Doing the Bartman

If I had have enough reason to hope that the Cubs lose, it’s the fact that many Cubs fans seem to still hold a grudge against against Steve Bartman, whose role in the defeat of the Cubs was trivial at best. First of all, it’s far from clear that Alou catches the ball in the first place. More importantly, the Cubs still had a 3-0 lead with one out and one on. I don’t think that Bartman caused Gonzalez to muff a routine grounder or Prior to spit out the bit or Kyle Farnsworth to be Kyle Farnsworth. Enough already. The Cubs lost because they lost; Bartman had nothing significant to do with it.

Bill Simmons’s entertaining roundup of modes of losing (“Is there another fan experience quite like overtime hockey, when every slap shot, breakaway and centering pass might spell doom, and losing feels 10 times worse than winning feels good (if that makes sense)?,” exactly right) brings up another example that’s always annoyed me: Cardinals fans whining about Denkinger’s blown call in the ’85 World Series. Again, they still had a lead with one on after the call; moreover, the winning runs scored with only one out. I can’t see what Denkinger had to do with, say, the crucial Porter passed ball, or the Cards getting the crap beat out of them in Game 7 (same thing for Bartman, of course.) The Cardinals lost because they deserved to lose.