The Chris Moeller Archives

Aisle 4, Row 8, Seat 113

Just how close did the Chicago Cubs come to winning their first National League pennant in 58 years on the epic night of October 14, 2003? So close that I had several innings anterior stopped watching that Championship Series Game 6 between the Cubs and the Florida Marlins. As a Cardinals fan fearing imminent destruction of the natural order of things, all I could bare to do was briefly check in on the score during each commercial break of the program(s) I was watching. I had to know what was happening. I just couldn't stand to watch it unfold.

The beauty of baseball-- and sometimes, the bittersweetness of it-- is that the tension builds the later in the game it goes. It's not an inevitable countdown of the clock, punctuated by clumsy time outs, such as it is in football, basketball, or hockey. Nor is it a count-up (huh?), as it is in soccer. No, if you're team achieves the advantage on a baseball scoreboard, there's no stalling out of the clock. You have to go after the other side aggressively. In fact, it's considered strategically-advantageous for pitchers to become more confrontational if they've given a lead to work with-- throw more strikes, the conventional wisdom goes, and don't give your opponents anything for free. As a result, in baseball, each succeeding out that's earned releases a shot of adrenaline in the fan, heightening the drama. One out. Two out. Three out. On to the ninth. I find it all quite pleasing, aesthetically, unless of course you're rooting for the trailing team. It's never hopeless, because there's no clock, but you can feel that hope slipping further away with each out.

I could feel the Cubs fans' intensifying glee through the television with each remote-controlled return to the action, but at one check, I noticed the mood had remarkably changed. Having flipped back, I had no idea what had just happened, but I could see immediately in the corner of the screen that the score was now tied. The Fox Television camera was settled on a pair of Cubs fans silent and sitting on their hands, and the broadcasters were silent also. What had transpired was a series of miscues that had begun with an action taken by a fellow fan named Steve Bartman.



Deadspin and New York Magazine's Will Leitch has written a new book called "Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons and the New Golden Age of Baseball." Leitch is a native of central Illinois six months my junior. That means we've shared roughly the same lives as Midwest baseball fans, and in the service of full disclosure, he's also a Cardinals fan. An excerpt from the book, chronicling the action that I initially missed on 10/14/03, was recently published at Deadspin. I particularly appreciated Leitch's reminder that there were other, now-forgotten, non-Bartman fans in the left-field seats that also reached out for that infamous foul ball sliced off the bat of the Marlins' Luis Castillo. Two other men were next to him, less-positioned but arms also outstretched, completing our enduring image of Steve Bartman on his own Mount Calvary.

posted by CM @ 1:48 PM