I am not usually a big fan of "old" coaches. I hate JoePa, because he is really just a figure standing there. He doesn't do anything, except maybe poop his pants a little bit on the sideline and be a story line of being really old. Yea, fuck him.
I didn't know what to think of Jack McKeon. I mean I always love his cigar smoking ways, but other then that I was indifferent. That was until he managed his first game since coming back. The first thing he did was bench Hanley Ramirez, by far the best player on the team. It was a ballsy thing to do, and exactly the right move. Hanely hasn't done shit all year. He was batting below .200 until last night, and there were reports he wasn't running out plays (sounds like another Ramirez we knew).
The story doesn't end there though. McKeon then turns around and puts him hitting cleanup the next day after a "good conversation". Basically, he brought him in the office and was like "Hey, you're are best player, we need you, be the star you're supposed to be". Ramirez responded with his first multi hit game in a long time, and I guarantee he goes on a roll.
A lot of people questioned bringing him back, but now I see why. They needed someone who had no future. They needed someone who could say the things that needed to be said without worrying about 2-5 years down the road. He can knock some sense into these players and that's exactly what this young team needs.
With his team in complete free-fall, Edwin Rodriguez stepped down as manager of the Florida Marlins on Sunday. This left the door open for one of my favorite managers of all time 80 year old Jack McKeon. The last you saw of the cigar smoking coach was when he led the 2003 Florida Marlins to a World Series over the New York Yankees.
I don't know if he will be able to do anything magical with this team who have been downright awful lately, but it will be fun to watch. With josh Johnson being out for the foreseeable future and Hanley Ramirez not playing like himself it'll be tough, but who knows, maybe the old dog has one more ace up his sleeve.
"Why not be hard-nosed?" Sabean told the radio station. "If I never hear from Cousins again or he never plays another game in the big leagues, I think we'll all be happy."
"He chose to be a hero, in my mind, and if that's his flash of fame, that's as good as it's going to get, pal. We'll have a long memory," Sabean told KNBR. "Believe me, we've talked to (former catcher Mike) Matheny about how this game works. You can't be that out-and-out overly aggressive. I'll put it as politically as I can state it: There's no love lost and there shouldn't be (ESPN)."
It sucks you lost one of your best players, but this crying about it has to stop. There isn't anything illegal about what Cousins' did, and to go on and on about this is a joke. One top of that to come out and say you are going to get some on-field revenge is fucking stupid. All this is going to lead to is some suspensions, and if I was the MLB I would fine this guy for making comments like this. The whole MLB is making a big deal out of nothing. Yes, it sucks a very good player got hurt, but shit happens and players get run into all the time and don't get hurt. It was just bad luck..... MOVE ON.
What I'm about to write might seem somewhat odd considering that the two ominous portents I'm about to discuss are, in theory, really good news. Really, they are. But I'm having difficulty coping, and considering there are bizarre occurrences aplenty popping up all over the globe, I'm inclined to believe that we're just days away from frogs dropping from the skies.
I mean, seriously. It's a statue of Michael Jackson at a Premier League soccer stadium. A goddamn scare one at that.
So yeah, that's the first incident of late that can really make you think, but in my life the more immediate things to notice are not so much colored by a diamond-studded glove as they are colored by, well, blue and orange. I refer of course to those two apples of my eye -- and by apples of my eye I mean, "those kids who disappoint you because they develop a drug addiction but you love them anyway".
Ah, curiosity, the name is the Mets ... or Knicks.
So what is my point here? Well, I'll get to it. After the Mets dropped their first game of the 2011 season in uproariously bad fashion, they somehow crafted a comeback Saturday night in an eventual 10-inning win over the Marlins to even the record at 1-1. Today with the rubber match looming, the Amazins didn't have to worry about making things close as they completely smacked around Javier Vazquez in a 9-2 romp. So what we have here is a Mets team that, despite its expectations for being utterly terrible this season, actually has a winning record three games into the season.
