Not only is it true that everybody wants to coach or manage in Chicago, almost everybody has.
If you can’t get a job here, you can’t get a job anywhere. But stick close to the telephone. Another of our sports teams will have an opening soon. When it comes to paying moving expenses, local franchises are in a league of their own.
That’s really why the Blackhawks can’t afford to spend on a world-class free agent like Wayne Gretzky. They’ve got too much invested in Atlas Van Lines. If only boxes could skate.
Is it any wonder why Hawks management gives plane tickets at Christmas?
While you blinked the other day, another guy got fired. Craig Hartsburg. By no strange coincidence, his dismissal occurred exactly 15 years after Lee Elia greased his skids as manager pro tem of the Cubs with that infamous postgame diatribe during which he ripped Wrigley Field fans.
You remember: 85 percent of the people in the world are working, and the other 15 percent show up here to boo our players. I wish I’d have zeroed in on that landmark occasion, but WSCR sportscaster Les Grobstein beat me to it.
Les deserves the credit. He edited Elia’s tape for hyphens, so as to render it suitable for family listening. But Grobstein shouldn’t get a big head, because almost every day in Chicago is the anniversary of somebody getting fired.
As one Hawks observer said after Tuesday’s almost annual press conference, “We have more pink slips than Marv Albert.” The Tribune chart that accompanied stories of Hartsburg’s dismissal was accurate, but space did not permit the true flavor of what has transpired over at West Madison Street.
After Billy Reay’s long and stable reign as coach ended rudely with a note under his door on Christmas Eve 1976, Bill White did indeed take over as coach. But he had co- coaches, Stan Mikita and Bobby Orr.
White also had a sense of humor. When asked what he would do differently than Reay, White replied, “Why, I’m going to remove all my doors.”
Soon the Hawks removed White and replaced him with Bob Pulford, who then remained as general manager upon appointing Eddie Johnston, whose exit after only one season created such an uproar–hockey mattered around here then–that the brass quickly appointed popular but inexperienced Keith Magnuson. (Beware, Denis Savard, of a similar public relations stunt.)
Magnuson coached one full season, then briefly stepped aside the next season for Pulford, who then returned the title to Magnuson, who then resigned, at which point Pulford took over, until he brought in Orval Tessier, who lasted until 1985, when Pulford again came to the rescue.
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Since 1988 the Hawks bench has been manned by Bob Murdoch, Mike Keenan, Darryl Sutter, Hartsburg and counting.
The Cubs, meanwhile, take a back seat to nobody, except opposing teams. Leo Durocher followed the infamous College of Coaches, but also preceded the frantic Malaise of Managers beginning in 1973: Whitey Lockman, Jim Marshall, Herman Franks, Joey Amalfitano, Preston Gomez (we hardly knew ye), Amalfitano II, Elia, Charlie Fox, Jim Frey, John Vukovich, Gene Michael, Frank Lucchesi, Don Zimmer, Joe Altobelli, Jim Essian, Jim Lefebvre, Tom Trebelhorn, Jim Riggleman.
During that span, Vukovich went largely unheralded, though he tied with the third-best record at 1-1.
White Sox? Al Lopez’s highly successful tenure ceased in 1965, and they still haven’t been back to a World Series despite 17 changes, including Lopez himself in 1968, when the Bulls still had their first coach, John Kerr, 11 to follow.
The Bears have used only one other coach since Super Bowl XX, but George Halas was still throwing clipboards the last time the Hawks won a Stanley Cup in 1961, only months after Hartsburg was born to be fired as their coach on the 15th anniversary of Elia’s State of the Ivy Address. Our coaches and managers don’t lift many trophies, but they surely can lift luggage.
My kind of town, Chicago is. Frank Sinatra made it popular, but Frank Lucchesi gave it meaning.