'We were there!' Pictures and stories from two diehard Bulls fans at Game 6 of the 1997 Finals
And by "there," my friends Tracy and Kevin Stanciel mean on the court.
The champagne was flowing in the Bulls locker room and in section 106. Tracy and Kevin Stanciel made sure of that. On June 13, 1997, the season-ticket holders and lifelong Bulls fans showed up to the United Center with a hidden bottle of champagne and four cups. They also brought a camera, rocked 1991 Bulls Finals shirts (produced by Magic Johnson!) and their Subway Bulls horn hats and grabbed photos on the court, all in the name of celebrating championship #5.
I met Tracy, 54, and Kevin, 59, in 2011 through my time on the ChicagoNow Dirt Angels softball team. (Chicago When?) During the 4th quarter of last night’s NBA Finals clincher, while we watched Denver fans slowly realize that their Nuggets were finally heading to a championship, I spoke with them about their incredible night at the U.C. for Game 6 of the ‘97 Finals, 26 years ago today.
Kevin started going to Bulls games in the early 1970s with his father, who bought his season tickets in the late 1960s, not long after the Bulls became a franchise in 1966. Kevin and Tracy got their own tickets when the Bulls moved to the United Center. The two residents of The Gap in Bronzeville remain as diehard as ever, and shared stories from their trips attending the MJ switch-hands layup game, the shrug game, taking their fathers to the Game 6 clincher of the ‘96 Finals on Father’s Day, and attending the final home game of the dynasty, which the Bulls lost before heading back to Utah.
This conversation has been edited.
Jack: You grew up with season tickets. What was your earliest memory of going to a Bulls game with those season tickets?
Kevin: This was in the early-to-mid 70s, and we saw a guy who was walking around with all of these chains on him. A sort of big bouncer type of guy. And he wore these big fur coats. We found out later that was Mr. T. We saw him every now and then — ‘Who the hell is that guy?’
He was on the floor, and they didn’t have that many seats on the floor in the 70s, because they had the glass up for the hockey still. It wasn’t until the 80s that they really started putting seats along the side of the court. That was one of my earliest memories: this guy with all of these chains and a big-ass fur coat, and it was Mr. T.
Do you remember your first time seeing Jordan at a Bulls game live?
Kevin: No, I don’t. Because it’s my age. Jordan is not my favorite Bull. I grew up on Jerry Sloan, Tom Boerwinkle, Norm Van Lier and Bobby Weiss. That’s who I grew up on. I listened to the Bulls’ heartbreaking loss to the Golden State Warriors in 1975 in the Western Conference Finals. God that hurt. (Pause.) But that made seeing the Bulls win it all all those years later so much more rich. Norm Van Lier, #2. My favorite Bull despite all of that. It’s who you grew up with.
We’re going to get to Game 6, but first give me the rundown of the huge Finals games you went to during the first three-peat. I know there were two in particular.
Kevin: My dad’s tickets — we had a box just off to the side of the basket. So shockingly, I don’t know how I was at that game, but I was at the game where Jordan put it up on one side, down the other, and put it in. My dad and I were just sitting there going, ‘What did we just see? We have to see that on TV!’ That’s what we did later on, and we were just blown away.
The Stadium was just electric then. We saw Oprah there. It was the Stadium so everyone was crowded into the lower section because you didn’t have all the boxes for the rich people. I was at The Shrug game against Portland where he put that in and did a shrug and we were all dying in the stands. But at the same time it was amazing that he was hitting all of those freakin’ threes, because at the time, Jordan wasn’t known as a 3-point shooter. But they were just going in. He was on fire. Just fire.
So 1997, Game 6. Set the scene — and tell us about that champagne.
Tracy: We had been to a Finals game before, and I just had this idea that if they win it all, I want to pop a bottle and have some champagne. We had the champagne that we got from France that you can’t get here, and that made it extra special. I wore some kind of coat or something, and I stuffed it in my coat and walked in like I was with child. Nobody said anything.
Kevin: Because that was before the time of metal detectors.
Tracy: Yes. So I put it under my seat. And I had cups in my pocket. I bought four cups because there was a couple that normally sat in front of us. And I just thought, if they’re there, we’re going to share this champagne with them. Otherwise, we’re going to drink this whole bottle by ourselves. I brought champagne twice. And one of those was successful.
So we had the bottle, and the couple came. We would always sit and chat with them.
Kevin: In the Finals games, we would not cough up our tickets. Other people would. But we never would.
Tracy: We wouldn’t even go to the playoffs. We would let family and friends have those tickets.
Kevin: Right. In the second three-peat, it was kind of like, why even bother if it was anything less than the Eastern Conference Finals? Everybody was always happy to go to playoff games, and they all knew these were our tickets, and don’t even bother asking about the Finals. We’re going and we’re not selling the tickets. At all. That was the craziest thing about that: in the Finals, we had tickets those three years, and we would see people who we knew those weren’t their tickets.
