With another Stanley cup win, the City is obviously elated. Certainly the owners of the Bears, Cubs & Sox see this. Are they (the owners) feeling the least bit embarrassed over the miserable showings of their teams? Yeah, I know the Cubs are currently having a decent year and the Sox had a great year a decade ago, but over the last couple of decades they all stink.
I still have a bit of hope for the Cubs and Sox, but until a new owner takes over the Bears, they’re a .500 team (at best).
Really not a sports fan these past couple of decades, but since say 1980, Chicago has had a boatload of NBA championships, a Superbowl, a world Series (Sox), and numerous Stanley Cups. Have other major markets had significantly better performance across the major sports?
Cubs have sucked since the 60s - w/ the rare playoff choke. No worries, the franchise is still a license to print money.
Few cities can match having championships in the four major pro sports since the Bears won the Super Bowl. Boston and Los Angeles are the only other ones that come to mind; not even New York can say that (no NBA championship.) Chicago is a very blessed sports town.
An interesting exercise would be to even identify all the cities that can say they’ve done it at all, ever. Aside from LA, Boston and Chicago, you just have:
New York (going back to 1973 for an NBA championship)
Philadelphia (last NFL championship in 1960, if we count pre-Super Bowl)
Detroit (last NFL championship in 1957, if we count pre-Super Bowl)
Um… maybe that’s it, actually. There are a number of other all-four-sport cities/metro areas; Phoenix, Denver, Toronto if you count the CFL, Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Washington, and I may be missing some, but all have never won one or more of the championships.
I don’t know how this came to mind but as I was figuring this out two interesting trivia facts jumped to mind;
New York City has won the World Series with four different franchises; not only the current Yankees and Mets, but also the departed Giants and Dodgers won World Series titles while in New York.
In one eight year from 1949 to 1956, New York teams not only won every World Series, they lost almost all of them too:
1949: New York Yankees defeat Brooklyn Dodgers
1950: New York Yankees defeats Philadelphia Phillies
1951: New York Yankees defeat New York Giants
1952: New York Yankees defeat Brooklyn Dodgers
1953: New York Yankees defeat Brooklyn Dodgers
1954: New York Giants defeat Cleveland Indians
1955: Brooklyn Dodgers defeat New York Yankees
1956: New York Yankees defeat Brooklyn Dodgers
In this span 46 World Series games were played, and 42 of them were in the City of New York.
Should these owners feel more embarrassed about their performance than they would if another team in a completely unrelated sport wasn’t having a great run? I can’t imagine why they should.
In the last 10 years the White Sox won a championship and the Bears played in the Super Bowl. The vast majority of teams in their respective sports can’t say that, so if those teams are “miserable” and “stinking”, I think your expectations are grossly unreasonable. The Cubs haven’t put together three good years since the Roosevelt administration, but the current ownership has only been around for a few years and seem to be making a very promising start, so there’s no reason for them to feel embarrassed about their predecessor’s failures, either.
Virginia McCaskey, owner of the Bears, certainly is. To quote her son, at the end of last season:
Source: Virginia McCaskey 'pissed off' with struggling Bears
I don’t think the success of a team impacts the attitude of owners of other local teams. Sox owners should be embarrassed because they suck this year and they were supposed to be contenders in the AL Central.