I know. I know. There are 159 left for them to lose disastrously, but for the time being, New York is on pace to go 108-54, and I'm perfectly fine touting that. Granted, this would hardly be the first time I've decided to relish in a flukish early-season run -- if three games could even be called a run -- but lease, let me enjoy it while I can.
So where do the Knicks fit in? Well, not only did they finally get over the bizarre hump tonight of actually defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers, but in doing so the Knicks sealed their first playoff berth since 2004. Ah yes, the heady days of 2004. When men were men, women were women, Barack Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois, the Boston Red Sox were still eight and a half decades removed from their last World Series and I was but a freshman in college who thought it was ridiculous to assume the Knicks would go seven more years before reaching the postseason.
So, you know, it's been a while. But what might be more bizarre to wonder is just how long it's been since these both happened at the same time.
That would be the first time since 1991 that the 'Bockers failed to get out of the first round, but surely, I thought, that was just a blip. Ever since the Knicks had seduced me with their wild run to the 1999 NBA Finals, I had assumed sustained success would be the norm. Even with the uneven trade of Patrick Ewing, Kurt Thomas, Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston and Marcus Camby formed a core that would continue contending much like the Knicks of Ewing, John Starks and Anthony Mason.
Good one, right?
But see, I had generally assumed that things would always go well for me because I was in the midst of the best stretches of sports fandom my life has known. The Knicks' run to the 1999 Finals was a precursor. First the Devils won the 2000 Stanley Cup and then a 10 month stretch starting in October of 2000 saw three of my favorite teams reach their respective championship rounds.
At the time I didn't even realize it, perhaps because all three of them lost, but the Mets reaching the 2000 World Series foreshadowed the Giants surprising run to Super Bowl XXXV, which begat the Devils once again getting to the Stanley Cup Final in June 2001 before falling in Game 7.
Yes, they lost, but this was an unprecedented run of success for me that I foolishly took for granted at the time. I won't go so far as to assume this is a sign of sustained success. After all, only a fool would expect the Mets to finish this season with a winning record, but it is nice to dream. This is, as far as my life is concerned, a rare time. And it gets even rarer when I take note of the fact that the Devils, who I was desperately pushing for the comeback to end all comebacks on, were officially knocked out of the playoff hunt with a loss to Montreal Saturday night.
Clearly, that's not a positive thrown into this, but two teams doing well is better than just one. The last time New Jersey missed the playoffs was 1996, but they weren't eliminated until the last day of the season when former-Devil Tom Chorske capped a surprising win by the Ottawa Senators, but that wasn't until April 13, at which point the 1996 New York Mets had already fallen below the .500 mark ne'er to return. That means the last time this particular troika occurred was in 1989, and since I was not even at my fourth birthday in April of 1989, it may as well have never have happened as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, it was so long ago that this guy hadn't even been drafted yet.
Of course, I'm not too worried about the Devils making it back next season. Anyone who watched how they played in the second half can clearly note that the abysmal first 33 games were a bizarre fluke.
The Mets and Knicks both being on the upside of things, however, that is a much rarer thing to note. It is so rare, that it may just not last the week once New York makes its first visit to Philadelphia for the season. Hopefully that isn't a case, but I'm a realist. My only real hope is that the next time that rare combo of the Knicks making the playoffs and the Mets having a winning record occurs isn't 10 years from now.
Now, I don't want to go out on a limb and say that after the offseason of no impressive player acquisitions and billion-dollar lawsuits against the ownership the Mets suffered through, that after six innings it looked like the Amazins were about to suffer through the worst possible start to their season.
But, uh, it looked pretty bad.
Not only did Mike Pelfrey's Opening Day start fall apart on an unexpected grand slam by that immortal slugger John Buck in the fourth inning, but the Mets were actually on the short end of a no-hitter by Florida ace Josh Johnson through six innings before finally breaking the spell and ultimately succumbing in a 6-2 loss in at Sun Life Stadium. Seriously, the best part about the whole night for a Mets fan was that Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band played the National Anthem on his sax.
