caron, right? But I know what questions [to ask] to get it going, and then I can draw out the audience and get them to ask the questions. When I’m looking at it and I’m seeing 12 people and I’m seeing everyone smile like it’s Christmas morning, that feels pretty good.”
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com.