On Wednesday, he broke Cal Ripken Jr.’s record.
NBA referee Dick Bavetta, out of the working-class Park Slope, Brooklyn, of yesteryear, broke the baseball hall of famer’s iron man streak of participation in the most consecutive professional sports games in history in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night when he officiated his 2,633rd consecutive NBA game.
Born in 1939 as the son of an NYPD cop in a brownstone his grandfather from Italy bought on Eighth St., Bavetta went to St. Saviour’s grammar school, graduated from Power Memorial High — which also gave us Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — and St. Francis College where he played hoops.
“I was a really average player,” he says. “But I loved and respected the game. My dad had been a cop from the 1920s to the 1950s and my brother Joe was a first-grade detective from 1954 to 1974. But he also used to referee American Basketball Association games on the side.”
Dick Bavetta was working for Salomon Brothers on Wall Street when his older brother told him he should really start refereeing hoops games.
“He said it was fun,” says Bavetta. “So I started refereeing Catholic Youth Association games. And I really did enjoy it. And you made a few extra bucks doing it.”
His love for reffing soon spread to public school games. Then he would ref games for workers from Con Ed, the telephone company, Wall Street, a bank league. “Then I started refereeing for the Eastern League that took me to places like Scranton in blizzards,” he said. “It never occurred to me, no matter what the weather, or how I was feeling, to miss a game.”
Once, after a game in Scranton, Pa., Bavetta climbed in his car in a blizzard and looking for Route 80, he just started following the guy in front of him, making lefts and rights, until the driver stopped and got out wielding a baseball bat, demanding to know why he was following him. “I told him I was looking for Route 80,” Bavetta says. “He shouted, ‘This is my driveway!’ ”
Bavetta was still not detoured.
“Whenever I drove home from out of town, from the Jersey Shore League, or from upstate, I made sure to pass Madison Square Garden, drive around it, look up at the marquee and dream that some day I’d ref a game in there,” he said.
Bavetta went to the NBA referee tryouts at Brandeis High School for nine straight years. “I was rejected every time,” he says. “And rightfully so. I just didn’t have the experience for the NBA.”
So he started refereeing in the Rucker League on W. 155th St. and Eighth Ave., where he says the greatest basketball players he had ever seen played summer ball.
“A lot of NBA players, including the whole Nets team played there one summer,” said Bavetta, who runs 6 to 8 miles a day. “And they didn’t win it. That’s how good those players you’ve never heard of were. These were men who played above the rim, doing things with the ball I’d never seen before. Their greatness forced me to rise to the occasion and be better.”
In 1975, the Italian kid from Park Slope was finally made an NBA ref. He has been doing it now for 2,633 straight games over 39 seasons, including 270 NBA playoff games, and 27 finals games, and the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. He has been voted into the New York Basketball Hall of Fame and the New York Catholic High School Hall of Fame.
“I never set out to break any records,” he said on Wednesday afternoon before his record-breaking game between the Knicks and the Nets.
“I learned a work ethic from my dad, whom I never remember missing a day on the job as a cop. I never missed an NBA game but then I can’t remember ever missing any other game I was ever lucky enough to be asked to ref. So tonight, I feel the same privilege I felt the first time I reffed a game. First, I’ll take a walk around the Garden and gaze up at that marquee I used to look up with a dream in my head. Then, I’ll go inside, put on my uniform, step out and do my job as fairly and as professionally as possible knowing that I am human and can make mistakes. And I’ll thank the big guy upstairs for giving me such a wonderful career.”
In his 2,633rd NBA record-breaking game.
dhamill@nydailynews.com
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