For those of you who follow Denz’s Twitter feed, you may have noticed a call for Chris Wingert to paint or tape the cast on his left hand (an unfortunate freak injury sustained against Toronto FC earlier in the year) into a red color. Not only would this better match the Claret portion of the Claret and Cobalt, but as Denz pointed out, would give Chris the appearance of the fictional character "Hellboy" due to the appearance of a massive club for a hand.

Though the character of Hellboy has the "Right Hand of Doom" (and Chris’s cast is on his left hand) the appearance would be menacing for the defender. It would also give Chris a nickname to fit in with the duo of "Borlave." However, it would never happen, right? First of all, Wingert would need to go along with it and ask for the paint job or taping of his cast. Second, the referee (in this case, Kevin Stott) would also have to be ok with a taping of the cast. Surely the idea was a pipe dream.

After the jump: turning a dream into reality

So in response to tweets from myself and Denz, Chris responded "haha, ok sounds good, i will try to make it happen" Initially I thought "Ok, he’s throwing us a bone here, but when we see him on the field it’ll still be a white cast for reasons outside our control. It won’t happen." But then, lo and behold, when I got to the Home Depot Center, who was sporting red on his left arm? Yep, you know who by now.

After the game Chris came over to the side of the stands behind the visitor’s bench. Having learned from my previous mistake (see my last guest post for that one) I had already made my way over there. I got an up close look at the cast, expecting to see some paint on it or maybe tape starting to come off after a hard 90 minutes of soccer. It was neither. Chris had decided to have a new cast made out of the red casting material (fiberglass I believe) so that it would look as close to the Hellboy look as possible. We talked for a few seconds (he came over primarily to talk to friends so I kept it brief) and I got the following picture:

What do I take from this experience? First, we’ve got some great fans. Calling for a Hellboy cast was very creative. Combine that with the greeting we gave Javi upon his return (as only a couple of many examples) shows that the fans are behind this Real Salt Lake team, through the good times as well as the tougher times. Second, the fact that Chris took an idea from a fan and ran with it, to the point of making it happen, shows that the team cares about its fan base as well. Do you think any of the other superstars in MLS would do something similar? Sure, it’s possible, but Chris has walked the walk.

In light of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition episode that aired tonight as well, we should realize just what a special team we have here. They are trying their best for their fans, both on and off the pitch.

One last request then for this fan: I’d like the MLS Cup this year, please.