I’ve watched the ESPN documentary, Catching Hell, about the Bartman game twice now. It is quite well done and worth a look,
especially if you are a follower of the Cubs or the Red Sox. I suppose there is a rough comparison
between the zealous fan base of each team, their long history of post-season
futility and late season meltdowns, etc.
There are also parallels in the treatment of the scapegoats Buckner and
Bartman. However, to my mind, that
is where the observation ends.
For one thing, Buckner was a player who made a physical
error. The game also was played in
New York, not in Boston, so the fan reaction had much less impact on the
outcome of the game or the series.
The blame that attached to Bill Buckner seems almost retrospective. The Buckner error clearly cost the Red
Sox the game, but, especially considering the rainout of the seventh game, the
whole incident developed over a more extended time.
In contrast, the Bartman incident took place in
Chicago. The reaction was
immediate and visceral and peculiarly universal. By that I mean pretty much everyone in the stands and all
the participants in the game, both the Cubs and the Marlins, instantly
recognized the utter and devastating significance of an apparently commonplace
occurrence, the attempt of a fan to catch a foul ball near the field of play. That is really the heart of the matter:
we were just waiting for something bad to happen, we were not just fearing it,
we were waiting for it and so was the team.
You have to ask yourself how this relatively routine event
could have had such an impact and how, thinking back upon it, everyone realized
right then and there the inevitable nature of that impact. I’m not a psychologist by any stretch
of the imagination, but the entire affair suggests a set of eerie speculations
on the psychology of crowds and how deeply a form of negative energy can infect
a group and the focus of that group’s attention. For me, anyway, that is the most interesting aspect of the
whole affair.
The following narrative is certainly anecdotal, but I very
much remember the night of the Bartman incident. I didn’t have tickets for the game, so I was watching at
home with my wife. I remember
thinking to myself how well the game was going. Mark Prior seemed to be in command. The Cubs had built a three run lead
going into the eighth inning. What
could go wrong? Yet in the back of
both our minds there lurked a nagging doubt. It was almost too easy.
We lived only a few blocks from Wrigley Field then and we
were debating when we should leave the house to walk over and join the
celebration. Something was holding
us back. We decided to watch the
top of the eighth before going.
Then it happened. My wife
said it was all over. I tried to
argue that it was just a fluke, a bad break. But I really knew deep down it was over and I was just not
willing to admit it.
In retrospect, it seems as if the whole stadium and all of
Cubs fandom and the team itself was waiting for something to go wrong. All it took was a fluke to set it
off. Alou’s reaction to the play,
the stomping up and down, the glove throwing, was totally out of proportion to
the event itself. How tightly
wound does a team, a player, or a crowd have to be to provoke the cascade of
events that followed? And how
intimately connected is this loop of tension to the actual outcome?
In a way, the ESPN documentary distorts the real-time flow
of things. I suppose this is
inevitable given the desire to follow two threads of the story, the crowd
reaction to Bartman’s interference and the Cubs collapse/Marlins rally that
followed. I had occasion to watch
a replay of the inning itself on the Internet last week. What you see there is how central the
foul ball is to the inning, how obsessed the crowd and the Cubs become with the
play and its aftermath. The whole
place loses its composure. Most of
the crowd is focused on abusing Bartman.
Even as the inning continues and the Cubs team goes into a tailspin, you
can see the Cubs players looking up into the stands, pointing fingers, shaking
their heads. They have obviously
lost their concentration. Every
subsequent pitch, every subsequent play adds to their frustration. Once things have started snowballing,
nothing can stop the momentum.
So, is there a Cubs curse? I don’t think so, but there is an expectation of failure
among the Cubs fan base, and that expectation carries over to the team. No team plays tighter that the Cubs
when the chips are down, and the continued history of failure must be a
contributing psychological factor.
This feedback loop has become a part of the team’s tradition, almost a
part of its definition, so much so that it is difficult to imagine the team’s
personality without it.
My father was a lifelong Cubs fan. Each year he would look forward to the start of the season
with hope and enthusiasm. He was
convinced, however, that the team would ultimately fail. Even in the magical season of 1969, he
knew it would not last. This
syndrome was the case even though when he was a young man, in the twenties and
thirties, the Cubs were a good team, filled with star players, perennial
contenders who regularly went to the World Series even though they did not win
it.
There are only three players left on the roster from the
2003 team, Aramis Ramirez, Kerry Wood, and Carlos Zambrano. From a combination of free agency,
injuries, and just weird circumstances, it is possible the Cubs will start 2012
without any of the holdovers. For
Cubs fans like myself, it’s not likely to make much difference. In our hearts we know it is going to
take some miracle to stop the slide.
We just don’t know what it could be and we just don’t believe it will
happen. We keep watching and
hoping though, which probably makes it hurt all the more.
This post is also available at The Fan Manifesto.
This post is also available at The Fan Manifesto.
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