On Sports

Today's column has nothing to do with the stock market or investments.  You'll have to get that someplace else.  This is a a good place to start.  We'll be back discussing the financial world Monday.  

Chicago, like other large metropolitan regions in the United States, is a state of mind.  If you meet a traveler from here and ask them where they're from, they will usually say they're from Chicago.  It's  only if you drill down a bit will they tell you where they actually live.  It might be a suburb or maybe a specific part of the city like Lincoln Park.  The city itself is about 3 million people.  The region as I define it encompasses about 9 million souls.  Start at the Wisconsin border, head west to Rockford, head south till you get to Kankakee and turn East.  Go over to South Bend, Indiana then head north till you run into Lake Michigan.  That's Chicagoland as most of us know it.  Chicagoland can be a hard place to live.  The weather stinks.  The region is dotted with old "Rust Belt" towns {Gary, Joliet, Rockford} that have fallen long ago on hard times and the infrastructure is run down in many places.  The city itself is broke, riddled by crime {200 homicides and total shootings year to date of 1,143}, and historically has been burdened with a governmental system that more than anything resembles a kleptocracy.  30% of the population in the city lives below the poverty line.  Many of these are people of color.  The region is also as John Kass of the Chicago Tribune likes to say a "City of Tribes".  All over it is divided into little communities by race, by class and by ethnicity.  The lines of these towns or enclaves are largely hidden to outsiders but tthey are as real to us as if they'd been drawn on a map.   A person telling me that they're from Skokie, Elmhurst, the Englewood district of Chicago, Beverly or any other locality tells me a lot about that fellow.

Because of this {and maybe mostly because of the crappy weather} Chicago is a sports town.  We may not agree on many of the issues that divide us,  but we can forget all of that when our teams play.  When we play for big stakes such as championships we come to the table united in ways that is nothing short of amazing.  Which brings us to the Chicago Blackhawks, sports and community.

Chicago isn't the only place that can claim to be a sports town.  Boston is a sports town as is Philly.  New York may be the ultimate sports town but Seattle, Cincinnati and St. Louis are up there as well.  Surprisingly so is San Francisco.  There are many such places and not all involve professional athletes, but you get the idea of what I'm talking about.  I'm describing places where the locals are passionate about their teams and the teams have deep ties to the community.   There are a lot of places with professional teams that are not sports towns.   Tampa, to take an example, likely has moved on from it's recent loss to the Blackhawks.  Folks here in the millions would have been heartbroken if it had turned out the other way.  

Chicago as a sports town over the years has acquired the reputation as a city hosting a bunch of teams that were "lovable losers".  The Chicago Cubs have had a lot to do with that, going on now over 100 years without a World Series title.  But in the last 30 years we've hosted championship parades here 11 times and seen teams in all four major sports {soccer doesn't yet qualify as the 5th} raise the winner's trophy.  That's better than 25% of all titles during that time by my reckoning.  But to be a sport's town and to be a sports fan means that you will also and perhaps often get your heart broken.  Chicago has known much of this over the years.  Babe Ruth's supposed called home run shot during the 1932 World Series, the 1969 Cubs, the "trickler" through Leon Durham's leg in 1984, the "Bartman Ball" in the 2003 playoffs are all stuff of legend around here as are the White Sox loss in the 1959 World Series.  The Bears squandered a Super Bowl quality team after their 1985 title and the most recent injuries to Derek Rose the past few years that may have cost the Chicago Bulls a shot at the title.  All of these come to mind when people here talk about the things that almost were.  Even the Blackhawks have given us some of this.  The three titles in 6 years bring out the dynasty talk, but all of that has a tinge of what-might-have-been if  a weird puck hadn't deflected off of defenseman Nick Leddy into the goal in over-time in game 7 of the Western Conference Finals.  That victory sent the Los Angeles Kings on to ultimate victory in the Stanley Cup. The Blackhawks and their fans went home to nurse their broken hearts.   Sometimes the losses hurt more than the wins.  Sometimes......

.....But then comes along something special and there's nothing more to say about what the Blackhawks just put us through in their Stanley Cup run than special or perhaps surreal.  There are all sorts of places where you can review what the Hawks march through the regular season and playoffs was like so I'll leave that out.  I'm pretty sure though that if the average Blackhawk fan had been administered a dose of truth serum, they'd expressed doubt about getting much beyond the opening round of the playoffs.  The team was banged up with one of their stars and leading scorer, Patrick Kane, out due to a broken clavicle.  They hadn't played particularly well at the end of the season.  External factors and tragedy seemed to gnaw at some of them and other teams just looked better.   I'd pegged us losing to the St. Louis Blues in the 2nd round.

Instead the Hawks started winning and Kane miraculously got healthy much sooner than anybody expected.  But it wasn't just the winning, its how they won.  In the first game of the series against Nashville, the Hawks spotted their opponents three goals, changed goalies and came back to win in overtime.  They played another marathon overtime game against Nashville in game 4 that ended after 1 am Chicago time with a win.  They blanked a Minnesota Wild team that was supposedly the hottest team in the playoffs at that time four straight.  They fell behind in their series against Anaheim, 3-2 before storming back hard in the next two games, finally they played a 6 game grinding series against Tampa Bay.  Through it all their play just got better.  The results you can see in the video above.

There will be a parade in Chicago today.  At least a million people will line the route to cheer on their team.  Millions more will carry the memory of this season with them forever.  In the video above at about the 1:38 mark is a group of people, family I'm guessing at what looks to be the moment the Hawks won the cup.  In the bottom right is a young girl clapping.  I don't know if she was a hockey fan before this but she is now and she'll always remember where she was the night the Hawks won the Cup.  I remember each moment the Bulls won a trophy like it was yesterday.  I remember watching the Cincinnati Reds win the 1975 World Series in Boston at home in Indiana with my parents and sisters.  I remember where everybody sat and what we ate for dinner that night {steak, potatoes and green beans} like it was yesterday.   

There's more money today in sports and so perhaps it's a bit more mercenary than it used to be at the professional level.  Maybe that attitude has now also sifted down to the college level now for the majors like football and basketball.  Also with the advent of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle we know more about players today then we did in the past and sometimes what we know isn't all that great.  But then comes along something special like what we saw these past two months here and you remember why you put up with it and why you continue to watch.  Sports at that time, at the moment you've just witnessed something wonderful like your hometown team, attaining history doesn't get better than that for fans, friends and family.

Congratulations Blackhawks!

Now forgive me for leaving you but I have a parade to go watch.