a ticker-tape parade<\/a> \u2014 as fans of the winning team once again, with the bedsheet to prove it.<\/p>\nIt was a long way coming for Mr. Bertinelli, 71, and Mr. Hannafin, 70, who had both retired from the New York City Sanitation Department and had children in the generation between Knicks championships.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Mr. Hannafin had become a New York sports fanatic, something of a prolific sign-holder at games, and a self-described hoarder of memorabilia.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bertinelli wasn\u2019t surprised that Mr. Hannafin kept the banner for more than five decades.<\/p>\n
And Mr. Bertinelli, who now lives in Barnegat, N.J., didn\u2019t mind the hour-plus drive to Mr. Hannafin\u2019s house on Staten Island to watch the Knicks lose Game 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like old times,\u201d Mr. Bertinelli said. \u201cEven though they lost, we ordered pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two had gone to St. Peter\u2019s Boys High School on Staten Island.<\/p>\n
They wound up with jobs at different garages with the Sanitation Department. Mr. Hannafin worked the early-morning shift in Manhattan, while Mr. Bertinelli became a supervisor on Staten Island.<\/p>\n
They had their first daughters three days apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn days Pat would come to work on Staten Island, I\u2019d tell the people setting up, \u2018Put him with me,\u2019\u201d Mr. Bertinelli said. \u201cWe\u2019d do a route.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Hannafin never got a cellphone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had the same house phone,\u201d Mr. Bertinelli said. \u201cSo I know the number by heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, they took the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan together, just like they had as teenagers, when tickets to the finals still felt affordable and were sold as strips for several games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWiping the dust off that banner, that was the highlight,\u201d Mr. Hannafin said. Mr. Bertinelli gladly drove back to Staten Island to take Mr. Hannafin to the parade.<\/p>\n
They said the celebration was bigger this time around.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t see each other that often now,\u201d Mr. Hannafin said of the distance between their homes. \u201cBut 53 years later, we\u2019re still attached to the Knicks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doug Bertinelli and Pat Hannafin met in 1969 as middle-schoolers and basketball teammates for Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[105140,4567,67480,222,9,24,1104,20076,56,63,65,64,273,10925,14018],"class_list":["post-272947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-barnegat-township-nj","tag-basketball","tag-fans-persons","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-nineteen-hundred-seventies","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-parades","tag-signs-and-signage","tag-staten-island-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}