The Cup and I Written July 7, 2022 Championship teams in most sports proudly display every award they've won. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers boast six Lombardi Trophies atop a steel girder in their lobby. Hockey is different.  There is only one Stanley Cup, and the National Hockey League champions aren't allowed to keep it in their trophy case. Its permanent home is in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, where it's considered the greatest prize in all of sports. But the cup does travel, protected in a big Anvil case.  The 35-pound silver chalice is always accompanied by a white-gloved chaperone, an official Keeper of the Cup, such as the main Keeper Phil Pritchard here. The trophy can turn up in some surprising places, even on a desk in a television studio. When a championship is won on the ice, each member of the winning team gets to raise the exact Cup he dreamt of raising as a child.  His name will be engraved on the base, and he will be entitled to spend a day with the Cup in a place and manner of his choosing — once including the bottom of a swimming pool at the home of Pittsburgh Penguins captain Mario Lemieux. During another of the trophy's trips to Pittsburgh, many of our TV crew got  pictures taken with it.  For example, below is long-time camera operator Rick Rhodes. I declined my opportunity to pose beside the Cup.  I didn't feel I had earned the honor.  I don't skate, and my closest connection to the Penguin heroes had been shivering behind a Chyron keyboard in a trailer outside the building. I did get near the Cup once.  It would have been during the month of March sometime during the 1990s. I had been asked to update the graphics before the start of the baseball season on the regional sports TV network, then called Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh. I didn't have a trailer handy, but the FSN offices, located in a building only a quarter mile north of PNC Park, had a Chyron in their control room. I went there one morning and began adding such details as new Pirates names and headshots to the master graphics disk.  After a couple of hours, I took a break.  I stretched my legs by wandering over to the small studio across the hall. At the far end was the set for the nightly SportsBeat talk show, which normally looked like this on the air. From left to right:  Stan Savran and Guy Junker (whom phone-in callers always greeted with “Stan! Guy! Love the show!”) and their guest for this particular evening, Mr. Lemieux. Of course, during my visit that morning there was nobody on the set.  But a gleaming silver object had been placed right there in the middle of the desk!  Could that be the Stanley Cup?  The Stanley Cup?  The actual “Presentation Cup,” not a studio prop? I stared at it for a few moments before noticing a man sitting quietly in the wings reading a newspaper.  He must have been the Keeper, waiting for Stan and/or Guy to arrive and tape their bit or at least pose for photographs.  Not wanting to alarm the Keeper's protective instincts, I didn't approach any closer, although I'm sure I could have done so. And that was my Stanley Cup encounter.