In 2003, the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won the finals in 94 years. This long period of fasting was one of the most famous so-called “curses” of North American professional sports, and as such created great frustration among fans. That year, however, the Cubs had reached the playoffs and after four years of absence from the decisive phase of the championship they at least glimpsed the opportunity to win again. In those playoffs they also passed the first round and thus reached just one round from the World Series, the championship finals, always lost after those won in 1908.
The Cubs then played the semifinals of the playoffs against the Florida Marlins (now Miami Marlins) and of the first five games of the series (played as a best-of-seven), they won three. On 14 October 2003, twenty years ago, leading 3-2, they found themselves with the possibility of winning the decisive match that would have taken them to the finals. That day, however, a fan named Steve Bartman became an involuntary protagonist in the history of North American sport, interfering with an action and compromising his team’s match. From there everything started to go wrong for the Cubs, and for Bartman it went even worse.
That night at Wrigley Field in Chicago the Cubs were ahead 3-0 in scoring and were playing defense in the eighth and penultimate inning of the game. At one point a Marlins hit ended up between left field and the front rows of spectators. Believing that the ball was now “out of play” (in “foul”) several fans attempted to catch it. Bartman also tried, but he touched it but got in the way of Cubs catcher Moises Alou.
When the ball dropped and Alou jumped, Bartman stretched out his arm and interrupted the trajectory, although he was unable to catch it: the ball rolled into the stands and was picked up by another fan, who showed it triumphantly, but very quickly regretted it. Alou, in fact, had already started swearing from the field: if he had managed to catch it he would have eliminated the second opposing batter and brought the Cubs closer to victory.
The stadium noticed the damage almost immediately and there was a long moment of general consternation and groans coming from almost all sectors. The public also began to blame Bartman, who was blamed for it even though he wasn’t the only one involved. In a visibly changed climate, the Cubs’ victory slowly began to recede. The Marlins scored eight runs in that same inning, then came back to win 8-3. Thanks to that victory, and another obtained the following day, they eliminated the Cubs and qualified for the World Series, which they then won by beating the New York Yankees.
Bartman was not able to see the end of that game, as for safety reasons he was escorted out of the stands by Wrigley Field officials. From there he was never seen in public again, although he continued to live and work in the Chicago area: he reluctantly became a sort of baseball legend and his story soon began to be mentioned in television series, cartoons and comedy programs . In 2011 he was also the protagonist of an ESPN documentary entitled Catching Hell.
In the days immediately following the incident, Bartman delegated to a lawyer friend the task of responding – generally to say that he had nothing to say – to the many requests for interviews or television appearances, but also of taking on all the insults and the death threats that had already started arriving. To try to fix things, the Cubs invited him to return to Wrigley Field that year, but he refused, as up to now he has refused every type of public proposal he has received.
In the following years, the resentment of Cubs fans towards him was also fueled by other collateral events. In 2004 and 2005, the other two great baseball “curses” were broken: that of the Red Sox (or “the Bambino”), who returned to win the World Series for the first time since 1918, and above all that of the White Sox , the other team from Chicago, who broke an 86-year fast. Between one broken curse and another, a Chicago restaurateur bought the ball intercepted by Bartman for over 100 thousand dollars, and after putting it on display for a few days, he decided to destroy it with an electric discharge hoping it was a good omen, but in the end what he got was just a little publicity.
Bartman was talked about again in 2016, when after 108 very long years the Cubs finally returned to winning the World Series. The following year the team management gave him one of the rings given as a prize to the winners, with the hope of ending the affair forever. Bartman continued not to be seen, but broke his silence for the first time and responded with a statement in which he said he was deeply moved and sincerely grateful: “My family and I will take care of it generation after generation.” He then added that he hoped that his experience could serve to «see sport only as entertainment, avoiding the search for scapegoats», as had happened in his case.
– Read also: The Black Sox scandal