THP #54: Wellesley & The Diner

January 2, 2025 – Wellesley, Massachusetts
Wellesley v Wentworth
Women’s Basketball

Multiple times I’ve been told by people that I’m hiding a gambling problem. How else would it be possible that I invest time in following sports like D3 football, Australian football, and cricket? I don’t know, I just like them. 

Usually I let this stuff roll off my shoulder, but I’ve internalized it to some degree because I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t. I find it sad that those people felt that the simple joy of being a fan wasn’t possible without financial stakes. 

A close friend of mine entered herself into Gambler’s Anonymous in 2023. She gave me her consent to talk about her in this essay in broad strokes. I’m so proud that she hasn’t gambled a cent since walking in that door. 

She kept coming to me with stories of young men getting taken to the woodshed by these fucking gambling apps.

Even from a distance it’s hard to hear, especially because being a sports fan in general is probably the safest form of gambling around. It’s a form of gambling that can involve building communities, organizing in towns, and making memories.

Every ticket you buy, every gym or stadium or rink you walk into is a bet unto itself. Will my team win? That’s it; that’s the wager. I’m buying a ticket in the hopes that this group of athletes I’ve ridiculously invested some of my emotions into will be victorious in a derivative athletic match over the next few hours. 

Real silly stuff here, but the feelings are true: the ticket is the bet. Will this game be heart-stopping excellence or will it be a 97-45 clunker? Will there be a mercurial, dynamic performance or will everyone shoot 2-11 and turn it over five times? Will the snacks be good or just stale Milky Way bars in a vending machine from 2003?

There are stinkers, but the rush I feel when a game is the highest level of theater is unmatched. I get maybe, MAYBE 10 of those a year, and most years it’s closer to 2-5. Goddamn, is it fun when a game hits. The only money I’ve spent is on the ticket and maybe a soda and a bag of peanut butter M&M’s if they got ’em.

I was a self-important SpOrTs KnOwEr throughout my youth. Please trust me when I say that you’re not smarter or better or more of a man for acting that way. Holy shit, did it take me a long time and several gut punches to the ego and my sense of self to figure this out and actually start enjoying sports with no mental strings attached. It’s hard to get there. I know it was because I had to walk the path to get to that endpoint. 

I allowed myself to stop viewing sports as a measuring stick for my own intelligence and superiority over others and used it as a way to engage with far-flung places around the world. So now I’m a guy who keeps up with Gaelic football (what a beautiful, historic sport) and modified auto racing and loves it.

Randomly one night a few weeks back I came across the Plumbing National Championships. It was on CBS Sports Network so I at least stopped to watch the intro. A10 hoops and Mountain West football are shown on this channel.: it couldn’t be that weird, right?

I digress. It was ok to stop following EVERYTHING. I was never much for the NFL, was a college football guy. So I let it go. I haven’t watched a full NFL game in a decade. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything, and it’s always there if my interest gets piqued again. A Lions super bowl? I’ll be watching that if we get there for sure. 

Chaos and Entertainment are my teams of choice now, rather than whatever is out there I think can stroke my ego if only I know it well enough. And it’s so much better and relaxing this way. Sure, I might flip allegiances every possession because I want a spectacle, but that’s fine to me. I want to be entertained, and my team winning a basketball game 85-50 is no fun at all. 

However you cut it, the gambling companies will get their money. By engaging with them for any length of time you’ll, at best, lose some beer money, and at worst you’ll lose everything. They are motivated to make you care about sports in unhealthy ways and treat you, the person, like an ATM.

Do you really want to spend any time watching a Rockies-Marlins game in July? No. Do you really want to invest any of the limited hours you have on this earth stressing over whether or not the Detroit Pistons hit their third quarter over on a January Tuesday night against the Jazz? No, no you fucking don’t. So stop putting yourself through that hell.

Enjoy the games just to enjoy the games. Commercially disobey. Save your money, your stress, and your time. Well, spend a little on a big, cold soda and a sandwich, hot dogs included.

But you know who never always disobeys? Bella.

The Good Eats

Just four minutes from the Wellesley campus, just over the line in Natick, is Casey’s Diner, one of America’s oldest diners.

Opened initially in 1890 as a horse-drawn food cart, the structure of Casey’s was built by the famous Worcester Lunch Car Company in 1922 and the diner found itself at its current location five years later.

It. Is. Small.

The front face is maybe three parking spots across.

Ten stools. That’s the entire capacity of the diner. Wait inside? No chance. The only place to wait is under that overhand to the right, and that’s the takeout window/doordash pickup spot. Inside is the most cramped thing you can imagine.

The menu sits dead center of the diner and is standard diner fare. Casey’s does both breakfast and lunch/dinner every day. Peoples’ heads kept popping in the window on the right looking for takeout. It made for a good vibe.

