Happiness, Joy Blow Into The Windy City

Understand if the March wind off Lake Michigan was just a little lighter Friday, if the late winter sun seemed just a little warmer.

If it looked as if there was a little more glide in the stride of shoppers on Michigan Avenue and the concrete canyon of the financial district on LaSalle Street seemed less gray, there was a simple, giddy explanation:

Michael’s coming back.

The man himself had yet to say it, but even President Clinton talked about it when discussing employment numbers:

Michael’s coming back.

Michael Jordan’s coming back to lift the Chicago Bulls from mediocrity to the heights of the basketball world again, coming back to lift the spirits of a burg that can’t even rightfully call itself the Second City anymore.

Bringing with him those tongue-wagging, 8-seconds of hang time, in-your-face-New-York dunks.

Yes, in your face, New York. Yours too, Los Angeles. Because, after all, you don’t get called the Second City for so long - and then sink to third - without developing a chip on your shoulder.

Winter in the Midwest can be grim work, but for three glorious years Chicagoans were privileged to spend the cruelest months watching the greatest basketball player in the history of the known universe carry an otherwise mediocre team to the top.

Even after Jordan switched to baseball, people in Chicago still clung to the notion that he would return to the Bulls one day.

“As soon as I walked in the club this morning, several people came up to me and said, ‘Do you think it’s true? Do you think it’s true?”’ said Jack O’Malley, the Cook County state’s attorney, who was jogging on a treadmill in the downtown health club where Jordan sometimes works out.

“I’ve already sensed kind of a palpable rise in the level of enthusiasm among Chicagoans and I don’t think it’s entirely attributable - try to say the word attributable when you’re running like this - attributable to the beautiful sunshine today.”

Since Jordan retired, it’s been two bitter seasons of watching it all unravel. As the Bulls dissolved, acrimony and backbiting replaced championship rings and tears of joy.

But late this week, as rumors swirled like Chicago’s famous winds, words of hope seemed to arrive from everywhere: Michael’s coming back.

“That’s all that anybody talks about,” marveled Mike O’Neil of Indiana. “I’m staying at the Hyatt Regency for a business conference and the whole hotel is just buzzing.”

The whole city seemed to be buzzing.

In Washington, while talking about a drop in unempoloyment rates, even the president had Michael in mind.

“As of today, the economy has produced 6.1 million jobs since I became president, and, if Michael Jordan goes back to the Bulls, it will be 6,100,001 new jobs,” Clinton said.

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the future of just about everything is speculated on for money, trader Allan Ross said no one was betting for or against Jordan’s return.