This isn't exactly the same thing as a spineless neighbor coming forward five years after the fact to say he'd seen someone other than the doctor murder the doctor's wife. But to a certain fan base and, perhaps, a certain fan, it might rank within the same neighborhood.
That was then: Moises Alou, to reporters, after the disaster, well after he jumped up and down next to the left field stands like a child deprived of a candy bar: I timed it perfectly, I jumped perfectly. I'm almost 100% sure that I had a clean shot to catch the ball. All of a sudden there is a hand in my glove ... hopefully, he won't have to regret it for the rest of his life.
This is now: Moises Alou, a New York Met, with his club off to a 1-1 start and heavy expectations upon their shoulders, harking back to the night that will live in Chicago infamy: Everywhere I play, even now, people still yell, "Bartman! Bartman!" I feel really bad. You know what the funny thing is? I wouldn't have caught it anyway.
Fat lot of good that does Steve Bartman. Though from the sound of things, he's managed to move forward from that night. As well he should have been allowed to do. Why, he even managed to keep himself from strangling ESPN writer Wayne Drehs, when Drehs managed to find him and chat with him for a short while, at the place where Bartman works for an international consulting company, two years after the foul ball seen and heard 'round Cub Country.
"Some might say I blew it, refusing to ask even one question. But there were still plenty of answers," Drehs wrote near the conclusion of his thoughtful essay. "Steve Bartman appears to be doing just fine. He still loves the Cubs, he still follows them as religiously as he ever did and, at least on the surface, his life appears peaceful."
"Steve," I tell him, "I've got one thing before I leave. Regardless of what I do for a living, regardless of the way this all might seem to you, I want to apologize. I want to genuinely apologize, on behalf of all Cub fans, for all the crap you've had to deal with.
"I think it could have been any one of us. And I truly wish you the best. I truly hope you're able to move on and live a happy and prosperous life."Bartman climbs out from behind his car door and extends his hand. We shake.
"Thanks," he says. "I really appreciate those kind words."
— Wayne Drehs, from "Searching for Steve Bartman," 2005.
Drehs did not say, however, whether Bartman can show up in the Confines (we're not going to presume everyone will be Friendly toward him even now, the fools) without armed protection and a police escort.
And we don't necessarily know if he can do it now. The Chicago Tribune describes Bartman as "presumed to be hiding somewhere in the Chicago area." That's the way they used to describe former Nazi concentration camp officers long departed from the grounds they besmirched, to use a polite term.
"Fact of the matter is, and not that Cubs fans want to hear this or will ever acknowledge it, Alex Gonzalez is the guy who should be afraid to come out of his house," fumed Jim Rome, the peripatetic radio host, who thinks Alou is about five years too late and five dollars too short with his absolution. "He was the one who kicked a routine inning-ending double-play ball moments later. He's the one you should hate, not Bartman."
Maybe the Mets should start worrying a little bit. Two of the catalysts for that play are now Mets — Alou, who leaped futilely to try catching the foul fly Bartman snared as a clean foul ball (watch the videos, ladies and gentlemen: I said it then and I'll say it again, that ball was clearly out of play, by just enough over the stands rail, and within any fan's right to try to snatch); and, Luis Castillo, then a Florida Marlin, who hit the foul in the first place.
Never mind the classic ex-Cub factor (you know, the team with the most ex-Cubs loses). The Mets may have to deal with a classic in the making, an ex-Cub Disaster factor. You know: the team with the most catalysts for a Cub demolition gets theirs. They had Alou and Castillo on the club last season, too. And you know what happened (though neither Alou nor Castillo were big factors therein) after the National League East lead slipped to a mere seven games.
Meanwhile, for those who still think poor Bartman should have been made the guest of honor at a necktie party, let's look again at what actually did happen after Alou couldn't have caught the Castillo foul.
A pitch or two later, Mark Prior unhorsed a wild pitch allowing Juan Pierre (on second with a one-out double) to help himself to third, before Castillo wrung out a walk. Ivan Rodriguez swatted a single to left to send home Pierre and set up a nifty inning-ending double-play with first and second, one out, and the Cubs still holding a 3-1 lead.
