Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Folarin Balogun is the striker and one of the best players on the U.S. Men's National Team that until last week, competed in the World Cup Soccer Tournament, the most important sporting event in the world, bar none.

Playing against Bosnia-Herzegovina in a do or die match on July 1, the winner of which would advance to the next round, in the 64th minute of the game, Balogun received a red card for a foul he committed against Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemovic. 

In going for the ball deep in Bosnia-Herzegovina territory, Balogun landed on Muharemovic's ankle causing it to turn over awkwardly. There was no initial whistle to stop the play but the VAR, (Video Assisted Referee), an official watching the game in the press box whose job is to look for fouls that the field referee misses, caught the infraction and halted play. In turn, the on-field ref shuffled off to the sideline where he reviewed the play from multiple angles and made the final call pulling the dreaded red card out of his pocket.

In soccer, a red card results in a player being ejected and his spot unfilled, meaning his team plays one man short like a penalty in ice hockey, except that in soccer, the penalty extends for the rest of the game. In addition, the offending player receives a one game suspension for the following match. 

Obviously, this is a stiff punishment reserved for actions deemed intentional or bad enough to cause serious injury, as opposed to injuries typical to soccer, that cause a player to roll around in agony until he realizes no one is paying attention, at which time he springs himself back into the game as if nothing ever happened.

Having seen replays of the incident many times, to my untrained eye, as the action may have hurt Muharemovic, (he did manage to stay in the game), Balogun's foul did not appear in any way to be intentional.

But what do I know, the referee disagreed and as red cards are not supposed to be challengeable, his is the only opinion that matters. 

Well, up until now. 

At this late date, I probably don't need to say what happened in the subsequent days when the president of the United States called his BFF the head of FIFA, the international governing body of the game that most of the world knows as football * and asked (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with asked) him to review the call.

The BFF said: "sure thing boss anything you say boss" and quicker than you can say Pelé, Balogun was reinstated and made eligible to play in the USMNT's next game against Belgium, to complete for a spot in the quarter finals. Did I mention the U.S. held on to defeat Bosnia Herzegovina 2-0 in that game?

The whole world cried foul, saying rightfully that neither the POTUS nor any politician has any business interfering with the outcome or the regulation of a sporting match.

What hardly anyone mentioned is that in successfully reversing a legitimate, if arguable call on the field, the president didn't do anything to help the U.S. men's soccer team, in fact, his actions very likely contributed to their defeat against Belgium and their exit from the World Cup, and may have caused serious repercussions on the international stage for the game of soccer in the United States for years to come.

That's not to take anything away from the Belgian team who going into the game Monday was ranked eight points higher in the ratings than the U.S. team. But like any other sport, ratings don't mean much when the teams come out onto the field. In this game, without the president's interference, the U.S. should have had several advantages going for them. First, it was played in Seattle and the fans in the stands were overwhelmingly on the Americans' side. Second, the questionable nature of the call against Balogun gave the Americans a chip on their shoulder, which is always helpful in sports. Third, Balogun's absence made the U.S. distinct underdogs in this match, another factor that gives a team a little emotional edge going into a game.

On the flip side, soccer is a game that isn't usually determined by one player. There are exceptions of course, players such as Argentina's Lionel Messi or maybe Norway's Erlig Haaland. But Balogun hasn't the brilliant vision of the entire field like Messi, no one has, nor the awesome physical presence of Haaland.

In the game where Balogun received the red card and was forced to the showers, the U.S. up by the slimmest of margins and down by one man, tightened up and played brilliant soccer, not allowing Bosnia-Herzegovina the chance to score. And the cherry on top was a perfect free kick by Malik Tilman which evaded a Bosnian wall of defenders and curved into the top corner of the net to give the U.S. an insurmountable 2-0 lead.

In a tournament filled with mostly ups for the Americans, the team was riding high, winning their division and looking forward to possibly making it into the elite eight in the World Cup for only the second time in history. That victory against Bosnia-Herzegovina, overcoming the adversity of the devasting loss of arguably their best player and having to play thirty minutes short-handed, was certainly their high point of the tournament, the fulfillment of what became the mantra of the team and its fans: "I believe that we will win."

The momentum from that brilliant win should have carried the team into their match against Belgium.

And it did until the president with his phone call, removed the chip off their shoulder and put it on the shoulder of the Belgian team. 

Maybe we shouldn't blame the president. After all, his entire life has been defined by people, mostly his father, bailing him out of adversity such as all those times he went bankrupt or the time daddy called a doctor telling him to find an issue, any issue that would excuse his boy from military service. Perhaps he felt that "helping out" the American team was his way of settling the score in some perverse way, or maybe some kind of easy karma.

But as I said, the president didn't do the national team any favors because in sports, adversity can be a good thing.

Here's something I came across on the internet:

Fútbol is not just another sport. Fútbol exposes who you really are when everything is on the line. When the pressure becomes unbearable. When the game turns against you. When nobody believes you can survive.

Look at Cape Verde.
On paper, Cape Verde had absolutely no business pushing Argentina to the brink. They were the Cinderella story. The little country that was supposed to be happy just to be there. They had nothing to lose and every reason in the world to play scared.
But they didn’t.
They dreamed.
They believed.
And most importantly, they went onto that pitch and PLAYED like they believed.

That is how  the U.S. National team approached the games they played through the Bosnia-Herzegovina match. They were in fact, albeit to a much lesser extent than Cape Verde, also a Cinderella team in this tournament

And by doing so, they gained the respect of the worldwide soccer community despite the fact that they represent a nation that is at this moment anyway, despised by much of the world. 

Then daddy president called the principal and told him to exempt his kid from the rules that all the other kids at school are subject to. And instead of being Cinderella, the USMNT all of a sudden became Cinderella's wicked step-sister. 

I said above that adversity can be an advantage in sports, but the adversity the president foisted upon the U.S. National Team at the time of the peak of their success was certainly not the kind they wanted or needed.

Here's more from the comment above:

But when adversity came, I did not see a team whose belief became stronger. I saw a team that looked defeated. I saw players pouting. I saw frustration. I saw a team acting like the game was already over before the final whistle.

I don't blame the American players one iota for that. Going into Monday's game against Belgium, they knew if by chance they won that game with their star player back in the lineup (which he was), that victory would be tarnished, as would any possible subsequent victory. 

And unlikely as it may have been, had they gone on to win the whole enchilada, there would have been in the record books, an asterisk forever placed beside their name. 

Perhaps it's a blessing none of that happened. In my comment following the game against Belgium, on Facebook I said simply: "the soccer gods are pleased tonight".

I can't say for sure but I think with the loss of respect that went along with the unfortunate action of the president and the FIFA goon, the American team lost their motivation to win. 

I wouldn't say that if the team had played their hearts out as Mexico did in their one goal loss to England last week, by far the best game I've seen in this tournament so far. 

The U.S./Belgium game could not have been more different.

Despite another brilliant free kick from Malik Tilman to score the only U.S. goal, the U.S. team's offense was insipid and they made several key defensive blunders throughout the game that would have made the coach of an 8U AYSO ** team cringe. The final score was 4-1, in international soccer terms, a devastating blowout. 

Did the American players play to lose that game? No, I don't think so. But sports, especially played at its highest level is a extremely psychological enterprise, and any advantage in that regard, can be the difference between winning and losing. 

Or the difference between losing by one goal, and by three as we saw.

Had there been no interference and the U.S. team played like Mexico in their farewell game, leaving both their hearts and their souls on the pitch after a hard played loss, it would have been a fitting end to a magnificent tournament for the Yanks. Granted there would always be people who would claim that the game was "rigged" against them because of a questionable call. But people who truly understand the game, and the nature of all sports that are on the up and up for that matter, know that bad calls are part of the game, some go your way and some don't. And when they don't, you have to play on. 

As England did after that game against Mexico when one of their players, defender Jarrell Quansah was sent off with a red card after a hard tackle banning him from the team's next game which was played against Norway yesterday. 

Without Quansah, England beat Norway in extra time 2-1 last night. In their infinite wisdom, FIFA has determined that Quansah's foul was serious enough to warrant a two game suspension which means the player won't be available Wednesday either when the Brits have the unenviable task of facing defending champions Argentina and their estimable captain Lionel Messi (who some claim to be the greatest footballer of all time), in the semi final match.