So that happened.
I know getting my knickers in a twist over this is, of course, a fairly foolish thing to do. After all, there are 161 games left to go this season, so getting antsy when there is plenty of time to change is irrational at best. But should I even bother to believe that there's a chance things will get better than they were Friday night? I mean, they ought to. I have a hard time believing they'd get much worse.
But that's why they play the other 161 games, so here we go in about seven and a half hours for Jon Niese and Ricky Nolasco, which should be a ripper, or something. If the Mets can pull off a win that'll be exciting even though an awful team does that 60 times a year or so, but if they CAN do that maybe we'll forget the mediocre that lies ahead over the next six months. Or at the very least, perhaps fans can make more hilarious ticket sales pitches like this one.
But even if the Mets are awful, life isn't all bad in the sports realm today.
For one, while all of us were sleeping Geelong kicked some ass in a closer-than-it-needed-to-be affair in Perth in an eventual 89-78 win over Fremantle, which puts the Cats at 2-0 before their big NATIONALLY TELEVISED GAME AGAINST PORT ADELAIDE NEXT WEEK. And by "nationally televised" I mean "in the United States on ESPN2". See? I didn't make up that this sport existed. It may be at midnight on a Saturday night, but since I have to be up early for work the next day anyway, I'll be in front of the TV. Also, I might be tired from my impending trip to Detroit, but more on that later.
In other news, the New Jersey Devils' season is probably over, but there is a minor lift coming tonight when after missing nearly all the season with a torn meniscus, Zach Parise will be back on the ice when the Devils host the Canadiens. The actual impact of his return on this season is probably close to nil, but it'll at least make the Devils fans among us a little happier for the night.
Truth be told though, I probably won't be watching much of either the Devils or the Mets tonight, because rumor has it there are some "basketballgames" of minor import. So yeah, most of my attention will be focused solely on the Final Four, which, while I stand nothing to gain as far as brackets or survival pools are concerned at this point, is still, you know, interesting. Or at least fun.
Besides, if by some chance Butler wins the National Championship or even, heaven's to betsy, Virginia Commonwealth, we'll all have a fun little story to tell our kids about, right? Right?
The answer is yes. We will. More fun than I'll have talking about the 2011 Mets anyway.
Well if that happened we'd probably all be a bit frustrated because it would be just about the least satisfying ending to a great movie we could possibly imagine -- short of the two of them just hugging for a few minutes. No Keyser Soze, no Kobayashi, no Dean Keaton. The Usual Suspects is just a big fat dud at the end.
That would totally suck.
I bring this up because that's pretty much what we got last night with Duke's victory in the NCAA National Championship Game. Don't get me wrong. The game was phenomenal the whole way through, and Butler proved they belonged on the national stage, but after one of the greatest tournaments in recent memory, the team that wound up cutting down the nets was the one team that absolutely no one wanted to see win. And that leaves a profoundly unsatisfying taste in the mouths of just about everyone who doesn't live in Durham, North Carolina.
And it's quite a shame that we lost what could have been the most appropriate ending to such a wild month of basketball when Gordon Hayward heaved up a potential game-winner three-pointer from half court and it clanged off the rim at the buzzer. We were this close to getting what we wanted -- a moment in college basketball that would have been talked about and replayed for decades -- a small school in its home town knocking off mighty Duke University for the National Championship with a buzzer-beater.
Alas, it was not meant to be, and all we have to remember it by is an incredibly lame game story by whomever was writing it for the AP. He actually writes "What a game!" in the story. Good lord.
It is difficult to know that Butler had not one but two chances to take the lead in the final 30 seconds, but in the end, a great game at the end of a phenomenal tournament isn't all that bad. And with the impending expansion of the tournament to 96 teams next year, this isn't the only shining moment college basketball has had, but it may be the last.
