Justice For Steve Bartman
For the first time in 13 years, Steve Bartman can sleep peacefully. No fan deserves it more. The poor victim of countless amounts of misguided abuse because he wanted to catch a foul ball in 2003. What happened to Steve is sports fandom at it’s lowest and most vile. Shamelessly ruining someone’s life because a team lost and angry people wanted someone to blame. This went beyond Bill Buckner, who was a player paid to make a play and was then met with disproportionate hate. This was even beyond Jeffrey Maier, the 12 year old who more blatantly interfered with a ball against the Orioles and then who the stupid ass Yankees paraded around as a hero for it (Fuck the Yankees). Orioles fans still hate Maier, but I think most of us realize that it was more the ump’s fault for not calling it what it was at the time. Steve Bartman had it far worse. He reached for a foul ball that was headed into the stands, that might have been caught for an out. Instead of an out, we had a foul ball, and the Cubs collapsed soon after. Bartman had to be hidden and escorted out by security and has become a hermit. His outfit (The cubs hat, headphones, green turtleneck and black sweatshirt) has become iconic. He deserved none of this. Whatever happens to him now, whether he stays a hermit (understandable) or whips out his dick and tells everyone to shove it while throwing out the first pitch next year, he’s earned it.
Congrats Cubs. No living person was alive for the last Cubs WS victory. At least I’m pretty sure of that, there might be some potato in a corner of the world who was alive in 1908. I’m sorry it had to come against another city with a similar drought, but that’s part of what made the series so memorable. I’ve long drifted from baseball fandom. The length of the season, the slump of my preferred team (Orioles), and my rise in football interest has left me rather dismissive of baseball as a whole now. The only games I watch anymore are in the playoffs and usually just the elimination games. I watched 3 whole games this year, the final 3 games of this series. Game 7 might very well be the best baseball game I’ve ever seen. It had everything. Great pitching. Great hitting. Dingers. Old guy dingers. A comeback. A wild pitch. Extra innings. A goddamn Rain Delay just adding to the tension. It was the whole package and we are going to talk about this one forever. Congrats Cubs. My Grandfather missed your celebration by a couple years, but I know he would have loved it.
Sorry Cleveland. The 3-1 curse struck you this time. Even worse, it gives Warriors unfair ammo to disperse the best sports meme of 2016. You know. That the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA finals. They still did that (please remember it still happened), but now it hurts a little bit less.
i like the one person in the crowd covering their face
My favorite part of the Cubs winning was the people in Chicago complaining to the police at midnight about the “excessive noise”. Like, some people just shouldn’t live in ChiTown.
Yeah, no. Cubs fans harassed and generally made Bartman’s life a living hell for years just because he did what any other baseball fan would in that situation. They deserved another century of no World Series for that.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-108-years-of-cubs-loyalty-hazels-got-two-championships-1478209519
(Just Google the headline of the article and click the top result to bypass the paywall.)
I spy a Pokémon fan trying to fit in
This game was the absolute longest ive ever watched baseball in my entire life. Though at the very end I did raise my hands in excitement, I couldn’t tell if it was because the Cubs won and I had just witnessed a peice of sports history, or I was just so glad the game was finally over.
Everything about baseball is built to be boring. Batters go in and out, pitchers take forever to throw, sometimes they throw to first base which hardly ever seems to work. It starts to sprinkle so they roll out the tarp, because heaven forbid these millionaires have to run on some soft dirt. Then it takes 10 minutes just to fold the tarp again. How have they not found a machine that rolls it up again in llike minute? No wonder this sport is dying.
Sounds like someone is bitter that baseball beat out SNF in ratings head-to-head.
everything about this comment is built to be boring, not to mention uninformed and pointless w.r.t anything at all
I was doing laundry that night. I started right around the start of Game 7 and I think I only ascended from the laundry room of my dorm around the 8th inning. I suggest that strategy: do chores during a baseball game (grocery shopping, vacuuming, bills) and once you are done, sit down and watch the rest of it as a reward. You won’t be as burned out.
Side note: When my local team (Red Sox) got eliminated, I made a new playoff prediction that the Blue Jays would become the most hated team in baseball by beating the Cubs. I have since been ridiculed for causing sports jinxes.
Second side note: A friend of mine is a White Sox fan and he was pissed the whole time.
If you think this guy had a rough time, Google it “Moacir Barbosa”. Oh humanity!
Seriously, fuck the cubs
Seriously fuck yourself
The poor guy was abused and hated by his home city. He couldn’t show his face in public or go to a Cub’s game for 13 years. I hope now he can openly be a cubs fan again
Game 7 of this World Series was the greatest game I’ve ever seen in my life
The funny thing is the Cubs were really just the Rays from a few years ago with actual money.
Also, you forgot the Gladiators of Arena (you knew I was going to bring this up), who ‘lost’ their season series with Philly 3-1
On of the least attractive faces of the present, is people’s tendency to “shame” people out of existence.
I get being angry for a little while. And some people deserve a bit of comeuppance.
But nowadays, when someone does something stupid or reproachable, people don’t seem to be happy until the offender’s lose their house, their job, and their family.
A few might deserve it. But most are just ordinary people caught doing something stupid on a bad day.
I was at all four WS games in Cleveland and I would rather lose game 7 like that than not have made it. This is a team that will probably get another chance, and if the entire starting rotation was healthy it would have been a much different series.
yeah, i wouldn’t be surprised if they end up like the 2015 Royals: soinfuriated by their near-miss the previous year that they just smash their way through everyone next year and crush whoever the National League sends against them in a comparatively boring World Series.