Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Don’t get too excited yet about Hawks

Two victories in two games. The overly-optimistic might be inclined to think that it is inevitable – the Chicago Blackhawks will win the Stanley Cup this year, making them champions of the National Hockey League for the 2009-10 season.

Then, there is the Chicago sports fan – who realizes what an aberation it was in 2005 for the White Sox to breeze their way through two rounds of playoffs and a World Series victory – only one loss the entire way.

THERE ARE THOSE of us of a certain age who will never forget 1984, not because of anything George Orwell wrote but because that was the year the Chicago Cubs were supposed to trash all the talk of them being perpetual losers.

They, too, won the first two games of what was then the only round of the National League playoffs. No National League team had ever won the first two games, then managed to lose all the rest to blow a league championship.

Leave it to the cutesy Cubbies to be the first. They were.

Boston Red Sox fans may think it is the ultimate sports tragedy that first baseman Bill Buckner let that ground ball get through his legs to cost the Red Sox a chance to win the 1986 World Series.

BUT THOSE OF us who follow the Chicago sports scene remember that Cubs first baseman Leon Durham committed the same exact error in the final game of the 1984 National League playoffs, costing the Cubs a league championship that they still haven’t managed to win since 1945.

There also are those of us who have always thought that Buckner’s error had nothing to do with any Babe Ruth-related curse. It was because he was an ex-Cub, daring to think he could be a championship-caliber ballplayer.

Now I know some people are going to respond to this by saying the Hawks are the Hawks, and that the Cubs have nothing to do with this. Then again, the losing streaks seem to run just a little too strong through our city’s sports professional sports teams – regardless of what the ball game is.

All I’m really implying is that this thing ain’t over yet. And the next two games will be played Wednesday and Friday in Philadelphia.

-30-

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