I could be wrong but I didn't hear any stories of King Charles dialing up FIFA and asking that their player be reinstated. 

In the spirit of fairness, maybe the POTUS should try his magic again with FIFA to help our old pals the Brits. 

I'm sure Argentina would be just fine with that.

*One of the glories of the World Cup is the quadrennial appearance of this John Cleese bit on what else, the glories of the game. In the bit he questions the logic of why we Yanks insist on calling it "soccer" and not "football", which given the way the game is played, would seem to make more sense.

As this is a comedy bit, not intended to be a Ken Burns screed, I assume that Cleese, quite the smart guy in his own right knows the answer. But some internet folks have got their panties (or as the English would say, their knickers) all in a bunch over the fact that Cleese doesn't seem know what he's talking about as "soccer" is actually a British term.

Soccer, or Football (not the American variety) came into being in England in the 1860s. In that era, two games evolved simultaneously, Rugby and Soccer, both of which were generally referred to as Football. To make the distinction between the two, the former was referred to officially as Rugby Football, while the latter was called Association Football. 

Those two mouthfuls were eventually shortened to Rugby and Association, and then further given slang terms at the universities where the games were almost exclusively played. In England at the time this meant shortening the word to its root then adding the suffix "er". Hence Rugby became "rugger". For obvious reasons, no, Association did not become "asser" but rather "soccer", using the second syllable of the word rather than the first. 

In the twentieth century, rugby remained a game mostly played at university (hence the description "a brutish game played by gentlemen"), while soccer became largely the game of the working class (hence "a gentleman's game played by brutes" by comparison). The terms soccer and football were used pretty much interchangeably in England to describe the same game until the mid twentieth century when the general term "football" began to replace the more preppie term "soccer". 

American football was developed in the same decade as the other two sports and since it had nothing to complete with at the outset, the name football stuck, as did the names rugby and soccer to distinguish them from the other sports when they made their way to these shores. 

It should be noted that countries with their own version of football such as Australia, South Africa, Ireland and others, also use the term soccer. 

Most other countries have stuck with some form of the word football borrowed directly from the English word so for example, in the countries where Spanish is spoken, you have fútbol, not the Spanish translation pelota de pie. 

Italy would be a major exception as there, soccer is called calcio, which comes from a much older Florentine game Calcio Fiorentino. Incidentally calcio comes from the verb calcare which means "to kick."

In Germany it's Fußball which conveniently enough is the literal translation of the word while surprisingly in France, there is no attempt to translate or francophone the word, there they call it simply football or on the streets, le foot.

**Eight years and under American Youth Soccer Organization

Rams Clip Porky's Wings

I learned a new word today. 

The word is adynata, the plural of adynation, From the sound of it you can probably guess it comes from the Greek language. It's not a common word in English, even my spell check doesn't recognize it.

But it's a very useful word as it means a figure of speech used to describe a highly unlikely or impossible occurrence.

Perhaps a more common English term for adynata would be "idioms of improbability".

Here are some good examples:

When hell freezes over.

The Twelfth of Never.

When pigs fly.

As I'm on a bit of a Shakespeare kick right now, here's a good one from the Bard:

Will all Neptune's great ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?

From Macbeth, referring to the character's inability to escape his guilt represented by the literal blood on his hands.

Last September I learned a contemporary term that in some circumstances could be related to adynata. Here's what I wrote about the term "hot take":

A hot take is a statement, opinion or prediction that is edgy, outrageous or simply uninformed. A good example of a hot take would be a sports commentator confidently predicting that this year's Chicago Bears are headed for the Super Bowl.

Now in my defense, that post was published on September 14, the day the Bears were crushed by their division rivals the Detroit Lions, 52-21. The week before in the first game of the regular season, they lost to another division rival the Minnesota Vikings 27-24.

Personnel wise, with some key exceptions, the team was essentially the same as it was the year before when they finished the season with a record of 5-12.

The Bears also hired a new head coach, Ben Johnson, previously the offensive coordinator of the Lions, who promised to bring a new winning culture to the Bears. But after the shellacking by his former team, the new culture at 0-2 bore a remarkable resemblance to the old one.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

A week later, after the Bears solidly beat the Dallas Cowboys, I still thought the idea of the Bears making it to the Super Bowl this season was preposterous and had no intention of re-writing that line. Same for the following week when they beat the Raiders, in that case sneaking by a weak team by just one point. 

The following game would be their first real test I thought, the Washington Commanders who last season beat the Bears on a game ending come-from-behind "Hail Mary" pass by their quarterback Jayden Daniels.

This season it was the Bears who had the game ending come-from-behind score, although not nearly as dramatic, a 38-yard field goal by their replacement kicker.

For the first time this season it dawned on me that this was a game the Bears would have easily lost last  year, or the year before, or the year before that, or in fact the past several years. I would have that same feeling many times this season. After that win in DC, the Bears would remain above .500 (having won more games than they lost), for the rest of the season.

I think that for any Bears fan at the start of this year, the idea of the team finishing over .500, even by just one game would be considered a step in the right direction.

The fans looking for more than that started to make a little noise, but their team still hadn't beaten anybody with a winning record up to that point. Two weeks later they lost to the 1-5 Baltimore Ravens by two touchdowns. That loss brought everyone back down to earth.

Then the Bears started to make a little noise of their own, winning the next five games including the Black Friday game, beating the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles in Philadelphia.

It was at that point I remembered my cynical comment about the Bears' chances this year and resolved to write a post to address that statement. But a friend told me not to as it might jinx the team. As I'm very superstitious when it comes to sports, I heeded his advice and am glad I did.

You're welcome, Bears fans.

The following week the Bears lost to their most bitter rival, the Green Bay Packers. It's always tough to lose to that team. I know, we've done a lot of that in the past oh 30 years or so. But this time, like they famously had done so often this year, the Bears came back from what seemed to be an insurmountable deficit and had it not been for a drive killing Packer interception in the end zone, Chicago could have walked away winners of that game.

In previous years, the Bears would not have come close to being in that situation.

There's another adynation that came to my attention this year. It goes something like this:

Chicago will have a Pope before they have a 4,000 yard passer.

We came so close to getting both this season.

We all know about the Pope who is presumably a Bears fan. The second part of that statement has to do with the fact that the Bears have never been known for their great quarterbacks. Well at least not in my lifetime.  

The last bona-fide superstar Bears Hall of Fame quarterback was Sid Luckman who retired in 1950. What so many pundits love to point out is that between 1992 and 2022, the Packers had two starting quarterbacks, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, one in the Hall of Fame, the other still employed as a player as of this writing and certainly destined for it. In that same thirty-year period, the Bears had 216 starting quarterbacks. 

OK that may be a slight exaggeration. 

This year marked the 40th anniversary of the Chicago Bears winning Super Bowl XX. That was definitely a team for the ages, despite the fact that they only won the NFL Championship once. 

I haven't heard anyone compare this Bears team to that one. 

But in my humble opinion, there are two pieces of this team that stand head and shoulders above their counterparts from forty years ago. First there's the aforementioned head coach Ben Johnson who has proven his mettle in his first year by turning a 5-12 team into a division champion. Mike Ditka certainly deserves a lot of credit for leading the 1985 Bears to the Super Bowl Championship but the reality is that team was dominated by its defense, which was led by Coach Buddy Ryan.

The other part of the 2025 Bears I'd take over the 1985 model is their quarterback Caleb Williams. This isn't to diminish Jim McMahon "the punky QB" and clown prince of the game, who had a phenomenal season in 1985. He may have had a phenomenal '86 season as well had he not been molested by Green Bay Defensive End Charles Martin in the cheapest shot I've ever seen in a football game.

This is only Caleb Williams' sophomore season in the NFL but he is fast becoming noticed as being among the best quarterbacks in the game, largely for his knack of turning the impossible into the possible, in many cases the probable, and in some cases the inevitable.

It has been pointed out ad infinitum that this year's Bears won seven games (six regular season and one post season), while trailing late in the fourth quarter. What is usually not mentioned is that in at least four of their losses, they also mounted a late game comeback including that game in Green Bay, where they came up just short. If  they had done that in two or three games, it could be considered luck or circumstance. But eleven games, no.