Tracy: The first year in the new stadium, it was kind of crazy. They were his dad’s tickets but when they opened the new stadium they made him buy three tickets and we asked him to ask for a fourth. So we paid for the third and fourth tickets on our own and we still split the other two tickets with Kevin, his dad and his brother. We had a whole set plus a third, and there were some games where we had four seats. And then the next year, we just had our own two. That’s how we were able to take our dads that year on Father’s Day. Because we had four.
Kevin: I think we mentioned that one of the years for the Finals, it was the blowout game, and we had sitting in our section the Jazz wives and girlfriends. And we were stunned. “Why are they in our section?”
Tracy: We were like, “They couldn’t get the wives better seats than this?”
So the game where the Jazz wives and girlfriends were there was the game where their husbands and boyfriends lost by 42 points?
Kevin and Tracy: YES.
Kevin: But our section was like normal people, so no one taunted them or anything. By that time, we were the freaking Bulls. No one is going to do that there. But it was kind of funny looking at them being sad.
What do you remember about the end of the ‘97 championship? Jordan’s assist to Steve Kerr. Pippen’s steal. Kukoc’s dunk. Tell me what you remember.
Tracy: It was so loud. It was euphoria. It was a lot of screaming, and when it was over, it was really loud. Mayhem. It was a room full of excitement.
Kevin: This was the 5th championship, you know? We were used to winning, but this was at home.
Tracy: I fully appreciated the moment.
Kevin: I did too. And of course, we had our champagne ready to go. (Laughs.)
Tracy: The only thing about that is that it was not cold. (Laughs.)
I’ll ask you this though: This was 1997. People didn’t have cameras with them. Did you bring the camera specifically because this was the championship?
Both: Yeah.
Tracy: We didn’t take pictures at any other games. (Laughs.)
Kevin: We bought that camera specifically for that game.
Tracy: So we could savor the moments.
Kevin: I don’t know how many other people did that. Again, it’s the freaking Bulls, we were used to that, but that’s why we bought the champagne and the camera, and that’s what made the next year so disappointing1.
Okay, I want to get you out of here because there are four minutes left (in the Nuggets-Heat Game 5). Do you guys have the game on?
Kevin: Yes, they’re up by 7, and it’s looking like what we experienced, the folks in Denver are going to have a chance to experience, except it’s going to be more like when we beat the Lakers. That was like a big relief because it was the second championship after the Bears.
We had grown up in Chicago all the time with: it was the ‘63 Bears and the ‘61 Hawks. That’s it. And the Cubs and the Sox way long ago. And that’s what makes all of these championships so special. Even though that was the 5th one, we were there. This one was also special because we went on the court.
How did you get on the court?
Tracy: After the game was over, most of the players at that point had gone in the locker room. And there were still some players on the court being interviewed, but people were just walking on the court and no one was making them leave. So we just kind of went down there too.
Kevin: Right. We just had to walk down to the bottom of our section and that was it. That’s how we ended up on the court. No one said anything. You couldn’t go far on the court.
Tracy: You couldn’t go to where they were interviewing people, but they also didn’t say anything once people were standing on the court and there was all the confetti.
Kevin: And we picked up the confetti, which we still have to this day. And by the way, when we say ‘confetti,’ it was like ribbons.
Tracy: It was streamers.
Kevin: It was like wide streamers. It wasn’t confetti-confetti. It was like the ribbons of wrapping paper.
So final thoughts on being there for history?
Tracy: It’s an experience that I will never forget. I am so grateful that we had that opportunity. And I wish that my children could experience something like that.
Kevin: It’s one thing to go to the victory parade, and those are nice. I think it was the first or second time the Hawks won. I worked with Metra a lot2 so I tossed on a vest and I just worked at Union Station when people were coming for the parade. And just the euphoria that you get when your team wins, you know?
But (Game 6) was back when you knew it was getting kind of near the end of the greatness — granted, we thought it would go on another two to three years — but we were there and it was awesome. Nothing touches being there when your team wins a championship.
Fun postscript: one month after watching the Bulls run the Jazz for championship #5, Kevin and Tracy traveled to Spain where they watched the running of the Bulls…
…in their Subway horn hats and championship shirts.
-
-
-
Thank you so much to Tracy and Kevin! Do you have photos of yourself at a famous Bulls game? I would love to share your story! Please email me at readjack6@gmail.com. Thanks all!
Best,
Jack
In 1998, the Bulls won Game 3 of the Finals at home (the aforementioned blowout game) and then won Game 4 to set up a clincher at Game 5, what would potentially be the final game of the dynasty. Instead, the Bulls lost by two with MJ missing a desperation 3. Tracy and Kevin brought a bottle of champagne to this game too, but they didn’t get a chance to open it and left with it.
Kevin worked for the RTA on special events.