Real Salt Lake

Remember that tiny little trophy that the New York Red Bulls hoisted after beating RSL in the MLS Western Conference final last year?

Owner Dave Checketts does.

That's why he said he lobbied the league and commissioner Don Garber for the much larger one that Checketts wound up cradling in the locker room after the RSL dispatched the Chicago Fire in the MLS Eastern Conference final last weekend.

“I sent Garber a note” last year, Checketts recalled. “I said, 'It's a good thing we didn't win, because I would not have accepted that 'tea cup.'”

Checketts followed up with the commissioner just before RSL went to the Eastern Conference final.

“I sent him another note, and I said, 'I'm not meaning to jinx anybody, but did we take care of the 'tea cup' problem?” Checketts said. “And he wrote back and said, 'very funny. Yes, [we] shipped a beautiful, gleaming, giant cup to Chicago.' So I said, 'OK, great.' And we did get it.”

Now that RSL has it, Checketts said he's inclined to put it on display either near the entrance to the offices at Rio Tinto Stadium or in the “Club Real” restaurant on the second floor. “It's a beautiful cup,” he said.

Goalkeeper Nick Rimando will answer questions from fans during an online chat on RSL's increasingly popular Facebook page.

The question-and-answer sessions will start at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, and fans also can learn how they can buy one of the “Nick Is My Homeboy” T-shirts in advance of RSL's game against the Los Angeles Galaxy in the MLS Cup in Seattle on Sunday.

So you want to sit with fellow RSL supporters during MLS Cup, do you?

Just follow this link to the Seattle Sounders ticket site, and enter the special offer code “SEAMLSCUP” and buy up to four tickets at $25 each to sit with other RSL fans in Section 338 of Qwest Field in Seattle. Yes, that's an upper deck, but the lower tier already is sold out. The section is along the sideline, too, about even with the top of the penalty area.

Fans will print their tickets at home — oh, you'll have to sign up for an account to use the service — and must pay a $1.25 surcharge per ticket. Otherwise, you can still buy tickets for other locations in the stadium by going to Ticketmaster and searching its inventory —  which early this afternoon even included some club level seats a little lower for $45 each.

You'd like to think RSL had something to do with it, but probably not.

Officials at Qwest Field in Seattle have made available another 6,000 tickets for the MLS Cup final Sunday — mostly because the participation of David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy have caused an “overwhelming” spike in demand. The game already had sold out its initial allotment of 36,000 seats, before the Galaxy qualified.

The tickets are located in the upper deck on the west side of the field, and can be purchased at Ticketmaster.com or by calling 1.800.745.3000.

Owner Dave Checketts said after RSL's victory over Chicago the other night that the team was hoping to arrange some chartered flights for fans, so they could more easily travel to the game. But evidently the cost would have been exhorbitant — around $800 per passenger, we're told, about double the going rate for commercial flights — so it's not going to happen.

The list of heroes was almost as long as the RSL roster last night, when the team advanced to its first MLS Cup title game by stunning the Chicago Fire in the MLS Eastern Conference on penalty kicks at Toyota Park.

But nobody stood taller than goalkeeper Nick Rimando.

The veteran made three tremendous saves in the do-or-die shootout, knocking away the Fire's last two shots to give teammate Ned Grabavoy the chance to clinch the victory and send RSL into the title game against the Los Angeles Galaxy at Qwest Field in Seattle next Sunday.

“I guess we had some luck on our side,” he said.

His coaches and teammates (above, celebrating, from Getty Images) believe it's more than just luck.

Rimando stopped two penalties to send D.C. United into the title game that last time the MLS Eastern Conference final went to penalty kicks in 2004, and he was among the best keepers in the league during the regular season. His three saves against the Fire all came among their final four shots.

“He was superb,” coach Jason Kreis said. “And I think if you look back on the history of Nick Rimando, you're going to find a lot of saved penalty kicks. So no surprise to any of us.”

Hardly.

Midfielder Kyle Beckerman said he had told teammates at the start of the season half that he was comfortable going to penalty kicks because he knew he could count on Rimando, and fellow midfielder Clint Mathis echoed the sentiments of the whole team.

“Look at what he's done all season for us,” Mathis said. “He's kept us in ballgames, he's won ballgames for us. Tonight, you have to give him all the credit. We were up there, and all we had to do was take a couple of kicks, and he came up with [almost] three in a row. You just have to give him so much credit. At the end of the day, if he doesn't save those, we're out.”