And much of the credit for that has to go to Caleb Williams. He's called "The Iceman", not because he belongs to the president's goon squad of rogue storm troopers who create mayhem in our cities, killing people who get in their way, but because of the ice water that seems to run through his veins during high pressure moments when the game is on the line. 

Much like a baseball closing pitcher, he seems to thrive on that extra pressure. Check out this Caleb Williams highlight reel from just the month of December.  If you're not interested in watching nearly 20 minutes of poetry in motion on a football filed, go directly to the 10:03 point in the video to view what in my opinion is one of the greatest sequences of plays in Chicago Bears history, at least up to that moment. 

It came during the second meeting of the Bears and the Packers this season at Soldier Field in Chicago. The winner of that game would end up division champion. 

This is what you don't see in the video: Having trailed all game and down by ten points with 1:59 left in the fourth quarter, Bear's kicker Cairo Santos kicked a 43 yard field goal to cut the lead to a touchdown. The next play was an onside kick, a short kickoff where the kicking team tries desperately to recover the ball. On side kicks almost never work. But indicative of the way things had been going for the Bears this year, they recovered the ball. 

Now to the video. The final play of the drive found the Bears with 26 seconds left in regulation time and fourth and four on the Packer six yard line, meaning the Bears had to get the ball at least to the two-yard line on that play or the game would be over. 

Did the Bears convert that fourth down? Of course they did, on a brilliantly designed play (with the help of some Packer miscues) leaving the receiver, Jahdae Walker so open in the end zone for the touchdown, I probably could have hit him.

Game tied.

The next play in the video could very well have been the greatest single play in Bears history.

Up to that moment.

It needs no explanation, just watch the video. And listen to Tom Brady, no slouch of a quarterback himself, lose his mind over the throw by Williams and catch by D.J. Moore to win that game in overtime and the NFC North Championship.

It turned out the Bears would win only one more game in this magical season, but what a game it was, the first game of the playoffs against who else, the Green Bay Packers. 

This time the Bears were down 21-3 at the beginning of the second half, meaning Caleb Williams time. If you understand football, you know that trailing by three scores, the offense led by the quarterback can't do it all on their own, they need the defense to stop the other team from scoring, something the Bears defense hadn't done all first half. At halftime I walked into the kitchen where the radio was still on and the pundits and fans were aghast, blasting the Bears' "D" saying the first thing the team needs to do in the offseason (which they assumed would start at the end of the game) is trade Montez Sweat and the rest of the Bears' high priced defensive players because they weren't doing anything. 

Well they did something in the second half. The Packers got the ball to start the third quarter and Mr. Sweat and Company forced Green Bay to punt on their next four possessions, two of which were three-and-outs. 

Nevertheless, the Bears were still trailing 21-6 at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Caleb Williams must not have gotten the call, let's try again, Caleb you there? Good. 

In the fourth quarter it was the Bears' turn to be unstoppable; in their four possessions of the quarter, they put up a field goal and three touchdowns. 

But after their final touchdown, ahead for the first time in the game, there was still over a minute left on the clock, plenty of time for the Pack to march down the field and score their second touchdown of the quarter for the win. The defense would have to step up one more time. 

As I said, this was not the 1985-86 Chicago Bears defense which took no prisoners. If you watch highlight reels from that year, at least half of the plays you'll see feature the defense either sacking the quarterback, forcing fumbles, or making interceptions, many of those plays resulting in a Bears touchdown. Of the sixteen regular season games that year, the Bears defense allowed ten or fewer points in eleven of them, and two of those were shutouts. Even more impressive, in the post season the Bears shut out both of their opponents in the two games leading up to the Super Bowl, where they only gave up ten points. 

By comparison, the 2025 Bears held only one team, the lowly Cleveland Browns to under ten points. 

Bend but not break has been the mantra of the Bears defense for quite some time now. That means they may give up a lot of yards and even field goals, but not a lot of touchdowns, the first half of this game being the exception. The bottom line is the Bears' D this year played well enough to keep the team in the game in all but one, maybe two games this year, which is very respectable. 

So it wasn't unexpected that with over a minute on the clock, Packer QB Jordan Love would lead his team down the field to be in a position to score the winning touchdown. With seven seconds on the clock from the Bears 32 yard line, Love would have his chance. Unfortunately for him he dropped the snap but as the Bears were only playing three men on the line, he had what seemed to be an eternity to find a receiver in the end zone He found one, but he turned out to be wearing the wrong uniform.

Like most of the year, the Bears' Defense wasn't overpowering, but it got the job done.  

The next game was the biggest test of all, playing hands down the best team the Bears faced all season, the LA Rams. Winning that regular season game against the Packers meant that the Bears would have home field advantage in that game. All the better, the temperature was predicted to be just barely in the double digits. 

Bear weather. 

Which warmed the hearts of old Bears fans like me who remember 1986 NFC Championship game like it was yesterday. Same opponent, same stadium, same weather.

Would history repeat itself?

Well not exactly as this Bear team wouldn't think of blowing out their opponents 24-0. That would be much too boring.

Again, trailing, seven points behind, do or die, fourth and long, 27 seconds to go in the fourth quarter, then this happens. 

The single greatest play in Bears history. 

Up until now.

That play tied the game, forcing overtime. All that was left was get into field goal position, kick the field goal, then on to Seattle. The Rams even obliged, not scoring on their first drive of overtime meaning any score wins the game.

It was inevitable, the Bears have been there and done that all year in the games that really mattered.

But not this time.

Caleb Williams did something he doesn't do very often, he threw an interception.

Some blame it on D.J. Moore who didn't run his route correctly. Some say he was dogging it. Others point out that he did spend some time in the blue tent earlier in the game being evaluated for a concussion.

Maybe he shouldn't have been playing.

Or maybe the coach shouldn't have left all those points on the field by "going for it" unsuccessfully on fourth downs when they could have kicked easily makeable field goals.

Or maybe the defense's aggressive blitzing after the turnover left too many receivers open for their quarterback Matthew Stafford to find.

Or maybe the football gods were displeased that the refs didn't call pass interference on Cole Kmet for pushing off the defender before he caught that unbelievable pass to tie the game.

It really doesn't matter, we all knew it had to end sometime.

One thing is certain. The Bears would never have gotten where they did without Caleb, DJ, Coach Johnson, the Defense, and all the other pieces of the team I didn't have space to mention.

Caleb Williams - AP Photo by Jeff Robertson

In this most wonderful, unlikely of football seasons that brought this city together like hardly anything else could, pigs almost flew. 

Thank you Bears.

Pioneers

While writing my last post, I came to a fork in the road. I chose to go down one path with the intention of coming back to the other path later in the post. That didn't happen. Here is the other path.

Devante SmithPelly, the Washington Capitals ice hockey player who was racially taunted by Chicago Blackhawks fans last week, follows a long line of professional athletes who have found themselves among a small handful of black players in their sport, and as a result. suffered indignities at the hands of fans and fellow players.

Much has been written about the abuses that Jackie Robinson endured after he became the first African American to play “organized" baseball since blacks were excluded from the game in the 1880s. His story and career, have become the stuff of legend. Less well known are the stories of the players who followed him into the majors, some of which I wrote about here. Even less known are the pioneers who became the first African American players in the other American professional sports leagues.

Kenny Washington

Like Major League Baseball, the National Football League originally featured black players until a "gentleman's agreement" was forged between owners to keep them out.  Kenny Washington, was a teammate of Jackie Robinson at UCLA on both that school's football and baseball teams. While there, Washington set several school rushing, passing, and defensive records (as players played both sides of the ball in those days), as well as being the first consensus All American from UCLA. He was considered by some to have been a superior baseball player to Robinson. So impressed by his abilities, George Halas, owner and head coach of the NFL Chicago Bears, tried to draft Washington after he graduated from UCLA in 1940, but was thwarted from doing so by the rest of the league. Washington languished in the semi-pro Pacific Coast Professional Football League from 1941 until 1945, playing most of his prime years in minor league football. When the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and expressed interest in playing in the publicly owned LA Coliseum, overwhelming pressure from the municipality convinced the team to integrate, which they did, signing Washington on March 21 , 1946, exactly one year before Jackie Robinson became a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jackie Robinson famously endured both verbal and physical abuse from fans and his fellow players and so did Washington. But as a football player, one can only imagine that the physical abuse from players had to be far more savage. Unlike Robinson, Washington's career in the big leagues was short lived. With five knee surgeries behind him and already past his prime when he entered the league, Washington played three seasons in the NFL, putting up impressive, but not Hall of Fame stats, which is why he isn't enshrined in the sport's shrine of immortals in Canton, Ohio. Still, Kenny Washington's contribution to the game of professional is unquestionable and he is deserving of much greater recognition. There is a movement underway to include him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but given his record on the field in the league, that seems unlikely. It would be interesting to poll current players in the NFL, a league now dominated by black athletes, to see how many of them know the name Kenny Washington. My guess is that few of them do.

