Wherever Hawks go, wonderment follows

Remarkable happens wherever the Blackhawks go these days.

Send them to Springfield and the deficit would go poof. Send them to South Africa and the United States would win the World Cup. Send them to a pig farm and Porkers would fly.

Send the Hawks to Wrigley Field on a cool Sunday night and -

Well, they must have left after the seventh-inning stretch because the double no-hitter the Cubs' Ted Lilly and White Sox' Gavin Floyd were on their way to pitching didn't happen.

Still, this wound up being one remarkable ballgame anyway.

The Hawks arrived at the park through the double doors in the right-field corner at 6:40 p.m. and by the time four of them sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" two hours later, neither the Cubs nor the Sox had a hit.

Shortly thereafter, Floyd yielded 2 hits and a run in the bottom of the seventh inning. Lilly gave up the Sox' only hit to begin the ninth, but Carlos Marmol relieved him and pitched out of a bases-loaded jam to preserve the 1-0 victory.

My goodness, the mere presence of the Hawks rendered interesting this game between the Cubs and the Sox, who are a combined 13 games under .500.

"I've never seen two no-hitters going into the seventh inning," said Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who entered organized baseball in the mid-1960s.

Since there's no other explanation for Chicago's dismal baseball teams playing such a exciting game, let's attribute it to Chicago's hockey team being in the house.

"It was wonderful with the Hawks here," Piniella said of the new Stanley Cup champions. "They got the fans in the mood for baseball."

A couple of years ago the Hawks developed a brilliant marketing strategy that included having their players be visible at games played by other teams in town.

The idea, presumably, was to associate the then-niche sport of hockey with mainstream sports like baseball, football and basketball.

Then a funny thing happened: The Hawks became the team others want to associate with.

"The Hawks deserved being out there and saluted," Piniella said. "It was a wonderful evening."

Former Cubs president/current Hawks president John McDonough threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Cubs pitcher/Canadian native Ryan Dempster.

It was like the Hawks telling the Cubs here's the ball, it's your turn.

Of course the Cubs' 101-season championship drought makes the Hawks' just-ended 49-year drought seem like a blink in time.

Maybe the Ricketts family, new owners of the Cubs, will receive the Hawks' message: Change personnel, change the culture, change everything and dare we say make the impossible become possible.

No wonder the Cubs were eager to associate themselves with the Hawks on this night, so soon after the Stanley Cup was brought back to Chicago.

"There was so much energy," Lilly said of Sunday night's atmosphere. "It was awesome."

Yes, folks, a role model role reversal has evolved. Now the Cubs want to be like the Hawks instead of the Hawks wanting to be like the Cubs.

That's rather remarkable in itself, don't you think?