Stan Mikita

Stan Mikita was a comforting presence in my life, like a favorite restaurant or movie house; you didn’t have to go to enjoy.  I never saw Mikita play, but I’m sure happy he did for the Blackhawks.  The Hawks’ Hall-of-Fame center died Tuesday at the age of 78.

Mikita spent his entire 22-year playing career, from 1958 to 1980, with the Hawks (and for a while he lived in the suburb of Berwyn, just like me).  What always stood out for me, an admitted hockey agnostic, was how Mikita and Chicago were made for one another.  He was an immigrant from what is now Slovakia by way of Canada.  If you saw that face of his, you knew it as an immigrant’s face, the kind I grew up with on the South Side.  And if you heard Mikita talk, you knew he was pure Chicago.

Mikita mixed smart-ass with humble; in New York, they only care about the first part.  Mikita was Chicago in the way that DePaul basketball coach Ray Meyer was Chicago, and my father was Chicago.  What I liked most of all about Stan Mikita was how much he reminded me of my Uncle Art.  They could have been brothers, they looked so much alike.

My uncle was a WW II veteran and Chicago cop.  For no good reason I can think of, he took a liking to me.  My father was detached; my Uncle Art was not.  In seventh grade, I broke my arm and ended up in the hospital for several days.  My uncle came to visit, baseball magazines in hand.  I think I still have them, from 1965, somewhere in the basement.

As long as Stan Mikita showed up at golf tournaments or Hawks’ games, it was almost as if my uncle hadn’t died in 1989.  Now, he’s gone for good.