Thursday Morning Cupcheck - A Guide to Chicago Sports History

Tired of all this Dallas Stars talk that's been dominating the airwaves? Here's a welcome change of pace.

Good morning, hockey fans! Here's hoping you bet the farm on Jaroslav Halak's 0-9 record when facing 25 or fewer shots this postseason, and became rich beyond any easily-impressed GM's wildest dreams. Last week we took science and reason and twisted them to our own nefarious purposes to prove Only-God-Knows-What; this week, I was planning on taking a break from the media circus surrounding the Dallas Stars and getting in a little R&R at my favorite rural Illinois strip club, Phat Cows, but recent events in el mundo de hockey stayed my course. Of course, I'm talking about the historic Stanley Cup Finals matchup between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers, two teams whose last Stanley Cup victories can be measured in geologic terms.

"Always bet on Halak. Unless he's not facing some volume-shooting team of overrated superstars."

In fact, so many moons have passed since each team's most "recent" Stanley Cup triumph, that I thought it proper to provide you, the bedwetting Flyers fan, a quick and easy reference guide to the Sporting History of Chicago. Feel free to use the information here to start barfights with pregnant cops, or whatever it is you cretins do when you're not freely distributing gently-used beer and cheesesteaks to our nation's starving children.

675 Million Years B.C.: The Chicago Cubs pull off a thrilling best-of-117 victory over the Fightin' Trilobytes for their most recent World Series win.

65 Million Years B.C.: A meteor strikes central Mexico, sending the earth into a hellish firestorm that would result in the extinction of the Byfuglisaurus, a close relative to both stegosaurus and the common boulder.

40,000 B.C.: A sabre-toothed wooly Mammoth copulates with a glacier, spawning a supernatural phenomenon later historians would simply refer to as a 'Ditka'.

36,000 B.C.: Tribal chieftain Ogg "El Cid" Luckman successfully hits a sleeping moose with a rock from ten feet away, a feat as-yet unmatched by any man in the legendary annals of Northern Illinois quarterbacking.

34 A.D.: After faking his own death to avoid a paternity suit, Jesus escapes to the southern coast of what is now Lake Michigan, and creates Dennis Rodman in His Infinite Wisdom.

1812 A.D.: Chief Makataimeshekiakiak leads the local Indian tribes in open war against the Americans in the War of 1812, and would later wantonly slaughter Illinois settlers in the 1832 Blackhawk War. The surviving stragglers of the fledgling colony would honor Makataimeshekiakiak by naming a hockey team after him.

Why the Blackhawks refuse to use this guy as their symbol is beyond me.

1876 A.D.: Adrian Constantine 'Cap' Anson becomes baseball's first-ever superstar, after pummeling a record 60 Swarthy Spaniards about the head and neck with the butt of his Winchester rifle. Anson's treasured record would be broken several decades later by Pete 'Bane of Men' Browning, who caused a huge controversy when he used an illegally-streamlined wooden club to cudgel 61 Filthy Irishmen.

1885 A.D.: Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon ingeniously provides the City of Houston with its only reason to exist when he travels back through time to invent the Birmingham Barons.

1889 A.D.: The Chicago White Stockings cause a tumultuous uproar at one of their sporting contests, after the ill-conceived 'Banjo Demolition Night' purports to go terribly awry.

1906 A.D.: The Chicago Cubs dominate the major leagues with the greatest team in baseball history, led by pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, left fielder Phineas "Visible Spleen" O'Malley, and utility infielder Orval "Removable Brain" Overall.

A 1984 photo of an actual Ditka

1919 A.D.: Sports history is changed forever when eight members of the notorious Black Stockings gang, including ringleader "Thongless" Joe Jackson, are gunned down in a North Side alley by Kevin Kostner.

1920 A.D.: The Decatur Staleys, later to become the Chicago Bears, are founded after a gambling-hungry Chicago public angrily discovers they can no longer fix World Series games.

1938 A.D.: The 14-25 Chicago Black Hawks become the worst hockey team ever to win a Stanley Cup, prompting U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to gnaw off his own legs in order to escape from the on-ice travesty.

1942 A.D.: Chicago sports history is forever altered after a South Side Lithuanian couple is forced to name their youngest child 'Dick Butkus' after losing a bet over who would win the Battle of Stalingrad, to the Mantitty family down the block.

1945 A.D.: The Chicago Cubs, who up until that time had been baseball's model franchise, tempt the Gods by performing a Black Mass along the third base line at Wrigley Field, sacrificing a wagonload of infants to Baphomet, the Goat of Madison Avenue, in a failed attempt to bring Hitler's Brain back to life.

1961 A.D.: The Chicago Blackhawks win their most recent Stanley Cup, causing a distraught Lee Harvey Oswald to think outside the box and find creative ways to settle up his gambling debts.

1970s A.D.: The Chicago Blackhawks capture seven division titles, but fail in the playoffs, at one point losing 16 straight Stanley Cup playoff games. The upstart San Jose Sharks watch their heroes silently from the shadows.

1985 A.D.: Using a chain forged in the fires of Mount Doom, the City of Chicago is able to harness the raw primordial force of the Wandering Ditka for a single season, resulting the mass extinction of the New England Patriots.

1998 A.D.: The rest of the NBA breathes a sigh of relief, as the Chicago Bull's unprecedented Threatened Twentypeat is put to rest after the retirement of Luc Longley.

2003 A.D.: Steve Bartman becomes the most reviled fan in Chicago sports history, after he took the mound and gave up a wild pitch, then a single, then mishandled an infield grounder to load the bases, then allowed a two-run double, issued a pair of intentional walks, surrendered another bases-clearing double, and finally gave up an RBI single. The eight runs allowed over two-thirds of an inning make Bartman the third-best pitcher in Cubs postseason history.

2005 A.D.: The Chicago White Stockings win a World Series marred with over a dozen blown calls, umpire errors and the mere presence of the Houston Astros, the unwanted stepchildren of Major League Baseball.

The 1906 Chicago Cubs' third jerseys were fan favorites, but led to problems when running the bases.

2007 A.D.: Chicago Blackhawks owner "Unpaid Bill" Wirtz is killed in the ring by evil Russian Ivan Drago, a tragic loss which would later be avenged by his son and successor, Rocky Wirtz.

2009 A.D.: The time-honored tradition of the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field is forever marred, when guest singers GWAR perform a version of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' that results in the blood-soaked corpses of eviscerated virgins crucified on the outfield ivy.

2010 A.D.: NHL history is made, when the Chicago Blackhawks defeat a record 16 different goalies in their four-game sweep of the Philadelphia Flyers.

That's it for this week's edutainmentical Cupcheck. Tune in next week when we discuss the Soviets' ambitious plans to mine the deep recesses of Chris Pronger for industrial-grade bauxite.