Kaduk: Showing sympathy for grump

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CHICAGO – As owner and Webmaster of WirtzSucks.com, Mike Miller felt the pangs of internal conflict Wednesday.

“It’s kind of an eerie feeling right now,” he said.

On one hand, the Blackhawks no longer were under the rule of an owner who always put his bottom line before trying to win a Stanley Cup.    

On the other, it took the death of team owner Bill Wirtz – a father of five and a grandfather of seven – for Miller’s hope of new leadership to be realized. Like any other reasonable person, the 36-year-old Web designer from Homewood never has wished misfortune upon anyone, even the subject of the Web site he created back in 2000.

“I know we always joke about this day coming and how we’re going to throw a party and it’s going to be a great day for Blackhawks fans,” said Miller, who likes the team so much that he proposed to his wife at a Hawks-Red Wings game. “But when you hear about the good things he did for charity and how loyal he was to his employees, yeah, it’s a little bit tough to have this day finally come.”

Admit it, Hawks fans (at least those of you who still are left), you felt similarly divided upon hearing that the 77-year-old owner had lost his battle with cancer.

The morbid catch in wishing for a new Hawks owner was that it always was going to take Wirtz’s death to wrest the team from his stubborn iron grip. As such, Wednesday’s critical obits were fronted with  “condolences to the Wirtz family.”

Well, at least most of them were. 

“I’m actually a little shocked because I see a lot of people spewing a lot of bad things about the man,” said Miller, who saw traffic to his message boards skyrocket. “I think we’re having a hard time separating the man from the owner. But as fans, I think people have the right to think what they think.”

Miller is right. Though Wirtz’s death should be marked by sympathy, his passing doesn’t erase the fact he drove one of the most beloved NHL franchises into the ground. In his 41 years of leading the Blackhawks, Wirtz gave his many detractors – no doubt he had more than any owner in town – plenty of reasons to write a case for him being one of the worst owners in professional sports.

And since the team was once backed by one of the most loyal and passion-filled fan bases in any sport, Wirtz’s disregard of the common fan created the ambivalent atmosphere we saw Wednesday.

It’s kind of sad, really. Had he sold the team 10 years ago, his obituary might have included a bigger emphasis on his better points: his philanthropic efforts in Chicago, his loyalty to the employees that worked among his various businesses and his leading role in the building of the United Center. 

Instead, they were filled with the litany of blunders that made the team irrelevant in Chicago and once compelled ESPN to name the Blackhawks the worst franchise in sports. By now, those charges have been filed to our permanent memories – no Stanley Cup titles since 1961, no home games on TV, playoff games on pay-per-view, refusing to sign Bobby Hull, allowing Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour, Chris Chelios and Tony Amonte to leave town, and encouraging a season-long lockout that crippled hockey in the United States.

Though many of his current players and coaches insist that Wirtz wanted to win as bad as anyone, it usually was difficult to see in the franchise’s cost-cutting moves.

But how fans felt about Wirtz went beyond the Hawks’ struggles. While those who knew the man talked of a generous spirit, Wirtz rarely showed the same kind of appreciation toward his paying customers. Chicago isn’t the type of city to forget a slight.

That’s why Wirtz’s death was met with less mourning than you would expect for a man of his tenure, prominence and stature.

“We always said that when he died we were going to throw a party,” said Miller, who is now considering changing the name of his Web site. “Now I have friends coming out of the woodwork wondering when this party will be. ... I just feel really strange trying to plan a party on the day the man died.”

– Kevin Kaduk is the Kane County Chronicle’s sports columnist. Write to him at kkaduk@nwnewsgroup.com. For more, read his blog, “Duk’s Calls,” at KCChronicle.com/kaduk.