What’s the sound of a drought’s imminent end? Is it a faint, foreshadowing rumble in the distance? The soft, steady patter of raindrops?
Or is it the full, unmitigated roar of 2 million fans at a victory parade for the Blackhawks, Stanley Cup in tow, as the end of Chicago hockey’s Dust Bowl era, 49 years of a friggin’ dry spell?
In a Best Sports City year in which thirsting fans in New Orleans and Tuscaloosa, even the Bronx, were quenched with championships and L.A. and Durham filled their Camelbaks full again, there was something special about the Blackhawks’ Rocky road from Bill Wirtz to first.
“I never would have imagined it changing this quickly,” Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Toews says.
Yet a single championship—remarkable as it may be—doesn’t make a Best Sports City. Otherwise how could we overlook the Saints’ Super Bowl victory?
There’s big league baseball, two teams’ worth; there’s the Bulls, a team surely on the rise. There’s the beloved Bears and DePaul hoops, Northwestern football and NASCAR Sprint Cup racing.
There is the city’s head-over-heels love for sports, all sports, and the people who play them.
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