Not to mention that they had already failed to close out the series in Game 5 when they had a 3-1 series lead, and their two aces - Wood & Prior - couldn’t get it done at home, regardless of what some fan did to affect the 2nd out of the 8th inning.
Alou wouldn’t have caught that ball anyway. Of course, this is the same guy that that admitted to urinating on his own hands regularly to make the skin tougher, so I don’t know why fans have given him such a benefit of the doubt on this.
Not logically… but you know in games oddest things change the momentum.
It’s similar to the who Bill Buckner thing; that ball going through his legs caused the Sox to lose Game Six. The Mets didn’t win the whole thing until Game Seven.
From Wikipedia: “Boston led Game 7 of the World Series 3-0 heading into the bottom of the sixth inning when New York scored three runs off Bruce Hurst (who had been named World Series Most Valuable Player before the Mets’ improbable comeback in Game 6) to tie the game, and score three more off Schiraldi in the seventh to take a 6-3 lead. Buckner was two-for-four in the game, and scored one of two runs the Sox plated in the eighth. However, the comeback fell short, and the Mets won their second World Championship in franchise history”
Why didn’t Hurst or Schiraldi catch the shit that Buckner did?
As a Cubs fan, I’m so glad I was out of the country when this happened. From a dispassionate, removed perspective, it never occurred to me to blame the kid for anything. Looked like a perfectly natural reaction to me, and he wasn’t the only one reaching for the ball. (The guy to his left had the sense to back away, but the guy to his right was reaching just as much as Steve was.) Fucking Cubs fans. (Yes, I’m a self-hating Cubs fan.) I figured if the Marlins could get past both Wood and Prior at Wrigley, they more than deserved the pennant. And so it was. The Cubs did it to themselves, and the hell with this “momentum” bullshit. A talented and highly paid team like that shouldn’t have such a fragile psyche that a little disruption in their rhythm should cause a boner of a play at short and a complete collapse the rest of the inning. And never mind blowing the next game.
To be completely fair, the catch wasn’t a sure thing, but judging by the replays, it sure as heck does look like he was right on it.
Yeah, curses etc are bullshit excuses… the series going perfectly fine then one moment they suddenly have a complete collapse with like zero production thereafter and blaming it on curses. We are talking about baseball, Cubbies, curses, a goat, a black cat and Bartman, right??
100 years ago, Ty Cobb was receiving death threats for spiking players.
Even Moises Alou admitted(after a while) he probably wouldn’t have caught it.
Instant replay might have saved Bartman’s life.
And some people say Mookie Wilson would have been safe anyway. He could run, and Buckner was deep behind the bag…
Huh. I looked at the wikipedia page, and Alou took back (or rather, claims he never said) he wouldn’t have caught the ball. I retract that.
But I don’t think he would have caught the ball, and I hold the Cubs responsible for giving up 8 runs before getting two more outs, and losing the next game too.
Yeah, he was just saying that to keep the heat off the kid, in my opinion, if he did in fact say it.
Ah, yes. Blame for the Bartman incident–where to begin?
Moises Alou–did he have to throw that hissy fit? Yes, in an empty stadium, he probably would have caught the ball. But outfielders know perfectly well that they reach above and beyond the fence at their own risk. Fans will always go for a ball, unless the fielder has time (and space) to get there first and body up and clear them out. A hissy fit in your home park? That was bush league.
Mark Prior, who actually came off the mound to argue for a fan interference call. First, learn the rules, dumbass. There’s no interference on a ball above or beyond the wall. Second, if the call is borderline at all (and this one wasn’t), you aren’t going to get it in your home park. Third, you have a 3-0 lead, a 3-2 count, and you’re five outs from the World Series. Get your ass back on the mound and maybe, like, throw the next pitch in the strike zone.
Fox Sports. If they had replayed the incident and let it go at that, nobody would know who Bartman was. It took eye-straining concentration to identify him as the person whose hands touched the ball. But no, Fox couldn’t let it go. Over and over, during the eight-run inning, they focused the camera on his expressionless face. To make it worse, the announcers were prattling sanctimonious shit like “Gee, I hope nobody blames that young man for this eight-run meltdown”. Get your goddamn cameras off of him, and maybe nobody will.
Alex S. Gonzalez, shortstop. He should send Bartman flowers every day of his life. He made the most ghastly error imaginable on a Sunday-hop ground ball, at least a force out, maybe an inning-ending double play. It was way more costly than Buckner’s error, since the Cubs were still ahead 3-1 and should have stayed that way. But Bartman took the heat for it.
Kerry Wood. Nice start in the seventh game, clutch.
The Cubs–ya gotta hate 'em.
For years, Fred Merkle could not walk around on the streets of New York because of his boner.
It is terrible that Bartman got so much heat for what is essentially an instinctual move. There were quite hands in the air near that ball. And that nothing to do with loss, the Cubs just find interesting ways to lose.
But ESPN DID make the point that holding any grudge about this was stupid, that we need to step back and look at ourselves as a group about what kind of people we are.
That said, Bartman will be a pariah till the Cubbies win a World Series.
Not to be a doubting Thomas, but, well, I doubt this quite a lot. As legendary as Merkle’s Boner was,
It’s unlikely most people in New York would have known Fred Merkle if they’d bumped into him. Merkle was a 19-year-old nobody in an era when there was no TV, no radio, and little documentation of the game as compared to today. His face would have been hard to recognize even to baseball fans and unknown to most people. He was a rookie in a league that at the time drew fewer fans per game than some junior hockey teams; the entire National League in 1908 drew fewer fans than some teamsw will this year.
Although over the course of history the story has coalesced into “Fred Merkle screwed up” the opinions at the time were a lot more varied. The game ended in total chaos, with fans charging the field thinking the Giants had won. Some people claimed Merkle touched second, including Christy Mathewson, who while a Giant was a man who was reknowned for his honor and gentility and who wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t believe it. Some newspapers reported that the Cubs, or the crowd, or both, had stopped Merkle from getting to second. There was a rules dispute, as it appeared the ball had touched a fan before Merkle was forced out, meaning it should have been ruled dead. The umpire who made the call had several different versions of events. So t the time, it wasn’t like all of New York wanted blood; many blamed the league, many blamed Hank O’Day, many blamed the Cubs, many blamed the crowd, and some blamed Merkle, and many blamed a combination of all those things.
Although Merkle did take his share of the blame and was promptly nicknamed “Bonehead,” the Giants apparently still liked him enough that they not only kept him but made him the everyday first baseman a few years later, and he had a long and successful career, most of it in New York. It’s hard to imagine that being possible in a place where he could not show his face in public.
Most people aren’t big time baseball fans, even in 1908. Most people who ARE baseball fans are not psychotic jerks.
*Merkle *became a verb, in fact, meaning ‘to not arrive.’
Also, fuck Tony Kornheiser of ESPN. He’s not funny and he doesn’t know sports, and he’s kind of a dick.
I think **Tom Tildrum **was making a joke about his boner making it difficult to walk.
Whoosh.
I don’t know. The Cub fans I hang around with don’t really care about Bartman and hardly blame their downfall on him (at least from today’s perspective). Granted, these Cubs fans are not your usual Wrigley Field fratboy-douchebag types, but I honestly think the average Cub fan has gotten over it, if they blamed him to begin with. I’d be curious to see a poll.