Dollar Bill

They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I have always believed that if a person was an asshole when he was alive by dying that does not turn him into a saint. I mean don’t get me wrong it is sad when anyone dies. But let’s not use that as an excuse to forget just how that person was when they were alive.

I bring this up because long time Chicago Black Hawk owner Bill Wirtz passed away last week. When he was alive he treated Black Hawk fans like shit. He is the main reason I am no longer a Black Hawk fan today, which is saying something. Back in the mid to late 80’s there wasn’t a bigger Hawk fan or hockey fan around then yours truly.

I still remember my first Black Hawk game like it was yesterday. My Uncle John took me. I couldn’t have been more then ten or eleven years old. The Hawks were playing the Toronto Maple Leafs. We sat in the nose bleeds up in the storied second balcony of the old Chicago Stadium. You had to climb what seemed like an endless set of stairs to make your way up to the top of the Stadium. Maybe that is what made it all the more exciting.

I remember the crowd was way into it and the sound and smell of the game. Hockey is truly the one sport where television does not do it any justice. The game just does not translate well to the small screen. There was nothing like seeing a Hawks game live in the old barn. The national anthem was something that you had to experience for yourself. The crowd would start cheering upon the first note with Wayne Messmer and would reach a crescendo on the last bar. The entire building just shook as he sang it.

For most of the 80’s the Black Hawks actually had a good team. They were in the playoffs every year. The home games were not on television. So, I was forced to listen to all home games on the radio. Pat Foley was the play by play man and he was brilliant. He painted a mental picture and was so good at describing the action on the ice. Denis Savard, Al Secord, Tony Espisito and Steve Larmer where my hero’s back then.

In the early to mid 90’s however the Black Hawks started to tank and it can be traced to the miser Bill Wirtz. Just like in the 70’s when he refused to pay Bobby Hull, he refused to pay for top talent. He traded away Jeremy Roenick (at the time the Hawks top scorer) for nothing. He traded away Ed Belfour (the Hawks goalie who would go on to win a Cup in Dallas.) The reason they were traded away, was simply they were headed to free agency and he didn’t want to pay them.

So, just as the product on the ice started to tank he felt it was the right time to raise ticket prices. So, not only were the home games not on TV, now you had to take out a loan to watch them. I had enough at that point.

On top of all that the United Center as nice as it can be for a Bulls game, sucks for hockey. It just doesn’t have that same feeling like the old Stadium did for a Hawks game. The last Black Hawk game I went to, (which was like in the mid 90’s) the place was half empty and it had the energy of a senior citizen on Nyquil.

When a guy decided to write a book about just how much Dollar Bill was ripping off Black Hawk fans, Wirtz sued the guy and tried to ban him from selling his book outside of the United Center. In 2004 he was a main cog in the lockout which cancelled the entire 2004-2005 season.

I have been reading in the paper how charitable he was and how great he was to his family. Which just goes to show that no person is all sinner or all saint. Wirtz, over the years treated the loyal Hawk fans like his personal ATM and we should not forget that. He has reduced the once great Black Hawks into the laughing stock of the NHL. It has gotten so bad that the minor league Wolves typically outdraw the Hawks. That will be his legacy, no matter how the writers in this town want to distort the true history of the man.