There Go the Hawks, the Mighty Blaaaackhawks!

As I grew up in Chicago in the 1970s, I didn't have much interest in most professional sports. Baseball stoked passion, but it was more for the poetry and almost religious framework of the sport than for our specific teams, both of which spent much of the decade in obscurity. (The Cubs' amazing but aging lineup--Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger, Fergie Jenkins--broke up, and the White Sox peaked with "The South Side Hit Men" of 1977, ultimately winning nothing but the hearts of diehard dreamers.)

The Bears were pretty awful as well, even after they added Walter Payton. The Bulls were nearly a nonentity, even with great players like Jerry Sloan, Bob Love, Norm Van Lear and Artis Gilmore. And soccer? Forget about it.

But Hockey? That was the sport we all knew and loved.

Maybe it was because we lived in a cold-weather climate during one of the most brutal run of winters--we could, after all, play hockey well after our baseball mitts and basketballs had been put away--or maybe it was because our NHL franchise, the Blackhawks, made the playoffs every year, even if they hadn't taken home the Stanley Cup since 1961. Still, they actually made the finals--more than you could say for any of the other sports franchises in town.

Hockey was the sport we all played--on rough and bumpy ice rinks poured on playgrounds or empty lots with garden hoses, or in narrow alleys with "puck balls" that, in the depths of the January chill, hardened to the consistency of lead. I usually played goalie, wearing my brother's gear (including professional-level pads and a glove that could easily cradle a small child) and stopping many more puck bulls than I missed. We knew the players' names--Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Tony Esposito, Keith Magnuson--and collected their trading cards. We watched their games on TV. We loved them.

Sometimes, love fades. Sometimes, it even dies--or is killed. While the other sports teams in Chicago progressed and improved--the Bears won the Super Bowl, the Bulls went on a championship run led by Michael Jordan, and even the Cubs and Sox made it to the playoffs, at least--the Blackshawks seemed to be skating around in the same increasingly worn-looking circle. They still made the playoffs with regularity--even made it to the finals again in 1992--and had great players like jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios and Dominik Hasek who were well worth our attention.

The team--and the sport--nonetheless faded into obscurity in Chicago, mostly because the team's owner, William Wirtz, seemed to actively work at alienating his fanbase. He moved the team's telecasts to cable--which, for many years, most Chicagoan's not only didn't have, but couldn't get even if they wanted it--and steadfastly refused to show home games. He joined with Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf to build the United Center, which replaced the historic, more intimate Chicago Stadium. Worst of all, he refused to play the Hawks' quality starters what they were worth--or anything close to it--and those players went to other teams and won championships there instead of here. (Chelios, a native of Chicago suburb Evergreen Park, wound up hoisting the Stanley Cup a couple of times for the Hawks most-hated rivals, the Detroit Red Wings.) Wirtz didn't seem to care that he was pissing off the fans. The team turned a profit, year in and year out, and nothing beyond that bottom line mattered.

When Wirtz died in 2007, he wasn't exactly mourned by the Hawks fans that remained--they actually booed Wirtz during a memorial ceremony at the United Center.

Wirtz's son, Rocky, took over ownership of the team, though, and it was apparent from the get-go that Rocky actually understood the deep anger and mistrust that had built up over the years--he actually got it. And he set about changing the way things were done, lifting the ban on televising home games, bringing in fresh quality players while also drafting talented youngsters, and even reaching out to former players wronged by the team and recruiting them as "ambassadors" to the fanbase. (Hull, Mikita and Esposito all spoke at length about this on a recent episode the locally televised, PBS-produced Friday Night Show.) Rocky and his new management team were working overtime to reignite the fanbase

He succeeded.

Fans came back to the United Center. TV ratings rose. The local newspapers and sports talk shows started paying attention again. And with good reason: This younger, faster, more aggressive team was not only more entertaining to watch, it appeared to be built to last. Last night, that hard work paid off big-time. The Blackhawks won game six of the finals from the Philadelphia Flyers, taking home their first Stanley Cup since 1961. The game, which went into overtime, ended oddly, with a goal scored by Patrick Kane from an extreme angle--so extreme that, for a minute or so, it seemed like the only ones who knew the game was over were the Hawks players, who dropped their sticks, tossed their gloves and started hugging as the fans booed loudly and the Flyers milled about in confusion on the ice.

It was a hard-fought series, with its share of heroes like Hawks goalie Antti Niemi, who seemed to literally fly from the net at times to stop the puck, and villains like Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger, a tough and charismatic player who proved to also be classless when he swiped the pucks off the ice after the first two games in the series (both Hawks wins)--game pucks that should, by long-standing tradition, have been given to the Hawks.

That's OK, Mr. Pronger. You're welcome to keep the pucks. The Blackhawks, their fans and the city of Chicago will gladly take the Stanley Cup instead.