It is always sad when a man dies.  No matter what you think of him or his life, his family will grieve.  His wife will miss her husband.  His children will miss their father.  His grandchildren will miss their grandfather.  That said, I don't know if there will be any grief shown by Chicago sports fans upon hearing the news that William Wirtz is dead at the age of 77.

In a city known for its' thrifty ownership, Wirtz was by farm the thriftiest.  He was so conservative with his money, he earned the nickname "Billfold."  Wirtz joined the Hawks in 1954, became the President of the team in 1966 and ran the team like it was the fifties always.

Wirtz refused to show home games on local TV fearing it was bad for business.  He let one of the greatest players in the game leave for the WHL.  He hired an absolute buffoon (Bob Pulford) as coach and GM in 1977 who is still with the team in 2007.  His holding back of the sport in all phases, including economically is the stuff of legends.  His being at ground zero of the owners wanting a lockout and shutting down an entire season was his final act.

At one point in our country's sports history, the NHL was bigger than the NBA.  Let me repeat that for those of you under 35.  The NHL was bigger than the NBA.  In Chicago, the Blackhawks played to sellout crowds and were held in much higher esteem than the Bulls.  As kids, we were much more interested in playing street hockey and ice hockey than we were playing basketball.  It was because the Hawks were good, had an all-star lineup and made the playoffs every year.

But as we grew older, things changed.  The wheels fell off of the Hawks somewhere in the mid-eighties and outside of the Mike Keanon inspired 1992 playoff run (which resulted in being swept in the finals by Mario and the Penguins) there was just darkness.  When free agency became the vouge, the Hawks were more interested in price than ability.  When star Jeremy Roenick demanded a new contract which rewarded his superstar status, he was promptly sent to Phoenix for Alex Zhamnov is one of the absolute worst trades ever.

The Chicago Stadium, perhaps the loudest arena in NHL history was razed and replaced the antiseptic United Center.  And of course, the coaches and GMs, from Mike Keanon to Mike Smith to Darryl Sutter to Brian Sutter to Dirk Graham and on and on and on went through a revolving door that spit them out battered, broken and totally confused.

The legacy of Billfold Wirtz will be that he tried to run an old school business in a new school economy.  That he cared more about making money than he did about his customers and that winning was a bi-product of luck rather than a reward.  Wirtz was what they called back in the day a sportsman, the ownership of a team was a hobby, a diversion from his huge financial holdings in real estate and the spirits industry.  In today's sports market, fans expect ownership to be more than a hobbiest, but those fans were not Blackhawk fans.

What will change for the Blackhawks now that Billfold has ascended to the great bank vault in the sky?  Probably not much.  Michael Wirtz, Billfold's son, has been actively running the team for a while now and it is Wirtz's wish to keep the Hawks a family business.  Maybe the Hawks will finally broadcast their home games.  Maybe they will sign a free agent at the peak of his powers that can make a difference.  Maybe they can lift twenty years of fungus and become competitive again.  Or maybe, as most believe, it will be business as usual on Madison St. where cash is king.

Lightning Round

• The White Sox score five runs early, lock in it neutral and get beat by the Royals 9-5, falling back into a last place tie.  Ozzie, you need to take your foot and put it up somebody's backside.  Finishing in last place, no matter how sorry this season has been , is totally unacceptable.  The same two teams tonight in Jon Garland's final appearance at home in a Sox uniform.
• Rumors are Brewers' Manager Ned Yost is feeling the heat of a Brewers season that might have been.  I think Yost gets one more year before we have to pass judgment on him.  It might help to get him some pitching.
  
• Well, the NL Central just got interesting.  Dontrelle Willis leads the Fish over the Cubs (again) while the Brewers TCOB against the Genius.  The Cubs have a two game lead with five left and a magic number of four. 
  
• Reports are that Brian Griese is taking over as the Bears starting quarterback.  As much as I hate to say it, Rex should start Sunday but get pulled at the first sign of trouble.  In any case, I hope Bear fans are careful what they wished for because Griese is clearly a short term solution, not a long range problem solver.
• Tommie Harris is one of several Bears who will not be playing this Sunday and perhaps the next few Sundays.
• Deuce McAllister is done for the year.  So, for that matter, are the Saints.
• It just keeps getting better for Michael Vick.  The state of Virginia now wants their piece of the action, indicting Vick on dogfighting charges.  There is no double jeopardy when the crime crosses state lines and you can be tried on both the local and federal levels.  This redundancy is helpful to prosecutors in making sure bad guys go away.   To top off Vick's day, he's being sued by a Canadian bank who wants to make sure that he has the finances to pay back a  loan he took out in January.
• Danny Nutt, won't you please go now?
• Carl Edwards is docked 25 valuable chase points for failing a post race inspection.
• A new study shows men with deeper voices have more children.  That's because men with deeper voices can do a better impression of Barry White.
• A Chicago area teacher has been fired for teaching vegan lessons instead of art lessons.  The teacher refused to visit the school cafeteria because they served meat and told people "You are ruining my life because you are eating my friends."  Let's hope he calms down before he starts his new job at McDonald's.
• Women are learning to speak the language of football.  If it were up to me, women wouldn't speak at all during football.
• When driving along with two suitcases filled with money of questionable origin amounting to almost a quarter million dollars, one should consider doing to legal limit so as to stay under the radar.
• Today's list: 10 worst athletes turned entertainers.