Stanley Cup mayoral bet environmental, scrum-diddily-icious
May 29, 2010, 11:30 AM EDT
Another playoff series, another silly mayoral bet.
Richard Daley and Michael Nutter, the esteemed mayors of Chicago and Philadelphia, respectively, went in vastly different directions when it came to what each wagered and what will be on the line depending on the outcome of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Blackhawks and Flyers.
Nutter eschewed the trademark food wager and instead pledged to volunteer at a community garden if the Flyers fall to the Blackhawks while Daley offered up a bevy of mouth-watering foodstuffs and miscellaneous Chicago-related items if Philadelphia prevails.
Surrounded by piles of sausages, beer, pizza, candy and other Chicago delicacies during a news conference at the United Center to announce the bet, Daley said the Hawks have increasingly taken on the character of the city.
“That’s our motto in Chicago: ‘I will.’ We never, ever give up,” Daley said as representatives of the companies donating to the wager stood with him. “And I think that’s what the excitement is all about. It’s all about where they come from, how they accomplish it, such a young team, a mature team, and nothing is ever taken for granted. And what we have behind us here is a group of young entrepreneurs and all types of businesses that are proud to be supporting the Chicago Blackhawks.”
Indeed. After toiling for years under the iron-fisted, penny-pinching ownership style of the late “Dollar Bill’ Wirtz, the team has prospered under the watch of Wirtz’s son, Rocky, who went against the grain of his father’s ridiculously conservative methods and did incredibly unorthodox things, you know, like actually airing Blackhawks home games on television, something Bill Wirtz did not do. With that in mind, it’s incredibly refreshing to see the Blackhawks – one of the Original Six NHL teams – make not only their return to relevance but achieve remarkable success.
But enough about that. Get a look at what Daley wagered:
*Three dozen Abundance Bakery red velvet cupcakes
*100 Al’s Beef italian beef sandwiches
*Six boxes of Allen Brothers USDA prime long bone ribeye steaks
*Billy Goat Tavern three dozen double cheeseburgers
*Bobak’s Sausage Co.: 100 Italian sausages and 100 gourmet chicken burgers
*Vienna Beef: 1961 Maxwell Street Polish Sausages and 2010 Chicago style hot dogs
*Terry’s Toffee: 30 pounds of toffee
*The Lyric Opera of Chicago: two tickets to Verdi’s “A Masked Ball,” two lyric fleece pullovers and baseball hats
*Chicago Public Library: books by seven Chicago authors, including “The Adventures of Augie March” by Nobel Prize winning author Saul Bellow.
And that is apparently only a partial list.
So hungry. So very, very hungry.
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Daley bets Chicago food, books vs. Philadelphia [Chicago Breaking Sports]