There isn't a long history of segregation in the National Basketball Association only because the league wasn't founded until 1949. Unlike this country's three other major professional sports, baseball, football and hockey, (sorry soccer fans), the origin of the game of basketball can be traced to a particular moment and to a single inventor.

Time now for a brief interlude...

In 1891, PE teacher James Naismith of the Springfield, Mass. YMCA was given the task of creating a new activity to distract his bored and rowdy track and field athletes during the cold New England winter months. His boss, the head of that particular Y, had a few requirements for the activity: it had to keep the athletes in shape, it could not not take up too much space, and it especially had to be "fair for all players and not be too rough."

The new activity would be a goal-oriented game like football and hockey. To make it fair and not too rough, Naismith placed the goals, originally peach baskets, high up above the players' heads so they would be unguardable. There also was no running with the ball, it was advanced by passing it from player to player. Goals were scored by players successfully soft-tossing the ball (originally a soccer ball) into the appropriate basket without it coming out. Upon a successful score, the janitor present at the game, had to walk up to the basket then climb a ladder to fetch the ball. Following that, a "jump ball" at center court would resume the action, if you could call it that, Contrary to what you might have expected, no, the new game was not called "watching paint dry", but Basket Ball. You may think that the greatest innovation in the game of basketball was the jump shot or the slam dunk, but I give that award to the guy who decided it would be a good idea to cut a hole in the bottom of the baskets.

Here is an interesting site devoted to the evolution of basketball.

Anyway, Naismith's game was a big hit, first on the YMCA circuit, then at schools and universities, before finally turning professional . It was played by folks of all races, and evolved as most things did back in those days, in the parallel universes of segregation. But unlike baseball where white teams played black teams only in exhibition games, officially sanctioned games and even championships were held between white and black basketball teams.

One of those all black teams was the Harlem Globetrotters which began as a legitimate barnstorming team, not the circus act they would later become, and not as the team's name implies, from New York City, but from Chicago. In 1948 the Globetrotters took on the all white Minneapolis Lakers (today's LA Lakers), and the man many considered to be the game's first superstar, 6'10" George Mikan. The game took place here in Chicago at the old Chicago Stadium. The Lakers had their way with the Globetrotters in the first half, but the combination of double-teaming Mikan, and a consistent fast-break offense in the second half brought the Trotters back. The lead went back and forth in the second half and with the game tied at 59 with 90 seconds left in regulation time, Marques Haynes eluded the Laker defense all by himself, dribbling the ball until there were two seconds left on the clock. At that point he passed the ball to Elmer Robinson for a perfect 30 foot set shot to win the game at the buzzer.

While it was only an exhibition game, the Globetrotters beating a team that greatly out-sized them put to rest for good the notion that black basketball players were inferior to whites. It had the same impact to African Americans as Jesse Owens winning the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, Joe Louis beating Max Schmeling in the first round of their second fight in 1938, and of course, Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Chuck Cooper

In 1949, the year after the Globetrotters' victory over the Lakers, the Basketball Association of America, the league the Lakers belonged to, merged with its rival, the National Basketball League, to form the National Basketball Association. The NBA would remain all white for exactly one year.

Settling on on the true Jackie Robinson of the NBA is a little complicated as there were actually three of them. From the 1950-51 season overview in NBA.com's encyclopedia, we learn this:

The season marked the first appearance of black players in the league. Chuck Cooper became the first black player to be drafted when he was chosen by Boston; Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton became the first to sign an NBA contract when he signed with New York, and Earl Lloyd became the first to play in an NBA regular-season game because the schedule had his Washington team opening one day before the others.

To further muddy the waters, one of the NBA's predecessors, the NBL, became integrated for a short time in the early forties during World War. II.* Unfortunately during a game, a fight broke out between black and white players, marking the end of that noble experiment.

Bringing up the rear as far as professional American sports leagues are concerned, the National Hockey League finally broke its color barrier with Frederickton, New Brunswick's own, Willie O'Ree, who broke in with the Boston Bruins to replace an injured player on January 18, 1958 for  a game in Montreal. 

There was little fanfare for O'Ree's debut. Eleven years earlier, Jackie Robinson was carefully groomed for the role he was about to be thrust into by his mentor Branch Rickey. Not O'Ree. His coach with the Bruins,  Mike Schmidt, while acknowledging the milestone, and assuring O'Ree that his teammates were all on board, told him in typical understated hockeyspeak, to put that all behind him and "just go out there and play hockey."

Willie O'Ree

O'Ree played only two games with the Bruins in 1958 before going back down to the minors. He was called back up two seasons later and played 43 games with the club. Like the other Jackie Robinsons of their respective sports, O'Ree received more than his share of racist taunts from the fans and the opposing players."Players would take cheap shots at me, just to see if I would retaliate..." O'Ree said, "...They thought I didn’t belong there. When I got the chance, I’d run right back at them."

Jackie Robinson was told by Branch Rickey that under no circumstances was he to retaliate when another player went after him, so as not to set back the cause of integration. For better or worse, fighting is an integral part of the game of hockey, at least as it is played in North America, and O'Ree was given the green light to not turn the other cheek. The worst cheap shot taken at O'Ree was right here in Chicago when my onetime hero Eric Nesterenko of the Black Hawks (as the name of the team was spelled at the time) verbally taunted O'Ree then speared him with his stick to the face, knocking out two teeth. O'Ree's stick then managed to find Nesterenko's head, setting off a bench clearing brawl. It took fifteen stitches to sew up Nesterenko's bloody head. Being hockey I have no doubt that after their penalties, both players barely missed a shift. O'Ree, a very popular player among his teammates, didn't need to fight all his battles. When opposing players would taunt or take a run at him, they had to answer to the enforcers on his team, namely Fern Flaman and Leo Labine.

While the rules of hockey allow retaliation against fellow players, the fans are another story.  O'Ree said the treatment by opposing fans was worse in the American NHL cities than in Montreal or Toronto. It seems the worst city of all, sad to say, was Chicago. "Why don't you go down south where you belong and pick some cotton" was probably one of the tamer remarks hurled in his direction. He was pelted with garbage while serving time in the penalty box but he never fought back. He said: "If I’m going to leave the league, it’s because I don’t have the skills or the ability to play anymore. I’m not going to leave it ’cause some guy makes a threat or tries to get me off my game by making racial remarks towards me."

After that 1960-61 season, (the season the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup), O'Ree was traded to the Montreal Canadiens. As that team was stacked with talent, O'Ree unfortunately never played another game on NHL ice, but he did continue to play professional hockey in the minors, finally hanging up the skates for good in 1979 at the ripe age of 44.

Unlike Kenny Washington who died in 1971. Willie O'Ree lived to see the day when the contributions of pioneer black professional athletes were rediscovered and finally appreciated. In recent years, O'Ree, who is still very much with us, has received countless honors and awards including the Lester Patrick Award for outstanding service to hockey in the United States, and the Order of Canada, that nation's highest civilian award. Since 1998, Willie O'Ree has served as the director of Youth Development for the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force. As you can imagine from his job title, the goal of the organization is to promote the game of ice hockey to new audiences, especially in minority communities, and to encourage the participation of these groups in youth hockey. One might look at the numbers of black players in the NHL today (averaging out to about one player per team) as evidence that the Task Force is barely sputtering along. That is until you realize that after O'Ree's days were done in the NHL, no black player stepped on NHL ice for another thirteen years.