In other news, some of you might have noticed that the Mets opened the season yesterday with a solid 7-1 victory over Florida. The game was actually quite taut most of the way until three errors by the defensively inept Marlins opened the floodgates in a four-run sixth inning for New York. Prior to that, Johan Santana and Josh Johnson had been locked up in a tight pitchers duel, with David Wright's first-inning home run providing the only difference. Eventually the Mets would pull away for the comfortable win, continuing their remarkable record of winning on Opening Day.
Now comes the hard part. Playing the other 161 games. With that pitching staff it won't be easy.
As one of my favorite teams begins its season another's regular season is ending. New Jersey is hardly done. Even if they get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs they'll still be playing until late April. Hopefully they'll be around until June. Either way, the next step in the Devils' close race for the Atlantic Division title with Pittsburgh comes tonight in Atlanta, where Ilya Kovalchuk will make his first appearance since the Thrashers dealt him to New Jersey in February.
While that is the big story, however, what may eventually be the biggest is that a win for Martin Brodeur will make him the first ever member of the 600 win club.
A few years ago, when Brodeur had won his 400th game, I did a brief extrapolation to examine how many wins he would wind up with at his current pace. I assumed some things would slow him down, age and perhaps his triceps injury last year among them. But I had found Brodeur could wind up with as many as 700 wins. I never expected that to happen, but with 600 on the horizon, and Brodeur still winning 40 games a year, with perhaps three seasons left in him, well, it doesn't seem quite so far-fetched.
And given that the most anyone else has ever won is 551 games, well, it's mighty impressive. Here's hoping he crosses that next milestone tonight.
In the mid-1990’s there was a commercial for ESPN Sunday Night Baseball in which a Chicago Cubs bobblehead doll nodded its head repeating “This is our year! We can’t be beat!” As it said this, the doll slowly grew a beard and became covered with cobwebs. At the time I thought this was funny, but being that I was young and not particularly well-versed in Cubs history, I didn’t quite understand the depths of why it was so funny or what it truly meant to watch the Cubbies.
There are, to me, few immutable truths or superstitions that are worth relying on in professional sports. Curses, good luck, bad luck, lucky socks, lucky jockstraps, rubbing your bats with fruit, wearing the same uniforms, eating the same pregame meal, velcroing and de-velcroing your batting glove the exact same number of times before each pitch – it’s all complete lunacy. None of it is real, none of it exists, it’s all in your head.
Except one.
There is one superstition that I believe wholeheartedly without any cold data or rational reason.
I haven’t found a Z-Score to determine the statistical significance of how unlikely it was for the Cubs to go more than a century without winning a championship, but given that there are now 30 teams in Major League Baseball, and that for the first 54 years of this streak there were only 16 teams, and if we assume that all things being equal, the Cubs should have made a World Series appearance at least once every eight years as there were only eight teams in the National League until 1962, and also assume they had a 50% chance of winning each of those World Series, well, it seems particularly unlikely that this one baseball team could go more than a century without winning a World Series.
It seems likely that this series of events would happen – all things being equal – less than five percent of the time. From this I can only assume that there is, in fact, a statistically significant bias that is causing the Cubs to have not won a championship. There must be some reason. And so, until it is determined that there is no reason, or the Cubs somehow manage to prove me wrong, I will stick with my belief that the Chicago Cubs will never win the World Series.
Because they are the Chicago Cubs.
Of course, I’m sure there are legions of Cubbies fans ready to prove me wrong on this count. What evidence they have to back themselves up I couldn’t tell you. There’s 101 years of evidence that seem fairly clear cut to me. And ineptitude isn’t the only reason as Wrigleyville has suffered the most disastrous close calls this side of Fenway, such as the black cat at Shea Stadium in 1969, Chicago’s near-miss in 1984 or the devastating collapse of the Bartman Game in the 2003 NLCS.
