We did not clock our serious hours watching Celtic games.

How many watching the playoffs?

How many re-watching highlights of the playoffs?

How many hours reading, talking, thinking, dreaming … go Celtics?

There’s a story my father used to tell. It went like this: He and his brothers, Morris, Mike, Will, Louie (but not Nathan) played on their school baseball teams. My dad played shortstop and sometimes catcher. He had the stocky build and broad shoulders to catch and block. Louie was first base and sometimes outfield. He had the legs.

Willy pitched except when he covered third base. They all were sluggers, at least by their own decree. They played their hearts out but never on the Sabbath, when they were due in Temple. Their father was president of his Temple, which meant the family occupied the front row bench and there was no slumping in the back.

If you were late, everyone plus God saw you were late and furrowed their brow. And yet every so often, it happened. There was a conflict between a Friday night service that started promptly and say, a game that went to extra innings. The boys then faced dual devotions.

On the Friday of the particular story, as my father told it, it was a championship game. Sort of like the NBA championship games — the East vs. the West — but more so. There was NO choice. You played. You played, raced home, changed clothes and crept down the center aisle. Though timing was never going to be on their side, they figured they’d beat the odds.

Except, sure enough, the game went to extra innings and ended late. So home, skip the wash, hide the dirt, grab their tallit (religious shawl) and slide into those front row seats. The pews were packed. The congregation with heads bowed were already chanting the prayers (the brothers’ more like heavy breathing.)

Suddenly a poke.

“Georgie,” his father says, in a stern but whispered Mr. Temple President voice.

“Yes, Pop?”

“You’re late.”

“Yes, Pop.”

“What then — baseball?

“Yes, Pop?”

“Did you win?”

“Yes, Pop.”

“OK.”

The point of this story was that this was America. Only a decade away from the Russian shtetl, only a decade from the pogroms of 1907, decades that saved them from their own extinction, so that they, a family, were safe in America. They were already forging a new life in a new land where there is English and baseball. Where maybe you win.

And where baseball, that game of games, was a true melting pot in the Bronx. It was where the Irish, the Italians, the Blacks, the Latinos and the Jews met as one. Each group owning a block or two, stuffed into their own tenement apartments, grannies and babies, each with their own tough fists and beat-downs, but only one baseball team. Fordam High against Pehlam Park. That was the point. Becoming together something new.

Did you win?

Yes.

For us, growing up, there was always a team. Always a win to hope for. A way neighbors might stop on the sidewalk or grocery aisle to ask, “What about those bums, huh? ”

And a collective hope that this is still our America. That we can still find a team, bigger than even the game of baseball, to win for the future of democracy, climate change, racial and social justice.

Go team.

Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.