Hockey has indeed come a long way since the days of O'Ree's youth when, as a teenage baseball player,  he got to meet Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field. When O'Ree mentioned that his true love was hockey, Robinson of all people responded: "I didn't know black kids played hockey."

The unfortunate taunting incident that took place in the United Center a little over a week ago, and the public's strong reaction against it, is a good indication that like hockey, society has come a long way since these pioneers broke into their respective leagues, but still has a long way to go.


* Integration was something Major League Baseball could and should have done during a time when there was a player shortage due to World War II. While the poobahs still deemed it unacceptable for blacks to play professional baseball, the majors fielded a child, sixteen year old Joe Nuxtall, and a one armed outfielder, Pete Gray during the war. That proved to be the final slap in the face for supporters of the integration of the Major Leagues which finally took place on April 15, 1947.

Ali

Quick, can you name the current world heavyweight boxing champion? I looked it up a couple days ago and still can't remember his name. When Muhammad Ali died earlier this month, I heard a radio report, probably on NPR who doesn't have a clue about these things, that said the sport of boxing was not very popular before Ali came on the scene, and returned to that state after he retired. That of course is nonsense. To some people, the NPR reporter included. Ali WAS boxing. However prize fighting as it used to be called, was second only to baseball in popularity in the US, up until the early sixties when the NFL began its meteoric rise to the top of the charts. Post-Ali, the heavyweight division of the sport continued to produce household names such as Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield, and everyone's favorite (said with a wink and a nudge), Mike Tyson. And let us not forget the reincarnation of George Foreman who transformed himself from a sullen, brutal, one man wrecking crew, into happy-go-lucky Uncle George the Grill Man. Despite looking like a tan version of the Michelin Man whenever he stepped into the ring and despite his advanced age, Foreman could still pack enough of a wallop to become at 45, the oldest heavyweight champion of all time.

Perhaps it was that image of slow, old Uncle George plodding around the ring sending the likes of boxing immortals Terry Anderson and Ken Lakusta to the canvas, punching their one way tickets to Palookaville, that turned people away from the of battleships of boxing, the heavyweights, in favor of the swifter destroyer class of the sport's lighter weight divisions. The hype surrounding, attention given to and money generated from last year's Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao welterweight bout is evidence that the sweet science is still a major attraction around the world.

I'm old enough to remember when Muhammad Ali was still Cassius Clay, aka "the Louisville Lip", notorious for his incessant posturing and braggadocio. His trademark slogan "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" was coined well before either Ali or Clay became household names. He called himself "The Greatest" long before he could back it up.

We forget today that people hated him for it.

Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston during their re-match,   Lewistown, Maine, May 25, 1965
Photograph by Neil Leifer

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That has to be an average number because all the pictures I've taken that have been worth only a groan or at best a "that's interesting" must certainly balance out the millions of words this Neil Leifer photograph evokes.

It is perhaps the most famous sports photograph ever made. The story behind it as well as the life and times of the two individuals in it, and the sport they excelled at, are so twisted and complex, it would take hundreds of thousands of words just to scratch the surface. 

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. (named after his father who was named after a 19th Century Kentucky abolitionist), was already well known before the fight that made him a legend. That fight to be exact, took place in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964. By that time, Clay was an Olympic gold medal winner with a 19-0 professional record and considered the top contender for the heavyweight crown. But with several less than stellar fights up to that point, nobody gave him much of a chance to beat the formidable current champ Sonny Liston whose biographer, Paul Gallender called the most gifted heavyweight in the history of boxing. Liston was so feared that seasoned professional boxers trembled at the mention of his name.

Liston, whose style and persona were emulated by George Foreman in his first go-around. was the antithesis of Clay, especially when it came to PR. Mistrustful of anyone not in his inner circle, Liston came off as surly and belligerent with the press. They repaid him in kind by portraying him as a brutal thug, emphasizing his prison record and mob connections. The picture the white press painted of Liston was that of the stereotype ferocious Negro whom you'd cross the street in order to avoid crossing paths with him. The truth is, black folks didn't care much for him either. Liston's reputation was so bad even the NAACP got into the act recommending that previous champ Floyd Patterson not fight him because they feared a possible Liston championship would set the cause of civil rights back decades.

Patterson should have listened to them. Liston annihilated the champ, knocking him out barely two minutes into the first round. When the new champ Sonny Liston returned to his home in Philadelphia after the fight, instead of the grateful throngs he expected to greet him at the airport, he was met by only a handful of press, one of whom publicly suggested a huge ticker tape parade up Broad Street was in order, using torn up arrest warrants for confetti. Liston soon left the City of Brotherly Love for Denver saying he'd rather be a lamp post in that city than mayor of Philadelphia.

The rage that cursed through Liston's veins did not escape the attention of 22 year old Cassius Clay who signed to fight the champ in late 1963. From the get go, Clay mercilessly ragged on Liston, in public and in person. He went so far as rent a bus and displayed on it a sign that read "Liston must go in eight" (rounds). Then in the middle of the night, Clay and his friends parked the bus in front of Liston's Denver home, honking the horn and casting aspersions at the temperamental champion as he tried to sleep.

Liston dismissed Cassius Clay as a second rate fighter and a madman. He barely trained for the fight and was probably in the worst shape of his career. It is rumored that he was up all night before the fight on a drunken bender. Unbeknownst to the general public, Clay's training regime by contrast was scientific and brutally intense. He studied every inch of the champ and understood his every weakness, few of them as there were.

Also unknown to the public was a previous shoulder injury to Liston which should have been grounds to postpone the fight. That injury put him at a disadvantage as did the fact that he was far older than anyone suspected, perhaps as old as George Foreman was when he won his second championship. If that's true, and we still don't know for sure, it would have made Liston twice as old as Clay at the time of their fight. 

The young Cassius was at his most outrageous at the weigh-in the morning of the fight, acting so crazed that people thought he was trying to get out of the fight on a count of insanity. It turned out he was crazy, just like a fox. Cassius Clay knew that Sonny Liston had not fought a fight in quite a while that lasted more than a couple of rounds because of his habit of knocking out opponents before most in attendance had a chance to settle into their seats. Clay also knew that Liston more than likely would not train for a long fight. If he could make the champ angry and impatient enough, then Clay's superior foot speed and agility would enable him to evade Liston's devastating punches and tire out the champ in a long fight. He'd later say: "If Liston wasn't thinking nothing but killing me, he wasn't thinking fighting. You got to think to fight."

At the first bell it was apparent that Clay did mange to get under Liston's skin as the champ came after the challenger with a vengeance. By doing so, Liston fell right into Cassius Clay's trap.

No sport inspires more brilliant poetry and prose than boxing. This account of the first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight, written by Robert Lipsyte, is an except from an article which appeared in the New York Times the day after the fight:

The fight was Clay’s from the start. The tall, swift youngster, his hands carelessly low, backed away from Liston’s jabs, circled around Liston’s dangerous left hook and opened a nasty gash under Liston’s left eye. 

He never let Liston tie him up for short, brutal body punches, and although he faltered several times, he refused to allow himself to be cornered. His long left jab kept bouncing off Liston’s face. From the beginning, it was hard to believe. 

The men had moved briskly into combat, Liston stalking, moving flat-footedly forward. He fell short with two jabs, brushed Clay back with a grazing right to the stomach and landed a solid right to the stomach. The crowd leaned forward for the imminent destruction of the young poet. 

But he hadn’t lied. All those interminable refrains of “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” had been more than foolish songs. The kid was floating. He leaned back from Liston’s jabs and hooks, backed into the ropes, then spun out and away. He moved clockwise around Liston, taunting that terrible left hook, his hands still low. 

Then he stung late in the first round, sticking his left in Liston’s face and following with a quick barrage to Liston’s head. They continued for long seconds after the bell, unable to hear the inadequate ring above the roar of the crowd...

Liston strained forward with overeager hooks that struck only air. For a moment, in the second round, Liston pummeled Clay against the ropes, but again, Cassius spun out and away.

Then the young man began to rumble as he had promised. His quick left jabs penetrated Liston’s defenses, and he followed with right hands. He leaned forward as he fired rights and lefts at Liston’s expressionless face. Liston began to bleed from a crescent-shaped cut high on the left cheekbone.

