FROM BEN JOHNSON AND RYAN DAY on over to Jayden Daniels and Marcus Freeman, so much of surviving the life is about the management of perspective.
The most blessed individuals circling the sun wind up with those safety-netting people who can consistently assist in tempering triumphs and softening setbacks.
Mike Spellman was one of those special moonlight guides.
FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, he was an extraordinarily well-liked member of The Daily Herald sports staff. His calling cards were talent, drive and a sense of humor that could constantly go quip-to-deadpan with even the most entrenched finish-line wit in the press box at Arlington Park.
Before that, he was a down-and-dirty catcher for the St. Viator Lions of coach Chico Pirman, graduating in 1982. Longtime dean of students Pat Mahoney — as big a den historian as the school has — once said, “Mike had a genius for friendship.”
TEN YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, less than 12 months after succeeding the late and esteemed Tim Sassone as Blackhawks beat writer for the newspaper, Spellman suddenly died on his 51st birthday.
From the shock and sadness, a determined band of friends and family decided to mine constructive tribute out of the earthly loss.
THE RESULT WAS The Michael Spellman Scholarship Fund at St. Viator.
Its initial target endowment was $50,000. With a critical seed contribution from Mrs. Mary Spellman — Mike’s mother — the fund is now well into six figures and bounding upward. Every year, it helps select students afford to attend the 64-year-old Roman Catholic institution.
SATURDAY AT DURTY NELLIE’S PUB in downtown Palatine — across from the Metra station — from 4 to 7 p.m., the Spellman Fund will get a further boost.
Enduring chums including Bill Piet, Karen Yaeger and Kathy Neumeyer have organized a casual event to keep the spirit of the journalistic gem alive. Suggested door donation is $20.
“Mike was the last person who would expect anything to be done to keep his name alive,” said older brother Neal Spellman, now a retired probation officer from the Cook County circuit court. “But the fund got started and then friends and even professional associates like the Blackhawks and the LPGA and Arlington Park made contributions.
“It all is extremely heartening. But he would blanch.”
ONE POINT OF ORDER THAT MAKES longtime followers of both Spellman and St. Viator sports blanch is the fact that he has yet to be inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Combining both his athlete’s feats for the Lions (he also lettered in football) and the honor he later brought to the school as a major-market sports writer of most amiable rank, Spellman into the St. Viator and Sacred Heart Hall is a chip shot.
Fresh school president Ryan Aiello — on the job since last May — and his staff are certain to correct that devaluing oversight at next opportunity.
*** *** ***
WITH MUCH OF NFL CHICAGO now ranging from atwitter to agog over the hiring of Ben Johnson as Bears head coach, so many inconvenient questions remain floating in serious hang time.
Among them:
— Why would a bright 38-year-old cast his lost with such a forlorn sports entertainment company? Why not just instead become Red Cross director of reconciliation in the corridors of the U.S. Capitol Building?
— As an either/or bet, which would be the overwhelming favorite: Johnson coaching Caleb Williams and the Bears to a Super Bowl victory by 2030 or Johnson doing the dreaded Departure of Shame from Halas Hall a few years down the road?
(A.: SB win, 89-1; Dep-Shame, 1-1,000.)
— Johnson has a relationship with Williams going back to the QB Collective, a clever prep device concocted by Richmond Flowers III, the new coach’s agent. Predicated on a critical link like that, shouldn’t Flowers have generated enough due diligence to steer his marquee client away from the organizational quicksand of the Chicago Bears?
JOHNSON’S EXIT FROM DETROIT did not draw universal chagrin from the Lions’ fan base.
That’s because his most memorable parting gift to them was the dramatic departure from chin-first culture Saturday that produced the interception thrown by WR Jameson Williams early in the fourth quarter of the dream-wrecking 45-31 loss to Washington.
Detroit trailed 38-28 at the time with the ball near midfield, a first down and 12:14 remaining. The pick and subsequent Commanders’ scoring drive effectively ended the Honolulu-bold season of the Lions.
FOX’S TOM BRADY QUITE CORRECTLY called the play “gimmickry.” He added, “Not a great time for a trick play.”
A fan cited by the Detroit Free Press tweeted: “Glad Ben Johnson had that endless trick play bag that everyone swore he had … naively wondered why he’d run so many great ones in blowouts.”
Posted another: “Ben Johnson misread his ‘up by 10’ play calls.”
SO WELCOME, COACH JOHNSON, to Chicago.
The fanboys are all for you.
For now.
Jim O’Donnell’s Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.