Up stepped Miguel Cabrera, now a very wealthy man about Detroit. Out to shortstop bounded his meager swat. And right off Alex Gonzalez's chest went the ball that would have been, and should have been, side retired, and not bases loaded and one out for Derrek Lee.
You want to know one big reason why the Cubs coveted and landed Lee in due course? Lee didn't wait for the Cubs to rehorse themselves. He shot a two-run double to left, tying the score and sending Prior out in favor of Kyle Farnsworth, who put Mike Lowell on intentionally to re-load the bases and reset a double play that would have kept the game tied.
Farnsworth got one out when Jeff Conine sent home Cabrera with a sacrifice fly, then walked pinch hitter Todd Hollandsworth intentionally to reset the pads. But Mike Mordecai, a Florida backup shortstop brought in during a seventh-inning double switch to spell the Marlins' Alex Gonzalez, who'd opened the fateful inning with a fly out to left, sent a three-run double over the middle and to the back of the park. Exit Farnsworth, enter Mike Remlinger, and into right went Pierre's RBI single, before Remlinger got Castillo to pop out to second to end the inning that should have ended six hitters earlier.
The sides went one-two-three the rest of the way, Kerry Wood didn't quite have enough for the seventh game, and the Marlins went on to dump the Yankees in the World Series. And there were those who thought immediately that Steve Bartman should have gone at minimum onto the next flight to Antarctica.
But then there are real Cub fans. We presume. "Real Cub fans," writes Sean Devaney, in a pleasant Sporting News special, ("Losing"), "were not angry with Steve Bartman. Real Cubs fans had some existential understanding about the situation. It had to happen because it's simply the order of things."
They said similar things in and around Red Sox Nation about Bill Buckner (himself an ex-Cub at the time), too. So who's the idiot who told Buckner's then 7-year-old son — who piped up sympathetically, playing catch with his father one day, when father missed a low throw, "That's okay, Dad, I know you have a problem with grounders" — that father had a problem with grounders? And where were the real Red Sox fans to convince Buckner he didn't have to leave New England at last?
Real Cub fans may not be angry with Steve Bartman now, they may not have been angry then, but wouldn't it be nice to know for dead last certain that Bartman can live even one day without even one reminder that he may still be the single most hated figure in Chicago sports since...
Charlie Grimm? Not quite. Jolly Cholly's been absolved long enough from wheeling out Hank Borowy on one day's rest rather than take well rested Hy Vandenburg out of the doghouse to pitch the seventh game of the 1945 World Series.
Phil Wrigley? Nah. Everyone thinks the College of Coaches was just a three-year gag. Though he still might have to answer for why his people's infatuation with Ernie Broglio allowed them to ignore Lew Burdette's warning that Broglio's arm was a dying wing.
Leo Durocher? Not even close. And he did more — with his avarice, with his capriciousness, with his nearsightedness — to thwart the 1969 Cubs than his exhausted players or some of their more venomous fans could have done. (And that's saying a lot: some Wrigley bleacher creatures took to hollering the names of actual or alleged St. Louis Cardinals road paramours at Cardinal outfielders during one set, inspiring Bob Gibson — so it was said — to beg for a start out of turn just so he could jam it down the Cubs' throats.)
Leon Durham? Bill Buckner paid for his sin.
Moises Alou might have meant nothing but the best trying to pay for Alex Gonzalez's sin. But where was he when Steve Bartman needed him? Oh, that's right. He was jumping up and down making gestures meant to say he'd have bagged that ball otherwise, in the heat of the immediate moment.
If you remember The Fugitive (the television series, not the film), you remember five years on the run ended when David Janssen's title character and the police lieutenant who finally bagged him were shocked to discover someone had seen Janssen's wife being murdered — and not by the husband who was convicted of the crime.
So what finally convinced Moises Alou he'd really seen the one-armed man?
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