Like a bull hurt and maddened by the picadors’ lances, Liston charged forward. The heavy muscles worked under his smooth, broad back as he virtually hurled his 218 pounds at the dodging, bobbing, dancing Clay.

His heavy arms swiped forward and he threw illegal backhand punches in his bearlike lunges. Once, Clay leaned the wrong way and Liston tagged him with a long left. Cassius was staggered, but Liston was hurt and tired. He could not move in to press his advantage.

And now, a strange murmur began to ripple through the half-empty arena and people on blue metal chairs began to look at one another. Something like human electricity danced and flowed as the spectators suddenly realized that even if Cassius lost, he was no fraud. His style was unorthodox, but …

Both fighters were sluggish in the fifth round, breathing heavily. Liston’s face was still impassive, but the grooves along his forehead seemed deeper, and the snorting breaths through his nose harsher.

He seemed even more tired in the sixth as Clay’s eyes cleared and the younger man bore in, then leapt away, jabbing and hooking and landing a solid right to Liston’s jaw. Clay’s jabs were slipping through at will now, bouncing off that rocklike face, opening the cut under the left eye. 

Liston walked heavily back to his corner at the end of the sixth. He did not sit down immediately. Then as Liston did sit down, Clay came dancing out to the center of the ring, waving his arms, all alone. It seemed like a long time before Drew (Bundini) Brown, his assistant trainer, was hugging him and Dundee was dancing up and down, and Jack Nilan, Liston’s adviser, was wrapping yards of tape around the former champion’s left shoulder...

Sonny Liston never answered the bell to the seventh round. The fight was over and the man who would announce to the world the next day that he was a follower of the Nation of Islam and soon change his name to Muhammad Ali, was the champion of the world. Few thought he could go more than a few rounds with Liston, let alone the distance, but his insane prediction that he would knock Liston out in eight rounds proved to be an understatement.

People called that fight the greatest upset in history but not everyone was convinced. Up until the end of the contest which was ruled a technical knockout for Clay, the fight had been even, at least according to the judges and referee's scorecards. Everyone knew that Liston was tied to the mob so surely he must have thrown the fight. Maybe someone from up above told him: "Champ, tonight's not your night." What else could he do?

To this day, no one knows exactly what happened to Liston that night, but it seems likely that his trainer stopped the fight because of the shoulder injury. It's very unlikely that he threw the fight, at least for the sake of gamblers, as the overwhelming odds in favor of him would have plummeted if the fix was in. They didn't. The score would have to be settled in a re-match.

If the first Liston/Clay match was a confusing mess. the Ali/Liston rematch was nothing less than a fiasco.

Clay's announcement that he was affiliated with the Black Muslims and a follower of their leader Elijah Muhammad, went over like a lead balloon among many Americans, black and white. The latter found the group's portrayal of themselves as "blue eyed Devils" not a little disconcerting, while many black Americans, including Martin Luther King, disapproved of their support of segregation. People of both colors considered the group racist. Floyd Patterson, who refused to call him by his new name, went so far as saying that Ali could just as well have joined the KKK.

Liston's popularity didn't exactly soar either as between fights he had a couple of run ins with the law and spent some more time in the pokey.

However to many whites, while they wouldn't want to meet up with Liston on a dark street late at night, Ali was by far the greater threat because of his quick wit, his intelligence, his mouth, and his willingness to use it to speak what was on his mind. He was a double threat because of his allegiance to an organization that had no intention of capitulating to white American values and its expectations of who black people should be and how they should act. "God knows...", you could hear whites in the sixties say in horror, "...a Negro might even one day become president." White America's anxieties were only strengthened when Ali said:

I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

Surely the world was changing and many white Americans were not ready. Some of course are still not.

By 1965, neither man was riding a crest of popularity and finding a venue to host the rematch proved difficult. The promoters ended up settling for a 4,000 seat hockey arena in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, the smallest venue for a championship fight that anybody could remember. Complicating matters was the company Ali was keeping. During the first fight, Ali's close friend Malcolm X hung out with the contender as he was training. This brought on the consternation of the fight promoters who insisted Ali, at the time still Cassius Clay, renounce any ties he might have had with the Nation of Islam. Clay refused, however Malcolm X did agree to leave the training facility as a concession. After a falling out between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, Ali sided with Muhammad. Nearly a year to the date after the first Liston/Clay fight, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, allegedly upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Word on the street was out that followers of Malcolm had a hit out on Ali as they felt he betrayed his friend and his cause. Not to be outdone, Liston allegedly received threats from Elijah's people. Both men were accompanied by armed guards during their stay in Maine.

Liston trained hard for the second fight and appeared to be ready. Ali was the same old Ali, only the name had changed. You wouldn't know that from listening to the fight announcers who continued to call him by his old name. The fight's tiny venue was only half full. If the pulse of the nation could be taken from the 2,000 souls in the arena that night, the cheers that Liston received was an indication that he was the public's favorite over Ali, who was resoundingly booed when he entered the arena.

Of the fight itself, there is not much to say. Halfway through the first round, Ali followed a Liston jab with an uppercut that may or may not have made contact. With that punch Liston went down. Former heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott the referee that night, had trouble getting Ali to his corner to begin the count. That is the moment captured by Neil Leifer in the photo above. To the uninitiated, it appears that Muhammad Ali is preening and gloating over knocking Liston down. In reality, Ali who knew quite well that the punch he threw could never have brought the great Liston down, was admonishing the former champ to get back up and start fighting. Walcott never got his count off and after Liston got to his feet, the fight resumed briefly, until the official timer told Walcott that he had made a ten count and Liston was down for the entire time. That was good enough for Walcott (although it shouldn't have been), and he stopped the fight. Not only had viewers, either in the small arena in Maine, or all over the world in theaters via closed circuit TV, not settled into their seats, many had not even entered the building.

Ali's punch that may or may not have connected with Liston has gone down in history as the phantom punch. Boxing people have been debating that punch ever since, some insisting that contrary to appearance, it was a deceptively powerful punch. Most however are convinced that Liston took a very obvious dive.

Here's the entire fight, all two minutes and fifteen seconds of it, so you can judge for yourself.

To this day, no one knows exactly what happened, why Liston went down the way he did and if he indeed took a dive, why. Once again there was no indication of any betting irregularity that would imply the fight was fixed. Paul Gallender who spent thirty years gathering information on Liston which resulted in his book Sonny Liston - The Real Story Behind the Ali-Liston Fights, tells the far fetched story that members of the Nation of Islam kidnapped Liston's wife and child and told the fighter he'd never see them again if he won the fight. As far as I know, his is the only account of this story so I'd take it with a huge grain of salt.

Needless to say, this fight was the end of Liston's credibility. He left the country and continued to fight unranked boxers in Europe, never getting a chance at another title. Liston did continue to be a celebrity of sorts, making several cameo appearances on TV and in movies. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1970.

The sport of boxing took a hit as people all over the world rolled their eyes at what they considered obvious deception and fraud in the sport. 

And Ali didn't get his due as champion as Liston's performance in the second fight only increased suspicions that the first fight was rigged as well. The new champ went on to defend his title against eight opponents including former champ Floyd Patterson, whom Ali viewed with contempt after Patterson's remarks about him and his religion. Boxing analysts claim that Ali could have put Patterson away early in the fight, but toyed with him until the fight was stopped in the 12th round.

Then came the defining moment of Muhammad Ali's life, he got drafted.

But that's a story for another day.

Click here for Ali, Round Two.

Ya Gotta Have ❤

It's time to get philosophical. Last night, the Chicago Blackhawks, the defending Stanley Cup champions, were eliminated from the National Hockey League playoffs by the St. Louis Blues. As you may remember, I've been a Blackhawks fan virtually all my life, probably since I was two years old and watching hockey from a crib or whatever contraption my parents stuck me into when they didn't want to bother with me.


Now you might think I'd be taking the news hard, but I'm not. You see, I grew up a Chicago sports fan and am used to bitter disappointment. In fact, disappointment is so natural to me, at least as far as rooting for sports teams goes, I'm never quite sure how to handle it when one of my teams actually wins something. Young people or folks who recently moved to Chicago don't realize what it's like to be a real Chicago fan. To them, this city is a bastion of champions. They think of the Blackhawks with their three recent championships, and the Michael Jordan Bulls who won six NBA championships in eight years. OK that happened last century but Jordan is still as much a part of this town as he was back then. The Bears were in the Super Bowl just a few years back when the late musician Prince did that helluva halftime show; they even won the thing once upon a time. Hard to believe it was thirty years ago, but people around town talk about that Bears team as if it were still together. Heck even the lowly White Sox won the World Series, ten years ago. Like the Bulls, the Cubs haven't won it all since last century (the beginning of it, not the end), but the current team looks promising not that we haven't heard that before.

