I think I’m finally able to say something coherent about this.
YESSSSSSS!!! WOOOOOOO!!! YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!
No, OK, maybe tomorrow.
I guess the universe doesn’t want me to see this game. Good thing I’m not a Cubs fan.
MLB Network aired a condensed two hour version of the game this afternoon while I was at work. I DVR’d it but the replay won’t work for some reason. Every other thing I have in my DVR queue plays like a champ. But no, not one of the most historic baseball games ever. Nope. It says I have an hour and half recorded but it only plays five seconds of Christoper Russo for some reason and then quits. No rewinding. No nothing.
So I shot my TeeVee. Elvis style, baby.
Aren’t you the guy who just wants to get laid? 
See? Problem solved. The Cubs’ perennial struggles no longer interfere.
That’s too bad. You should have seen that bit during the top of the 4th when they shot the rogue panda out in center field.
Fantastic game 7 - one of the best baseball games I’ve seen.
Cards’ fans aren’t supposed to cheer for the Cubbies but the baseball fan in me took over – I was definitely hoping for the Cubs to end the curse last night.
Mad props to the Indians for clawing back in that game the way they did. I honestly thought they would win it in the 9th when Maddon sent Chapman out yet again. But Chapman, despite quite nearly being the biggest goat in Chicago since the one that started the curse, really showed serious mettle himself.
Maddon managed quite well except for three pitching decisions - one in game 6 and two in game 7 - that would have haunted him forever had the Cubs lost. The Cubs bailed him out. He did a fantastic job with the lineup.
What was Pablo Sandoval doing in that game? Was he lost?
I guess that’s why they had to shoot him.
Yes, indeed it was. Teeth and toenails down to the wire to end a 108 year drought.
To have to wait 108 years, though, is a little long.
Back in the days of Harry Caray, WGN would show the Budweiser Play of the Game after each game. Yesterday was the Budweiser Game of the Lifetime.
At long last, Chicago’s 11-year World Series drought is finally over! No longer need the poor, long-suffering Chicagoans be content with having merely four champion teams.
Thoughts from the next day:
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The Cubs won in spite of themselves. The Indians nearly won BECAUSE of themselves. I’m very happy my cubs won (I’ve stopped using the Thesaurus I swallowed at birth to use euphemisms for “very happy”
), but I’ve got to admit that Cleveland played really well most of the Series. They hustled, and never stopped trying. By comparison, until the last two games, the Cubs were consistently failing at fundamental baseball (bunts, running, batting, etc.). -
Joe Maddon lost confidence in the bullpen pitchers not named Aroldis Chapman (or Montgomery) for some reason during the latter part of the series. They got you there; trust them to get you over the finish line.
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Kyle Hendricks gets no respect from his manager, and I cannot figure out why. His stats in the NLCS were awesome. Yet he got yanked in the 5th inning both WS games; in the first he was working a shutout, in the second, he had given up just one run and had a four run lead. Indeed, the whole second-guessing that Maddon faces for using Chapman the way he did can be traced to quick hooks of starting pitchers in games 5, 6 and 7. I’d trust Hendricks to get me seven or eight innings of 1-run at most ball game, then replace him.
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The game, and the series, were awesome. I’m just glad they worked out for the Cubs; I truly thought that the 8th inning was the start of the end. Thank goodness for the rain delay; might not have been Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, but it still worked out!
Any other year, I’d be rooting for Cleveland. I would have been happy for you winning yesterday. Both teams deserved it. (And the fact the Sox won in 2005 means nothing to true blue Cubs fans, just as the Cubs winning yesterday means nothing to die-hard Sox fans.)
Alex Gibney–mostly known for his documentary about Scientology, Going Clear–made a 30 for 30 doc for ESPN called Catching Hell about Steve Bartman. Even if you don’t give a shit about baseball or sports in general, it’s a really well made look into media driven hysteria. It’s chilling and worth watching.
Agree, it’s a good watch. I recommend it too (and many of the other 30 for 30 shows are also good). Gibney shows that Bartman is a good guy, coaching kids, helping in the community. He also interviews people sitting nearby who were also instinctively reaching for that ball. They say they’re thankful they weren’t in that seat, or it’d be them incurring the wrath heaped on Bartman. They admit it’s a natural, instinctive reaction for some people to reach for a coming ball.
He’s also the childhood best friend of one of my close friends. Everything I have ever heard about the guy and everything since the incident has shown me that he is a stand-up human being in every sense. He hasn’t even cashed in on his notoriety. There are few people like that left in this world, it seems.
Anyhow, but, yes, when I saw the play I was a few thousand miles removed watching it after knowing the outcome. Maybe if I was in the moment, I’d have a slightly different perspective, but I didn’t understand the fuss. He was reaching for the ball like almost everybody else was. He just happened to be the unlucky fan that it landed nearest. I mean, like we observed in this thread, even the sound guy was reaching for the ball on that foul ball pop out that the Indians snagged. It’s natural. I’ve been a Cubs fan my whole baseball watching life, and those are the kinds of Cub fans I detest.
I’ve never “hated” Bartman for what he did. He reached out for a ball, not thinking it was playable. It was a sad thing to happen; I’m certain he felt bad about doing it.
I think a certain amount of the antipathy towards him may have come from the fact that he was wearing headphones, listening to the game broadcast, which gave a sense that he was detached from his surroundings (much like todays millennials). But mostly I think it reflects frustration at something that went so horribly wrong after that, about which Cubs fans couldn’t control. The main reason I never blamed Bartman for what happened is that, it shouldn’t have mattered. They should have gotten the outs they needed without giving up three (let alone 8!) runs. Further, who’s to say, given what happened, that the Cubs wouldn’t have ended up squandering the lead some other way; it’s not like it was the third out of the inning.
But some people just love to be bitter. 
I assume the 30 for 30 piece discusses how the Bartman moment, while certainly coincident with a shift in momentum, was not a do-or-die thing at all. Wasn’t it not even the last inning, and not close to the last game of the series (necessarily)?
In the same vein, the late, great natural historian Stephen Jay Gould wrote a piece on how we tend to misremember the Bill Buckner moment in 1986. We assume it must have been at the end of the Series-winning game for the Mets. Nope, the Mets still had to win a whole game after that. Momentum-shifting, maybe. All or nothing coming down to that one play? Not even close.
ETA: Not exactly ninja’d – I’d say my post and DSYoungEsq’s complement each other nicely.
Right, it was the top of the eighth (not the ninth), the Cubs at the time with a three-run lead (and following the play, still with a three-run lead, with just one runner on base).
The key plays in that inning most likely were
*Derrek Lee’s 2-run double (which tied the score and put runners at second and third);
*Mike Mordecai’s three-run double (which put the Marlins up by four runs);
*Jeff Conine’s sac fly, which was not a classic Big Blow but put Florida on top;
*and, if we absolutely must have tar and feathers and pitchforks, someone to ***blame *** instead of attributing an outcome to an opponent’s success, we might look at a one-out error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez on what might have been a double-play ball, which instead loaded the bases with the Cubs still up by two runs. (I always thought Bartman was the luckiest thing possible for ol’ Alex.)
And it was Game 6, not Game 7; and the Cubs actually led Game 7 by a 5-3 score after four innings.
Funny kind of momentum changer, that allows the momentumless team to build and maintain a lead the very next night…
Yes, blaming Bartman was even worse than blaming Buckner. There were lots of things after Bartman’s mistake that caused the Cubs to lose. There were a lot of mistakes made by other players before Buckner that put him in the position to be the scapegoat.