October 14th, 2003 is a day many Cubs fans remember. Up 3-2 in the NL Championship series vs the Florida Marlins, they were primed to head to the World Series. With a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning and with one out, Luis Castillo hit a pop-up that was going foul. Moises Alou gave chase and the ball started to drift back towards fair territory. It never got fully to fair territory, and it never got into Alou's glove either. The ball was grabbed for and deflected by a fan sitting in aisle 4, row 8, seat 113. The Cubs would go on to give up eight runs that inning and lose the game, then they'd lose game seven.
Perhaps, now that they've won a World Series, it doesn't have quite the same significance or the same sting, but before 2016 that date was a source of angst. Even more than the date was the infamous fan who dared to try to catch a foul ball that was headed in his direction.
I'm not a Cubs fan, but I'm an avid sports fan, and that incident is singed into my brain. I wasn't even watching that series because my team, the A's, were already ousted by Boston, but after that game six between Chicago and Florida all I heard--all the way over here in California--was about that fan. Then, we learned his name: Steve Bartman, and we'd never forget it. Just like I didn't watch the Boston Redsox lose to the Mets in '86, as a sports fan I knew very well who Bill Buckner was. To think that a fan would become as infamous as a player for keeping his team World Series-less. And to think that a fan would be doxxed by a newspaper (The Chicago Sun Times) who are supposed to follow a code of ethics, is even stranger.
"Catching Hell" by ESPN Films is such an awesome documentary for me as a baseball fan. They analyze, scrutinize, and break down that play like I've never seen before. They provide so much context that you'll feel like a pitiable Chicago Cubs fan yourself. They also make a considerable effort to apologize and absolve Bartman from any wrongdoing. The documentary is directed by Alex Gibney, one of my favorite documentarians, and he does a spectacular job as always. I have to say, I never felt sorry for Steve Bartman until today. I, like thousands, no millions, of other fans felt he deserved all the animus he got. I hadn't thought about him or that play in a long time, but I almost feel like I owe him an apology as well.
$1.99 purchase on YouTube.