Now back in my day...

Well let's put it this way, before there was something called the Super Bowl, the Chicago Bears won the NFL Championship in 1963. I was alive but have no memory of it. The next major Chicago team to win a championship, (sorry soccer fans, I'm not counting the long defunct Chicago Sting), was that 1986 Bears team who won the Super Bowl. That is my very first memory of a Chicago championship. I was 27 years old on that glorious day, January 26, 1986 to be exact.

That means during my formative years, the time when I was most interested and passionate about sports, the teams I followed, and my heroes who played for them, in other words, during my entire conscious childhood, there was nothing, zip, nada.  Oh there were the close calls, the '69 Cubs, the '71 and '73 Black Hawks, the '75 Bulls, the '83 Sox and '84 Cubs, when we were at the gates of the Promised Land only to have those gates shut on our fingers.

Well as they say, if it doesn't kill you it only makes you stronger. That's why I'm convinced people who grew up rooting for Chicago teams, at least until those Bulls teams came along in the nineties, were better equipped to deal with the slings and arrows that life throws at us from time to time. As my mother who knew a thing or two about losing Chicago teams always taught me, when you expect the worst out of life, you're never disappointed.

By contrast, young Chicago sports fans don't think of victory as something they might experience one day but only in their wildest dreams, they actually expect to win. When they don't win, look out.

Those are the folks who are moaning and groaning today, complaining that the Hawks dug themselves into too much of a hole to climb out of, that they let the Blues walk all over them, that they fell apart at crunch time, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I get a kick out of people who like me, never played a day of competitive sports, yet feel compelled to criticize men and women who have made a life out of them. Did the Hawks really intend to fall behind early and often to the Blues? Did Corey Crawford plan to let a few shots slip by him that he knew deep down he really should have stopped? Was Captain Jonathan Toews who was held scoreless in the series, lazy, preoccupied, or indifferent? Was Coach Joel Quenneville content to rest upon his laurels as one of the winningest coaches in NHL history?

Hardly. This Chicago Blackhawks team didn't win three Stanley Cup championships for no reason. Perhaps I'm going way out on a limb by saying this but I believe they are the best team this city has produced in over a century, and yes I'm including the six time champion Chicago Bulls of the 1990s. That was a great team dominated by one player. Take that player out of the equation, as they discovered in 1994, and most of 1995, and they were a pretty good team.

These Blackhawks on the other hand, have a core of six or seven players who make up the heart and soul of the team. You probably know their names, Toews, Kane, Hossa, Keith, Hjalmarsson and Seabrook. Those six have been with the team since they won the Cup in 2010. Rounding out that austere group is goaltender Crawford who became the team's starting net minder in 2012.

The rest of the team far from being a supporting cast as Michael Jordan liked to call his teammates, are a group whose members work seamlessly together, just like the different parts of a body. Because the rules of hockey dictate a strict salary cap, successful teams like the Blackhawks are forced to let go of good players every season, especially championship seasons. That is one reason why it is so difficult to win consecutive championships in the NHL. Winning a Cup almost always means losing some of your higher paid, better players, exactly what happened to the Hawks after last season.

Despite that, the Blackhawks have remained one of the handful of elite teams in the league, largely because of the influence of their core players, the brilliant wheeling and dealing of their GM, Stan Bowman, and the magnificent leadership of Coach Q.

I recently joined a Facebook group dedicated to ice hockey, whose members come from all over the US and Canada. Much to my surprise and delight, I discovered how many hockey fans despise the Blackhawks. Just as fans despised the Flyers in the seventies, the Islanders and the Oilers in the eighties, the Red Wings in the nineties, and the Canadiens for eternity, NHL fans despise these Blackhawks because they are really good. One comment which came after one of the Hawks' gutsy wins in this series went something like this:

I really hate the Blackhawks but you gotta admire them for their heart.

Their heart is what enabled them to come back after being down three games to one in a best of seven series. If one were to point fingers, that heart comes directly from their captain. It's true that Jonathan Toews didn't score a goal in the series, but he did get six assists. In perhaps the most important goal for the Blackhawks in this series which came in the second overtime period of game five, Patrick Kane made a point blank shot on Blues goalie Brian Elliot, then skated around the net and picked up his own rebound and flicked the puck into an empty net for the game winner. It was a miraculous play, something we've come to expect from Kane. Although he didn't make it into the score card on that play, it was Toews, by putting himself in harm's way in the goal crease that created enough havoc and distraction to make the goal possible.

But the Blackhawks found their match in the Blues. The team from St. Louis arguably has less talent than the Hawks, but make up for it in toughness. This series was as close as could be. All but one of the seven games were settled by one goal. Game one ended on a fluky St. Louis goal off a Chicago defenseman. In game two the Blackhawks benefited from a few questionable calls. St. Louis won both games on the road putting the Hawks down and almost out, three games to one. In game five in St. Louis, the Hawks let a two goal lead evaporate in the third period, but battled back in overtime which was settled by that brilliant Kane goal. In game six in Chicago, St. Louis scored three unanswered goals to take a two goal lead but the Hawks, still with their backs against the wall, battled back and scored five unanswered goals of their own in the only lopsided game of the series. That victory tied the series three games apiece.

At that point, the Chicago press and much of the national press as well had written off the Blues who blew a two game lead and apparently lacked both the talent and the experience of the Blackhawks. But the Blues showed they had more than enough heart of their own to match the Hawks. It was their turn to blow a two goal lead to the Hawks who tied game seven in the second period. From thereon the game was end to end with both goaltenders standing on their heads to keep their team in the game. Close to the end of the third period I resigned myself to the thought that this series would be settled by a fluke goal in overtime, just like game one.

Just as that thought crossed my mind, the Blackhawks suffered a defensive breakdown, allowing their former teammate Troy Brauer to roam unchecked into the goal crease where he buried the series winning goal into the net from two feet away.

Still the Blackhawks weren't finished. Brent Seabrook took a mean slapshot from the point that beat Brian Elliot, but hit not one, but both goalposts. The chances against hitting both posts without the puck going into the net are steep. It happened twice to the Blackhawks this series.

It was "divine intervention" as network announcer Doc Emrick called it. The hockey gods had their say. They ruled in favor of the Blues.

It was as great a series as any hockey fan could have hoped. Unfortunately, one team had to win and one had to lose. That's just the way the puck bounces.

But cheer up all you newbie Blackhawk fans, they'll be back and with a vengeance. The core guys, well most of them will return along with new stars like the two Russians, Artem Anisimov, and Artemi  Panarin, a Slovak, Richard Panik and a Finn Teuvo Teravainen. Things are looking pretty good with the farm club up in Rockford too so the future looks bright. Plus, no longer being the Stanley Cup champion means that every team in the league won't necessarily be bringing their "A" game against us next year.

Losing to the (with all due respect), despicable St. Louis Blues was a letdown for Blackhawks fans to be sure, but only a temporary one. If you're particularly bummed about this loss, take some advice from someone who understands this sort of thing: relax, take a deep breath, and finally, repeat as often as necessary the traditional mantra of the true Chicago sports fan:

Wait 'til next year.

It Never Gets Old

This year I didn't have to go far to become a part of the Chicago Blackhawks victory celebration, it all started when I hopped on the L...

... and then it turned out the victory parade would roll by the back door to work.

They said somewhere in the neighborhood of two million people showed up in Downtown Chicago yesterday to take part in the celebration, but hiding inside the office popping out when I heard that the parade was a few blocks away, I only encountered a fraction of them. My colleagues who ventured out at lunch told me they witnessed several drunk people (at noon), throwing up. My son who was with some friends a few blocks away smelled pot smoke. But everyone who I encountered behaved themselves, just happy to be a part of history, and to catch a glimpse of their heroes in the red Indian head sweaters, and the Stanley Cup.