That last one I remember extremely vividly as I was in my second month at Northwestern University when the collapse occurred. Of course, as Frou Frou might have put it, there’s beauty in the breakdown. Watching the Cubs fall apart just five outs from a World Series berth on Alex Gonzalez’s booted double-play ball and the interference on a foul pop fly down the left field line to Moises Alou, which was muffed by lifelong Cubs fan Steve Bartman, was the way the course of events were supposed to run. Because the Cubs will never win the World Series.
It was life. And in a cruel way, it was beautiful.
I pulled myself down to Sheffield and Waveland Avenues to be a part of the crowd for Game 7, hoping to witness the explosion in Wrigleyville when the Cubs made their first World Series appearance in 58 years. Alas, a rally by the Marlins, who pulled off the upset, meant it was not meant to be. The Fish would go on to an unlikely Championship that year – which I predicted a month earlier, just ask Luisa – and the Cubbies stayed home, wallowing in misery as the bad century continued its march.
I actually attended my first game at Wrigley a month before it all happened on September 28, 2003, clearing up my first order of business as I began my undergraduate career in Evanston by making my first venture inside the friendly confines. That day the confines weren’t exactly friendly – or at least they weren’t comfortable. It was extremely chilly, something that could be said 10 months out of the year in Chicago, and with the Cubs having clinched the 2003 NL Central Division title by sweeping the Pirates in a doubleheader a day earlier, this regular season finale was entirely meaningless.
I got my ticket through Northwestern as this was considered one of the New Student Week activities where you were encouraged to make friends by doing random activities with hundreds people you’ve never met before. While, at that point, I had made a few friends at school, it was still that nebulous period freshman year is heir to – a semester of eating, drinking and socializing with dozens of people you don’t know and who you aren’t sure are your real friends. Eventually, most people find their way – and their friends – and I certainly did that, but it hadn’t happened yet. I went to the game on my own, picking up my ticket at the technical institute and then following the crowd to the Noyes L stop.
Wrigley Field sits at the Addison stop on the Red Line and as the train pulled in, the conductor announced, “This stop, Addison – Wrigley Field, home of the 2003 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs.” Not surprisingly, cheers rang out as I headed out of the station and by the numerous ticket brokers trying to pawn off their last ducats outside the stadium. There are dozens of them. Ticket scalping is a common sight at every stadium, but Wrigley has an abundance of them. If a Cubs game appears to be sold out, have no fear, you will still be able to find a ticket. If you have overwhelming demands such as “being in your seat by first pitch”, you may pay an arm and a leg for one. However, if you wait until the start of the first inning, the prices drop quickly.
Wrigley is a building that looks as old as it is. The exterior is covered with paint that is constantly crackling or peeling, the green roof on top seems lower to the ground than it actually is and the big red marquee behind home plate looks like something out of a Charlie Chaplin film. But I say these things not out of skepticism, but adoration. Where Wrigley lags behind Fenway in terms of city-necessitated quirks or championships it makes up for with an unbelievable amount of charm.
Wrigley’s aged appearance has a friendly appeal that makes it feel warm, even if the weather almost never is. There are moments and days when the weather at Wrigley is wonderful, but they are impossible to predict and disappear as quickly as they come. On some days, if you’re lucky, there will actually be multiple weather patterns within the stadium, as was the case when Evan Hung and I felt 45-degree chills in the upper deck while bleacher bums went shirtless because of the oppressive sun in the outfield. My sophomore year at school I went to all three games the Mets played in Chicago and found myself one night in monsoon-like conditions, the next night under clear skies and 80-degree weather, and the final day stuck in the bleachers shivering as the temperature struggled to break 40. The pain of that day was exacerbated when famed longtime Cubs fan Ronnie “Woo Woo” Wickers, a man who legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray dubbed “Leather Lungs” for his ability to shout for hours at a time, razzed me personally in front of a crowd as I exited the stadium when the Mets fell in extra innings.
