As the Chicago Cubs lock down their second NLCS birth since 1945 and an invigorating ever-closing reach toward their first we-shall-not-jinx-it you know what since 1908, today marks a dark day in the franchise’s “cursed” past, when a fan reached out for a fly foul ball against the Florida Marlins on this day in 2003 at a pivotal point in the post-season, interfering with a Cubs outfielder trying to make the catch, and all hell happened to break loose from there.
We don’t need to go over the story again. It’s painful. Even for non-Cubs fans. And especially Steve Bartman, the then 26-year-old fan who went on to make a wonderful scapegoat for a team and city so thoroughly fed up with getting knocked out of the post-season. Long-story short, Bartman has been a class act through the vitriol against him since, never speaking to the public about it, and Cubs fans even mounted movement to exonerate him in 2015 with a campaign to send him back to the playoffs.
Whether or not that’s a horrible idea is in the eye of the fan beholder. He’s kind of been exonerated anyway, with the Cubs knocking out the much hated Cardinals in 2015 in a historic Friendly Confines outing. But again, we will not jinx it and shut up for now.
There have been plenty of songs for Cubs fans to vent and rally around since 2003, from rock royalty Eddie Vedder’s campfire yearner “All the Way” to DIY suburban Casio warrior superfans like Terry Carroll’s near two-dozen jams, punctuated 2015’s “The Cubs Are Gonna Rock This Town.”
Though nothing has been as on point as underground hip-hop genius Serengeti’s “Don’t Blame Steve” via alter-ego Kenny Dennis, that ends all conversations on Bartman with the fact that the Cubs gave Andre “Awesome” Dawson’s old number to Alex Gonzalez — #8 — who dropped a routine double-play that was so much more heinous than Bartman and Moises Alou’s bobble will ever be:
Blame Bland Randall Simon
Blame Eric Karros
Blame #8 [Alex Gonzalez]
Blame 21 [Sammy Sosa]
Blame Wayne Messmer
Blame D-Lee,
Blame [Kyle] Farnsworth
But don’t blame Steve
