What the puck! The Blackhawks rally

Sports are filled with overused metaphors for daily life. Cliches abound like beer commercials during a playoff game. But any Chicago team fan knows one sad truism: You really can't take anything for granted.

In most of our lifetimes, the Sox have won one World Series and the Bears just one Super Bowl. The Bulls had a nice run in the 90s, but their last title was 12 years ago. And the Cubs. Well poor Pat Szpekowski knows that tale all too well.

And that's just one reason why the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup partially mended the Carpentersville businesswoman's sports-broken heart.

Pat was a 11 in 1961, the last time the Hawks brought home the traveling trophy, and growing up in a Polish neighborhood on the Near West Side, not too far from the old Chicago Stadium. Her mom loved hockey. The family would occasionally go to games and more often would listen on the radio or tune in the black and white TV.

Reggie Fleming was a talented enforcer for the squad, and also happened to be half Polish. That might have influenced Pat asking Fleming if she could head up his fan club.

"He told me, `I'd be honored,'" Pat recalled. She soon was putting out newsletters for 200 fellow Fleming fans across the US and Canada.

See, back in the day, many players led more working class lives and mingled with the common folk and became friends with fans. Fleming wrote letters to Pat's grandmother - in Polish. She went to his wedding.

"He was like a big brother to me," Pat said.

The two kept in touch over the years. She has scrapbooks, memorabilia and even one of Bobby Hull's bloodied hockey sticks to prove it. Yes, NHL hockey pretty much always has been a Quentin Tarantino movie on skates. And yes, that is the coolest sports gift. Ever.

Fleming wound up playing for several teams, including the Rangers and the Flyers. He lived out his life in the northwest suburbs and passed away about a year ago. Fleming's son, Chris, chronicled his dad's final years in videos still up on YouTube.

Pat couldn't make it downtown for the victory parade Friday, but watched on TV. I planned on going anyway. But talking to her sealed the deal on braving what turned out to be a crowd of about 2 million people and hearing "Chelsea Dagger" umpteen more times.

We had an inkling of how things would be downtown, when the 7:50 a.m.train from Elgin wound up sardine tight by Roselle, which made it a de facto express run.

I invited my friend Dave, whom I had not seen since college, who was in Carpentersville visiting his dad. His son Keenan and brother Bob, from Sleepy Hollow, came along, too. How can you not ask someone you haven't seen in more than 20 years do join you for such a day? Welcome home, indeed. Besides Dave lives in Texas now, and everything is big there, right?

Anyway, we met up with my cousin Dan, who drove in from South Bend, as he has hockey in his blood (which is redundant). We all used to play a floor version in his big family's big basement in Frankfurt - with a light plastic, neon orange puck. Hey, it was the 70s.

Dan played goalie for St. Jude's out of the rink in Crestwood, where he befriended former Hawks star Chris Chelios, then at De La Salle High School in the city. He tended net some in college, in intramural leagues while getting advanced degrees, and in true hockey player fashion, still laces up the skates despite cracking his back a year ago. He was playing forward in a 3-on-3 game, and a fat goalie fell on him. Ironic, ain't it?

Fitting, though, is that Dan grew up to be a reconstructive surgeon. He missed Patrick Kane's Cup-clenching goal last Wednesday night because he would be heading into surgery on a, 11-year-old boy who got hit in the face by a baseball.

Dan got to see boyhood heroes Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito on one of the double decker buses Friday. He has the photos to prove it. Everybody had a camera or smart phone working overtime snapping away the most red and black shots ever taken. Heck, even the fountains in Daley Plaza were putting out blood-like plumes of water, which is perfect for hockey.

Cori Nawrocki of Lake In the Hills, who stood next to me in along Washington Street near Dearborn, held her camera above her head, hoping to capture her favorite player, Johnathan Toews. Nawrocki disappeared, perhaps joining the Pied Piper like masses who followed a the bus with bubbly Kane to the rally at Wacker and Michigan.

But on this collective Ferris Bueller's Day off, my friends and I headed to the Willis Tower. Hey, Dave promised his wife he would stand in one of those Plexiglass boxes hanging 103 stories off the building. Maybe it was I bet.

Though you couldn't see the rally from there, standing on the top of the city seemed a fitting thing to do - and a great place for a player to bring the Stanley Cup late one night, if you know what I'm saying.

And should that tourist I saw in the elevator up happen to read this. I lied. Lady Gaga did not sing a song from the victory podium. Hey, I gave her something to tell her friends back home. It was the least I could do.

And while I was looking down at the city, I thought about what Pat Szpekowski said in advance of all the craziness.

"There's so much sadness in the world, and nothing seem to be going right. Faith gives us hope, and so do the Blackhawks," she said.

Me, of little faith, might not take things far. I'm not gonna cry like Jeremy Roenick.

But I can an at least agree with Cousin Dan. Calling as he neared his home in Indiana, Dan said "It definitely was was worth the drive. And if they do it again, let's plan on being here, too."

This being Chicago, we both know it's all a big IF. And that makes you appreciate a day like Friday all the more.