Woo Woo has become a cult hero around Wrigleyville, recognized far and wide as one of the most dedicated souls in the Windy City. Wickers has become so popular over the years that he led the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch in 2001, an honor typically reserved for local celebrities or ones who just happen to be passing through the city. Ozzie Osborne once delivered a particularly memorable – and entirely indecipherable – rendition of the tune.
Wickers actually spent most of his adult life as a night custodian at Northwestern before briefly being homeless in the late 1980s, a period during which he attended most games with donated tickets. If nothing else, this is a place where the fans appreciate the other fans. One such notable incident occurred in 2008, when the Cubs allowed someone who had actually seen them win a World Series, 104-year-old Leo Hildebrand, throw out the first pitch to a raucous ovation. Of course, this came after the Cubs front office had initially denied Hildebrand’s request and then caved to a wave of bad press.
Being razzed by Woo Woo was embarrassing and my friends mocked me on most of the ride home, but I’ve since come to view it as an honor of sorts. At the very least, whether he mocks you or not, you know Woo Woo will always be there. He, and perhaps annual disappointment for the Cubs faithful, unlike the weather, are constants around the park.
Wrigley is famed for its Ivy-covered brick outfield walls, and they are a pretty sight to see – and I imagine a painful one to experience – but this only holds true in the later months of the season. In April, the ivy is still reeling from the sub-zero Chicago winters and is a mess of brown and gray. Personally, the ivy isn’t my favorite feature in the old yard even if it is the most famous. For me the two things that truly stick out are the old timey centerfield scoreboard and the extended bleachers across Sheffield and Waveland. The scoreboard is still operated by hand and has pennants of all 16 National League teams hanging above it in division order. It doesn’t seem very far from home plate in the deceptively large building, but the only person to ever hit it, according to legend, is PGA great Sam Snead, who needed a golf ball to do it.
Beyond the scoreboard, the bleachers across the street from Wrigley are a unique characteristic of taking in the Cubs games. Like many old parks, the stadium sits in an urban area where rooftops from across the street can see into the grounds with ease. While people BBQing as they watched the games for free was a practice quietly tolerated by the Cubs for decades, enterprising landowners eventually billed bleachers on the roofs of each building to be rented out during games. Not surprisingly, this brought legal action from the ball club in 2002, with the rooftop owners eventually agree to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Cubs. Since then, the Cubs have advertised the rooftops on their website, endorsing them as “partners” with the team.
One such rooftop across Sheffield Avenue in right field is frequented by the Lakeview Baseball Club, which boasts a famous sign which says, “Eamus Catuli” or what is roughly the Latin for “Let’s Go Cubs”. While the “Catuli” literally translates to “whelp”, the Wrigley faithful have latched on to the phrase anyway, with the same rooftop also posting a sign which says “AC0064101”. AC stands for “Anno Catuli”, or “in the year of the Cub”, while the next two digits count down the years passed since a Cubs division title, with the next two counting years since a National League pennant and the last three the time passed since the Cubs last won the World Series. While division championships have become a norm in recent years, the last two numbers have only gotten larger. However, it speaks to the almost irrational pride these fans have that they would publicize their decades-long futility rather than hide it.
While I went to my fair share of games in college, I almost spent more time around Wrigley than in it. Wrigleyville is a noted weekend hot spot populated by all the Northwestern undergrads who recently turned 21 and want to feel like adults by paying for alcohol they could have gotten for free at a house or apartment party. No, these aren’t the only people drinking in Wrigleyville on a Saturday night, but you’ll almost always bump into someone you know from school if you’re in the neighborhood. While many of the bars are generic, some pay homage to the Cubs’ history, like Merkle’s, which is named for the New York Giants rookie Fred Merkle, whose famous inability to touch second base – known as Merkle’s Boner – cost the Giants the 1908 pennant, launching the Cubs to their most recent World Series title. Others are historic spots in their own right such as the Billy Goat Tavern, which just might be the root of all this pain and suffering. The Tavern’s owner, Billy Sianis supposedly was asked to leave Wrigley during the 1945 World Series because his pet billy goat had an offending odor, prompting Sianis to declare that he would curse the franchise from ever again playing in the Fall Classic.
