Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz walks down the stairs into the Ketel One club at the United Center Thursday night with his family — wife, Marilyn, daughter, Hillary. He is dressed in a gray suit and a tie. His stepdaughter, Elizabeth, says she’s never seen him wear jeans.
He orders a chicken Caesar salad and a glass of red wine. Diners nearby turn and stare, and a few snap photos with their cell phones. Ald. Brendan Reilly stops by, and one brave man steps up to the table, apologizes for the interruption and says, “Rocky, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“That’s so nice,” his daughter, Hillary, says after the man leaves. “People are so nice.”
Rocky Wirtz, 57, having turned the Blackhawks into a winning franchise almost overnight, is quite possibly the most popular businessman in Chicago. But it hasn’t always been that way. He says he hasn’t forgotten the local headline that topped a story about his divorce from his first wife: “For Better or For Wirtz.”
Time: One minute into the game; Brian Campbell scores.
Wirtz sits in a folding chair, behind the last row of 100-level seats in a corner of the arena with a great view of the net. Wirtz waves to Bobby Hull, who is watching from a box, and some Jersey Boys singers, who are sitting below to his right. His son, Danny, who is vice president of the $1.5 billion Wirtz Beverage Group, joins the group along with Elizabeth and Carol “Mickey” Norton, a Bulls and White Sox partner.
He points out that Norton has seven “rings,” six from the Bulls championship, one from the White Sox. She is wearing two of them tonight.
“I just want one,” he tells her. “I’m very envious of your seven.”
Norton later tells him in the private Sonja Henie room that he’s setting the bar too low. “One at a time, Rocky,” she says. “Get them one at a time.”
Time: Second period, Dustin Byfuglien scores.
Wirtz misses it. He’s walking to visit Hull and Tony Esposito. Wirtz, a former high school football player, has handsomely cut brown hair, a long nose and a million-dollar smile. His humor is wickedly dry. (At times during his father’s regime, he quips, “Even the guy who ran the mailroom said ‘no, thank you’ ” to tickets.)
Hull recaps Byfuglien’s goal, saying Campbell’s early score “wasn’t going to be enough.” The fact that the two are talking is remarkable. Wirtz said the most important decision he has made was to woo the franchise’s famous alumni back into the fold. Of them all, Hull, 71, bitter over years of disputes about money, took the longest to persuade.
“We really have to not hold grudges,” he says.
Time: Period three
Wirtz rides the crowded elevator to the 300 level. On the way, a ticket holder, who doesn’t recognize him, warns everyone that he’s just eaten a ton of beans. Such is the risk of mingling with the mortals.
Wirtz passes the Jagermeister stand and the new bars he had installed but barely has time to point them out before he is mobbed. Men reach out to shake his hand; again, more thank-yous; and he begins to attract a small crowd asking for autographs. A few start chanting, “Rocky. Rocky.”
Wirtz pulls out his personalized Sharpie. His lifelong friend, John Miller, CEO of North American Corp., had “Rocky Wirtz” stenciled on it as a practical joke.
“He has a bad sense of humor,” Wirtz says.
One woman asks Wirtz to sign a hat for her nephew. After he turns to the next autograph seeker, she whispers to me, “Who is that?”
Game time: Duncan Keith scores in the third.
Wirtz watches from the owner’s box, which he has handed over to team president John McDonough. Wirtz stands behind the bar and adds two bottled waters to the ice bucket. The game is on Comcast SportsNet on a flat-screen TV behind him, which is again remarkable. Among his first moves after inheriting the team from his father was to get the Blackhawks’ home games on television.
“Hey, that’s Lori Healey,” I say as the camera pans the crowd and catches Mayor Richard Daley’s former chief of staff. The camera cuts to a woman wearing a black sweater, “And that’s my secretary!” Wirtz says. The camera cuts again. “Hey, Rocky, that’s you,” I say, and after, a few-second delay, I realize, “And me.”
Time: A minute or so left in the game; victory in hand.
Wirtz is back in his folding chair. I point out that a few reporters have derided him as not being “a hockey man.” He admits to spending most of his time on his beverage business. “I only work this during the games,” he says. But, he argues, he has been attending hockey games since birth. And he knew that he was going to take over the franchise when he was in the sixth grade.
“We had a succession agreement in place,” he says rather nonchalantly, as if such a thing were normal for a teenager. He seems to have been plotting strategy ever since, warning his family’s longtime PR man, Guy Chipparoni, “Get ready. You’re going to be busy.”
The buzzer sounds. He says that he loves to watch fans jumping and dancing. One turns around to shake his hand and congratulate him on the win. Then, he asks, “Mr. Wirtz, can you buy the Bears?”
Until Thursday, the closest Melissa Harris ever came to Bobby Hull was filling in his name in a crossword puzzle. She can be reached at [email protected] or 312-222-4582.
Follow her on Twitter @ChiConfidential.
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