Archive for June, 2010

“Nobody Wants Huet”

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Over the weekend I went shopping for Blackhawks souvenirs and came away with a lesson on human nature.  It happened at the Field of Dreams memorabilia shop at Woodfield Shopping Center in Schaumburg.

The store has an impressive selection of Blackhawks memorabilia, from pucks and plaques to framed photos.  Going through a stack of gorgeous pre-matted 8x10s, I noticed one player was conspicuous by his absence:  Antti Niemi.  I asked a store employee if I might have been looking in the wrong place for the Hawks’ netminder.  “No,” he quickly replied, “we’re all out of Niemis.”  He shouted to another gentleman behind the counter, “Do we have anymore Niemis?”  The other guy just shook his head.

“But,” I chuckled, “I see you still have lots of Cristobal Huet.”  They had at least a half dozen photos of the other Hawks’ goalie.  The first gentleman looks at me and says, almost sheepishly, “Nobody wants Huet.”

That’s when it dawned on me how true that was.  I couldn’t help thinking about that as I paid for my pictures and walked out of the store.  Ever since the team clinched the title, every Blackhawk who stayed in town has suddenly become a hot commodity, commanding what I would guess to be premium fees to shake hands and sign autographs at stores, auto dealerships and shopping malls.  Even fill-ins such as Jordan Hendry were getting top billing in some places.  But there was one player who didn’t seem to be making the rounds of the glad-hand circuit:  Cristobal Huet.  Is there any place you’ve noticed that’s hosting a Huet autograph signing?  I bet not.

I don’t know if Huet had a reason to leave town right after the celebration or if he’s still here but laying low.  Either way, it’s not fair that he’s become persona non grata among fans, especially after being a contributor to the Blackhawks’ greatest season going back almost 50 years.  Huet was actually the starting goaltender when the ’09-’10 season began and, along the way, appeared in 48 games, earning the same number of wins as Niemi, 26.  True, he wasn’t a world-beater, performing below league average some of the time, and his wobbles at the end of the season couldn’t have come at a worse time for fans and their short memories.  Furthermore, it doesn’t help that his large salary is often cited as the reason the Hawks have serious cap issues this off-season.  But Huet was always ready when the Hawks counted on him, especially in the early part of the season, and his salary is the fault of Hawks’ management, not him.  Fans should also realize that, even on championship teams, players can have subpar years.

Since the team clinched the Cup two weeks ago, Blackhawks fans have been a happy, contented lot.  I’m proud to say I’m one of them.  But I’m a bit disappointed in my fellow fans who’ve been giving Cristobal Huet grief, from booing him at the rally downtown to totally ignoring him at the souvenir stands.  At a time when there’s plenty of celebratory afterglow to go around, Huet deserves to bask in his share of it.  At least his name is on the Cup, where it’ll be forever.

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My Kind of Sports Town

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Call it a championship perfectly earned, acknowledged and celebrated.   You can say it was old school or a refreshing change of pace.  Either way, the Blackhawks’ victory in the Stanley Cup and the city’s reaction to it couldn’t have been scripted any better.

As for the Hawks themselves, how could you not root for them?  The Blackhawks were an exciting, energetic team that appealed to everyone, from young fans to people like me from the Tony-O/Golden Jet/Stan Mikita generation who never got to see that stellar crew win a Cup.  The 2010 Hawks went 16-and-6 over their last 22 games against premiere competition.  They methodically overcame everything that could have been used as an excuse for failure:  losing home ice advantage, questionable officiating, their opponents’ physical play against their speed and finesse game.  They rose to every challenge and won with dignity, class and old-fashioned hard work.

Then came all the celebrations which followed Wednesday’s clincher.  There were so many high points we don’t have enough space here to list them all.  Let’s review just a handful that had me reaching for the kleenex:  Toews’ emerging from the plane in the wee hours of Thursday morning to give us our first glimpse at the Cup; the throngs that greeted our conquering heroes downtown Friday morning; the reception Hossa got up on stage when his name was announced; the young players looking like they were truly soaking it all in and not taking it for granted.  And, when it was all over, the crowd eventually went home, no storefronts were smashed and downtown was left perfectly intact.

I’m proud to be a Chicago Blackhawk fan.  At the same time, I’ve never been prouder to be a Chicagoan.  We showed the world a big city can still celebrate a sports championship the way it should be.

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At Least Armando Gallaraga Got an Apology

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

“What if…” is never a happy question, and seeing defeat snatched from the jaws of victory isn’t fun, especially here in Chicago where we’ve been witness to that scenario a few too many times over the years with our sports teams.

I can only wonder how long it will take Julianna Canabal-Rodriquez to get over the sting of being unfairly bounced from the finals of the recently concluded 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee.  Unlike Armando Gallaraga, the Tigers pitcher who received an apology from umpire Jim Joyce, who denied him a perfect game with a badly blown call—Julianna, to my knowledge, hasn’t heard a word from Jacques Bailly, the official of the Scripps Spelling Bee whose careless pronunciation caused her to misspell her word in that fateful 6th round last Friday.

Julianna’s word was “gyokuro,” (correctly pronounced “gyOH-ku-roh”) which we were told was a type of high-grade Japanese tea.  Bailly, the “official pronouncer” for the annual spelling bee, mispronounced the word on his first read-through as “gyAH-ku-roh.”  He mispronounced it again on his second try.  Then, when asked by Juliana to repeat it, he mispronounced it several more times, never getting it right during the two-and-a-half minutes she stood at the microphone before eventually misspelling the word and stepping away.

Watching Julianna you could tell she was grappling with what came down to two choices in her mind:  going with “g-y-a” or “g-y-o” to start the word.  By her repeated requests for Bailly to repeat “gyokuro,” it was obvious to me that she was leaning toward the correct spelling but that the way he was pronouncing the first syllable was pushing her toward a spelling she had no confidence in.  In the end, she went against her gut entirely because of his pronunciation.  She was eliminated from the tournament as a result.

As she was walking off the stage in stunned disappointment, the commentators were remarking about how Bailly had seemingly led her down the wrong path, having Anglicized the word when he pronounced it “gyAH-ku-roh.”  They were right.  No one speaking correct Japanese would have said it that way.  Even I, for whom Japanese was a first language when I was growing up, would have ended up spelling it incorrectly after being given that erroneous hint.

For a contest predicated entirely on absolute precision, the E. W. Scripps Company ought to be as demanding of perfection on the part of its officials as it is the young men and women who courageously compete each year in its famous spelling bee.

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