The tech is just as ancient as the diner. The tank that dispensed water used for tea and coffee was original to the diner. The copper tank where the hot dogs steamed was original to the food cart from 1890. It looked the part.

The famous meal on offer is a hot dog all around, which is a dog in a steamed bun with mustard, relish, and raw onion. It wasn’t a looker, but they weren’t lying that the dog snaps and all the flavors work together.

I also got a cheeseburger, with onions grilled into the patty, with lettuce and tomato. There was also a side of fries. I had the choice of shoestring or crinkle cut. I chose crinkle cut because I enjoy fun.

There was no cash register or point-of-sale machine. We walked out the door without paying only to get four steps out and realize we hadn’t paid. All the bills were done by the team working off the top of their head and then it was cash only.

Everything there was from a bygone era down to the, now empty, cigarette machine by the takeout window.

Honestly, the food was just a six or seven out of 10, but I can’t recommend this place more just for the vibes and being able to walk back in time a century and enjoy a hot dog.

The Campus

Wellesley’s campus is beautiful. Even in the dead of winter, it did not hurt the eye.

Founded in 1870 as a seminary, Wellesley is one of only 26 women’s-only colleges remaining in the country. With 2,280 students, all undergrads, it’s certainly a small college but quite usual for the liberal arts colleges in the region.

The Game

The Wellesley Blue play their games in the Dorothy Towne Fieldhouse within the Keohane Sports Center.

The KSC houses locker rooms and team offices as well as squash courts and training areas. Upon walking in you’re immediately greeted by the school’s trophy case. The centerpiece are the three national championship trophies won by the rowing team.

Through the doors on the way down the ramp into the fieldhouse is the Wellesley hall of fame, resplendent in blue.

This is not a gym here at Wellesley. The court fits snugly between one of the turns of the indoor track and is curtained off to provide some sense of intimacy and to give shooters a background to shoot at.

It at least made it easy to get a stretch in at halftime.

The Blue do not have a recent history of success on the court. After making it to the ECAC New England tournament in 2013 & 2014, the Blue have not been back to the postseason since. In fact, the team hasn’t made the conference tournament since 2020, when it bowed out to MIT in the opening round.

Since COVID threw out the 2020-2021 season, the Blue are just 24-52 as of the date this is published.

But on this day, the Blue welcomed Wentworth to town and did their best to put a game together.

And it didn’t start great, with the Leopards pouncing to a 10-2 lead.

Wellesley didn’t roll over. Despite the record, this was a team with some talent and a good coach in Jennifer Kroll that got the most out of her players. The Blue battled back to close the gap down to one by almost the end of the first quarter.

Brianna Carroll had a green light all day for Wentworth. She finished with a dozen points.

And in the second quarter, a compelling basketball game broke out.

So it went the rest of the half, with fun basketball being the name of the game. Samantha Jones here picked a steal and went all the way to the rack to tie it for Wentworth.

Having shown that the early deficit was a bit of a fluke, the Blue had a chance to extend the lead going into half and all Stacy Chen needed was a chance.

Coming out of the break, the Blue continued to keep up the pressure on the Leopards. The trio of Chen, Trinity Barrow, and Mirella Funari were the ones who led the charge for the home team.

Taylor Garebedian, Wentworth’s leading scorer coming in, seemed to half an off night but had her moments. And the “seemed” part is important because she did finish with 12 points and 12 rebounds.

But Stacy Chen…

Chen was great, but it wasn’t enough to hold the halftime lead as Wentworth went into the fourth up a point. The Leopards led 45-44 with just under a minute gone in the fourth quarter.

But then Mirella Funari stepped into one.

And Barrow scored off a Stacy Chen steal.

And Ava Shane, an absolute magician off the bench, puts the Blue up eight with just under six minutes left. She only played 19 minutes but finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds.

The lead kept growing. That 10-2 deficit in the first quarter simply didn’t exist anymore. It was all Blue, all day. And the Leopards had no answer.

Wellesley 62, Wentworth 52. Final.
Player of the game – Stacy Chen (Wellesley): 17 points, 8 rebounds
Time of Game – 1:30:07
Admission: Free

I wound up back here three days later for the game against Colby. The cavernous fieldhouse was a perfect place to take my daughter for an afternoon of running around and goofing off while my wife got some necessary work done.

Do I love the basketball? Absolutely. Do I mean it when I tell my wife I’m taking the little one to the game as a way for her to get energy out? Yes. We only sat down for the fourth quarter and even then for only parts of it.

If you have young kids, find your local D3 and use it as a playground. Sure beats going to a crowded mall and having your kid wowed by some product you’ll then wind up buying. And the fieldhouse had a whole bunch of high jump landing pads I could toss her around on. Macy’s won’t have that.

Thanks for reading. Happy New Year. Here’s a very obvious one for the road…

Whoops, I slipped…

There we go.