Herald readers have spoken!
The Bobby Orr statue outside the TD Garden is the winner of this week’s poll of the best statues in Greater Boston, with 44% of your vote.
With 16%, the “Make Way for Ducklings” statue, which recreates the duck family in Robert McCloskey’s children’s book, comes in second.
Third place goes to the majestic George Washington memorial on the Boston Common with 10% of the vote out of 300-plus voters in our quick-banger poll.
We didn’t want to influence the poll, so we held off celebrating that the Bobby Orr #4 bronze is based on an iconic Boston Herald photo.
The famous photo inspiring the statue’s gravity-defying pose was shot by none other than Ray Lussier, a photographer for the Boston Record American, today the Boston Herald.
As former Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald wrote, “The Goal” replicates one of the most famous photographs in sports, perfectly capturing Orr’s exhilaration in winning the Stanley Cup in 1970.
As the late Joe Fitz wrote: “It was Mother’s Day 1970 and the Bruins, having easily dispatched the Rangers and Black Hawks in earlier rounds, were on the verge of a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Blues.
Game 4 was tied 3-3 at the end of regulation.
Forty seconds into overtime, Derek Sanderson fired a pass to Orr, who was swooping in on goalie Glenn Hall. As the Boston wunderkind flicked the puck past Hall, he was tripped by defenseman Noel Picard, sending him airborne, making him look like an ecstatic Superman sailing into history.
Ray Lussier, 29, a Boston Record American photographer working at ice level, manning a motor-driven Nikon, seized the moment and made the picture, shooting through an opening in the Plexiglas.”
What should our next poll be? Send all ideas to newstips@bostonherald.com
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