There's something unique about that thirty five pound chunk of metal which since 1925 has been the prize de jure of the National Hockey League. Unlike other trophies in professional sports, there is only one Stanley Cup, they don't cast a new one every year. That means every team who wins the championship has to give it up the following year, unless of course they win it again. That hasn't happened since the Detroit Red Wings won it in consecutive years in 1997 and 1998.

The Stanley Cup pre-dates the NHL by 25 years. The Cup, pictured at the bottom center of the photograph below, was donated by the Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley.

The Montreal Hockey Club, first winners of the Stanley Cup, 1893

If it's not immediately recognizable, that's because of the seven tiers that have been added to accommodate the names of each player on every team that has won the Cup. Each player also gets to spend a day with the Cup. Usually they choose to share the Stanley Cup with their home town, which given the international character of the game, could be at any corner of the world.

If it could, the Stanley Cup would have lots of stories to tell. It no doubt made the rounds at watering holes around the city immediately after the Hawks won their third championship in six years. Before it appeared in Chicago's Loop yesterday, Jonathan Toews, the captain of the Blackhawks, shared it with the residents of  Miserecordia, a local institution in my neighborhood that serves people with developmental disabilities. Thousands of Chicagoans will take the opportunity to see and even lay hands on the Cup in the following weeks as it calls this city its temporary home,

Thursday was the fourth time I laid eyes on the Stanley Cup. The first time was in 1992 at the old Chicago Stadium where I saw it hoisted by Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Two years later I saw it carried by Mark Messier at the New York Rangers Championship Parade on Lower Broadway in New York City. I wouldn't see it again until 2010 when Patrick Kane hoisted it aboard a double-decker bus on its way to Tribune Tower and the first Blackhawk championship celebration not in my lifetime, but certainly in my memory. This year it was Patrick Sharp, Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith and his young son, who had the honor of accompanying the Cup through the streets of Chicago, en route to the official rally at Soldier Field.

There were lots of downtown workers who grumbled about the inconvenience surrounding the event. The poor behavior of a small percentage of individuals who showed up, mostly teenagers and young adults, confirmed in some their worst feelings about sports and sports fans. Some folks even expressed outrage that a meaningless event such as a sports championship could capture the imagination of so many people, when there are so many other pressing issues in the world.

They could all be right. On the other hand, aside from the end of a war, I can't think of a single event that can bring together so many people of different backgrounds, for no other reason than pure joy and celebration. In a clip that went viral, on the night of the championship, a local news reporter looking for someone to interview encountered an African American man wearing a Blackhawks tee shirt. He asked the man how he felt and the response was "You know how awesome they are? They got black people loving hockey, ain't that something?"

On Facebook, a friend expressed how much he wished his dad were still alive so he could enjoy the Blackhawks championship. On several occasions on this site, I've expressed the same feelings about my dad who above all other sports, loved hockey, and passed that love along to me. For three times in the last six years, I have thought long and hard about my late father and how happy he would be with this team and their success.

And as has been my tradition after these three championships, after the game on Monday ended I looked up to the sky, raised a glass of good Czech beer, and toasted my dad by saying:

"Nazdravy Tati."

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and...

Today's the Fourth of July and what could be more appropriate and patriotic than to spend the day with my son by the telly, watching the World Cup. Why not? This country like it or not, is a country of immigrants, people whose relatives if not themselves came from elsewhere. And the game of choice in that nether-region called someplace else, at least in those someplace elses where they don't call it soccer, is in fact, soccer.

The Great Pelé, scoring against Belgium, 1968.

Now I can't think of anything more pointless than comparing the relative merits of one sport against another. Yet every four years, it has been a ritual in this country to compare the world's most popular spectator sport, with our own most popular sports, namely baseball and the game only we refer to as football. Every time the World Cup rolls around, we're subjected to the rantings and ravings of (soocer)football lovers about how their game is so much superior to the two American games because of its continuous activity opposed to the seemingly endless periods of standing around talking, scratching and spitting, only occasionally broken up by fleeting moments of action. On the other side are the Americans who demand our sports are better because their players don't spend all their time running around trying, and usually failing to kick a ball into a net.

In other words, each side is arguing that the other guy's sport is boring. Of course there are loads of people who couldn't care less because to them, ALL sports are boring.

I would argue that you get out of any sport, just like anything else in life, exactly what you put into it. If you've grown up with a game, played it, and/or ever rooted for a particular team at some point in your life, chances are you will appreciate that sport as an adult. You'll understand the intricacies of the game, appreciate the tactics and strategies of the players and coaches, and revel in the skill and mastery of those performing at the absolute highest level of their profession.

If none of the above applies, then a sport is nothing more than some guys kicking a ball around a field, a guy throwing a ball at another guy who's trying to hit it with a stick, or a bunch of guys trying to beat the crap out of each other.

The best thing I ever read about soccer was a beautiful piece called: If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder*. It was written by a fellow named Aleksandar Hemon from Sarajevo, who found himself stranded in Chicago as he was visiting the city exactly at the moment when civil war broke out in his country, Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of his great passions was playing soccer, and not being able to play regularly while living in a foreign city left him out "at sea, mentally and physically." Fortunately this being a great soccer town if you know where to look, Hemon found a regular pick-up game along the lake in Uptown which was organized by a UPS driver from Ecuador, a fellow by the name of "German." German set up the field, the foul lines, goals, and distributed jerseys to all the participants. He even set up flags representing the nations competing in the World Cup. Since he was middle aged at the time, German would seldom play, unless they were short of players, but was the full time referee. Soccer is truly the one international language as the divergent nationalities of the players in that pickup game attested. The regular players of that pickup game came from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Chile, Columbia, Belize, Brazil, Jamaica, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Ertirea, Ghana, Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, France Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, and Korea. One of the goalies was from Tibet.

This collected assembly of nations on American soil is not to the liking of everyone, especially commentators like Ann Coulter who last week wrote a cheeky article blasting soccer, essentially comparing Americans' quadrennial interest in the game and the team that represents them, to nothing less than the moral degradation of an entire nation. This set off a maelstrom of silly articles slamming Coulter and her piece, calling her xenophobic, claiming she knows nothing about the game, and defending a game that didn't need defending. Of course that response was Coulter's intention all along and her detractors unwittingly played right into her hands by giving her article way more intention than it deserved.

Anyway, the referee and game organizer, the Ecuadoran named German eventually retired from UPS and moved down to Florida. Without a credible successor, the Uptown pickup game dissolved. Hemon, the author of the piece, found another game in a different neighborhood, this one comprised mostly of Americans and assimilated Europeans and Latinos. He found there was something lacking in this game, the level of passion he was used to simply was not there. Illustrating the difference between the international game and the American game, many times he was admonished by the Americans for his intense style of play. They'd say to him: "Relax, it's only exercise." His response to them was : "...go and run on a fucking treadmill and let me play the game the way the game's supposed to be played."

In a particularly beautiful passage, Hemon described an incident that took place during one of the Uptown games. In typical Chicago fashion, the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and a rain storm "started at the other end of the field and then moved across it towards the far goal, steadily advancing, like a German World Cup team." The power of the storm forced the players to abandon the pitch and make a beeline for German's van. All the players that is except for the goalie and the rest of his Tibetan friends who continued to play in the rain...

as if running in slow motion on the surface of a placid river. The ground is giving off vapour, the mist touching their ankles, at at moments it seems that they're levitating a few inches above the ground, untouched by the flood. 

One of the other players and his wife...

are watching them with perfect calm, as if nothing could ever harm them. They see one of the Tibetans scoring a goal, the rain-heavy ball sliding between the goalie's hands. The goalie is untroubled, smiling, and from where I am, he could be the Dalai Lama himself.

Hemon concludes this passage by describing absolute perfection. He is writing specifically about soccer but it could apply to any game or in fact the perfect moment in any field of endeavor:

...the moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who practice sports with other people; the moment arising from the chaos of the game, when all your teammates occupy the ideal position on the field; the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes - as moments tend to - when you complete the pass; and all you have left is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the instant you were completely connected with the world around you.

It may be only a game but we all should be so lucky to experience such a moment.


*Aleksander Harmon, "If God Existed, He'd be a Solid Midfielder", Granata, ©2009, Granta Publications