They haven’t since.
There have been a number of attempts to shed the curse, including a recent bizarre trend of leaving dead goat carcasses hanging from the statue of Cubs announcer Harry Caray outside the stadium. As of yet, these attempts have been unsuccessful. But the first day I was there, the one sense I got more than any other from the fans around me was, certainly, the curse of the Billy Goat wouldn’t be hanging around for much longer. With the Cubs winning a division title and earning a postseason berth, surely this was their year. Of course it wasn’t their year. They are the Cubs after all, but as I soaked in my first day at the legendary ballpark, the fans all seemed carefree, safe in the knowledge that the Central division champs were one step closer to ending a century of heartbreak.
After the first few innings of watching the game by myself, something I don’t particularly enjoy, I was lucky enough to happen upon Adam Rowings, who had been one of a group of Northwestern freshman I went camping with in Minnesota before school started. I would watch the rest of the game, an unremarkable 3-2 win for the Bucs with Adam, a lifelong Cubs fan, who I imagine was also certain Chicago’s World Series drought was set to end that fall. Of course, it was not meant to be, as Steve Bartman’s misfortune became the misfortune of all the Cubs faithful.
Near the end of my college career, I made a point to squeeze in one last game at Wrigley, and was lucky in that my roommate, Abe, and friend David Morrison, were both Marlins fans willing to see a game on May 30, 2007 when the Fish were in town. The primary draw for me, aside from the sheer joy of watching a game in that building, was that it was Alfonso Soriano bobblehead day. The three of us threw caution to the wind and bought pricier seats near the field level. The upshot of this was a great view of the game on a picture perfect night. The downside was nearly three years later, Dave still owes me $50 for the ticket. Dave, however, was my co-beat writer at the Daily Northwestern for Women’s Tennis and Women’s Basketball. Considering Dave probably spent more time with me than anyone who didn’t live with me or date me, I feel like he’s had enough exposure to my neuroses that I should give him a break.
Abe and Dave left happy as the Marlins beat the Cubs up that night. Dan Uggla launched two home runs while Miguel Cabrera and Josh Willingham added longballs of their own en route to a 9-0 thumping. The Cubs had fallen quite a bit since losing the NLCS to these same Marlins four years earlier. Evidently, after another brush with greatness, the Cubs were left to realize that the curse still lives.
In a desperate bid to end the scourge of the Billy Goat, the Bartman baseball was later bought at auction by Harry Caray’s restaurant and blown up in front of an approving crowd. The remains were then boiled with the steam being captured, distilled, and used in a pasta sauce, which would later be served at the restaurant. The proceeds from this dish were donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the same charity that Bartman himself suggested any Marlins fans looking to send him gifts donate their money to.
In theory, the explosion and digestion of the ball was expected to overturn the Curse of the Billy Goat once and for all. How permanently making a symbol of your eternal pain part of you overturns said pain is a concept well beyond me, but at this point I don’t blame Cubs fans for trying everything in the book. No doubt, they are a dedicated lot – they have to be to still love this team without a title in more than a lifetime. But if going to numerous games at the friendly confines and living among Cubs fans for four years taught me anything, it’s that they shouldn’t be worried about the heartbreak of the past. Steve Bartman and every Billy Goat they can find are of no concern to the mighty Catuli and their fans. They are not overwhelmed or beleaguered by the curses, or their title drought. Nowadays they are supremely confident rather than dwelling on their struggles.
After all, as they’ll tell you every April, this is their year.
