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I wonder if anyone might be able to clear up something for me:
How does Steve Bartman go about retrieving the last 41/2 years of his life? How does he rewind the tape and then start erasing the scenes in which news helicopters are flying over his home and reporters are standing on his front lawn? How does he go back and change all the nights he stayed in when he might have wanted to go out to dinner or to a Cubs game but didn't for fear of being recognized?
I didn’t realize Steve Bartman was E.T. You forgot to mention his love of M & Ms and his pseudo-sexual relationship with a preteen Drew Barrymore. Seriously, ITS BEEN FIVE YEARS. If anyone’s been standing on his front lawn for the last four and a half years, then you might want to call the police.
You might have heard or read that Moises Alou has acknowledged he had no chance of catching the infamous foul ball in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field. That seemed apparent to many of us as we watched the replay of the incident about 1,000 times over the last four seasons. We saw Alou reaching for a ball off the bat of Florida's Luis Castillo, then slamming down his glove in anger over what he believed was Bartman's interference down the left-field line. A 2-foot-long glove might not have helped Alou catch that ball.
That’s not what you wrote when it happened, when you wrote “"Years from now, when the story is being told, it will always start in the same way: 'Once upon a time, there was a guy wearing a blue sweatshirt, a green turtleneck, headphones and a Cubs cap." Then again, as a columnist, you’re not paid to be consistent. You’re paid to be douchey and get people to read a dead media.
You know the rest of the story. Security guards escorted Bartman out of Wrigley for his own protection. The Cubs melted down, allowing Florida to score eight runs in what would be an 8-3 victory. They went on to lose the series. And the image of a blanched, wide-eyed Bartman became a symbol of Cubs bewilderment.
Actually, it went “Alex Gonzalez kicks sure-fire double play ball, Cubs melt down.” Three or four people blamed Bartman, the media decided to run with it, and virtually every talking head on ESPN decided that, in lieu of doing actual research and being relevant, they’d rely upon Bartman to be their lead in talking about the Cubs. After all, Chicago is west of the Appalachians, and therefore no one there counts anyway.
Alou said he feels bad for Bartman. Good.
This might be a good time for some apologies.
So you’re going to apologize for writing about him any number of times over the last five years? No? Oh, forgot that rule about columnists and consistency.
How about one from Harry Caray's restaurant, which received scads of publicity when it purchased the "Bartman Ball" and blew it up in the name of reversing another Cubs curse. All in good fun, the people there said, and of course it was good fun as long as your name wasn't Steve Bartman.
He goes on to torch Jay Mariotti, which is always fun and should be done more often, but then feels the need to finish up with this:
More apologies are in order. How about one from all the people who have had a laugh at Bartman's expense? It's not so funny when you really think about it, is it? The reports Bartman is in "hiding" are exaggerated—he lives and works in the Chicago area—but the Game 6 incident and the resulting firestorm have affected his life drastically.
Did I miss something? Have people outside the media been calling for Steve Bartman’s head for the last five years? Last I checked, the chain of Cubs stupidity (in the eyes of most fans) for the last five years started and ended with Dusty Baker. Apparently, the only place that offers a view of a firestorm is from high atop an unoriginal soapbox.
Yes, Alou started that fire, but it was fanned by a lot of people who were looking to blame somebody, anybody for all the years of Cubs futility. So the guy in the sweatshirt, headphones and baseball cap became a national laughingstock, good for jokes on the late-night talk shows and mean-spirited derision in more than a few newspaper columns.
Of which you wrote at least one. Seriously, do you have a self-reflective bone in your body?
Steve Bartman did what a lot of people instinctively do. He reached for a foul ball. People blamed him for ruining the Cubs' chances of going to a World Series, which happens about once every Ice Age. In light of Alou's admission, maybe they won't blame him anymore, which would be so very considerate of them.
But I'm still confused. Those 41/2 years … remind me again how he gets those back?
Let’s make this simple: Cubs fans don’t care about Steve Bartman anymore. 99.9% of them felt bad for him in the first place. 3-4 people out of a fan base of roughly 20 million decided to act like idiots, and now Cubs fans have a black eye that every unoriginal columnist and media member feels the need to dredge up every six months or so. Why, exactly, would Cubs fans want to continue even talking about this guy?
Morrissey has never seen a high horse he couldn’t climb up on. Why don’t you apologize for writing about him all those times, and even moreso for writing about him four and a half fucking years later for no reason other than because of a throwaway quote from Moises Alou. You accuse Mariotti and Harry Caray’s restaurant of being attention whores, yet you decide to piggyback on their attempts while at the same time trying to condemn them. Well, Mr. Morrissey, both Mariotti and the restaurant are pathetic whores, but at least they’re slightly more original whores. You don’t even get the main room in the brothel.
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