Original subtitles

Este ESPN Films presentación es brought to you by Buick.

This is really a story about the fans, almost more than the players.

In the Cubs game in 2003, the Bartman game, we see from the film that there are

a lot of fans who are pretty unfair to Bartman, where he just reaches out for a

foul ball, and suddenly he's the focus of all the enmity and anger in the middle of,

you know, 40,000 fans.

The vibe around Wrigley Field is so upbeat and positive and so friendly.

They call it the friendly confines.

So, in a way, it's deeply ironic that this event should happen at Wrigley.

This is the one time that the fans went to a really dark place.

What are the chances of catching a ball at the ballpark?

Out of 40,000 seats, what are the odds that a ball will seek you out?

By ball to left, toward the line, Alou over.

Imagining that possibility is part of the magic of baseball.

But for one fan, the dream of making that catch

turned into a nightmare he could never have imagined.

And leaping up, Alou cannot make the play.

And Moises is unhappy with the fans.

But Moises went into the seats.

He could have had that ball.

A fan interfered with him.

A loyal fan, a young man named Steve Bartman, who wanted to catch a ball,

caught something else instead.

All right, welcome back on WGN Radio Sports Central.

I'm David Kaplan.

And Alex Gibney is in the studio with me.

He is directing a documentary on Steve Bartman and

everything that went into that fateful night through today.

Phone lines are lit up.

People want to talk.

At the time, was I mad?

Oh, yeah.

I was madder than could be because, oh, he could

have caught the ball but it kind of got in the way.

I think the big factor was the crowd's reaction.

Everyone that was there just was clenching.

And I think if the fans had just let it go and just continued to be behind the Cubs

and support him, I think it would have been a totally different outcome.

But the fans all fed off of the reaction of Moises Alou.

When Alou looks at him, slamming his fist, that's what really causes, I think,

the building reaction in the stadium.

How did you get into this project?

Well, it's a funny one.

I mean, in a way I took a peculiar roundabout way into this one because I'm

not, you know, I have some Chicago connections but I actually grew up in Boston.

And it was through the pain of 1986 that I recognized the agony here in Chicago.

A slightly different thing, but still that moment where you're so close to tasting,

you know, that post-season glory.

And in Boston, we were one strike away, there was

nobody on base, and then everything just collapsed.

And Bill Buckner, not unlike, you know, Steve Barton, became the scapegoat there.

Like Bartman, Buckner's nightmare began with a ball that was begging to be caught.

Two hops and a dribble.

For years, I would freeze the moment just before the ball got to Buckner's glove.

I wanted the dream, not the nightmare.

The dreams are that you're going to have a great series and win.

And the nightmares are that you're going to let the

winning run score on a ground ball through your legs.

So, you know.

Five-three Red Sox.

Galvin Chiraldi.

Trying to finish off the Mets and the 1986 baseball season.

And that's it to dead center with Henderson going to run it down.

And the Mets are down to their last out.

1986 is one of the great post-seasons in baseball history.

NBC broadcaster Bob Costas was in the Red Sox locker room.

The Mets had won the 1969 World Series.

The Red Sox hadn't won since 1918.

And it had an excruciating series of near misses.

Well, it was to be my job to interview the winners.

And the only team that could win the World Series that night was the Red Sox.

Because they were ahead three games to two.

And they have already covered up all of the lockers with some sort of plastic so

that the clothes won't be wrecked by the anticipated spray of champagne.

They've rolled in the championship trophy on some sort of table.

The cameras and all the cables are there.

And now they're on the verge of winning the World Series.

Blind into left field.

Base hit for Carter.

And the Mets are still alive.

Well, a base hit.

A little bloop single.

Base hit.

No big deal.

One guy on.

Not a big deal.

And I am up there in the right field looking at the left field scoreboard.

And it says congratulations to the 1986 world champion Boston Red Sox.

It just flashed up for a moment.

Was it an evil omen?

Curve ball.

And that's gonna be hit to center.

Base hit.

And now suddenly...

Boston fans always looked for omens and signs about why they lost.

In 1986 the Red Sox hadn't won since 1918 with their star player Babe Ruth.

The next year when the Sox sold Ruth to the

Yankees that began the curse of the Bambino.

And it goes back to the curse of the Bambino.

I really believe I'm a superstitious guy.

Now it's like Shakespeare.

I'm like waiting with a bated breath to see what collapse is gonna happen.

And that's gonna be hitting the center field.

Base hit.

Here comes Carter to score.

And the time run is at third in Kevin Mitchell.

John McNamara goes to the mound.

5-4 Red Sox and he's also going to the bullpen.

He wants Bob Stanley to pitch to Mookie Wilson.

When John McNamara brought in Bob Stanley, it didn't seem like a winning move.

It sounded like the trumpeter who just sounded the call for a retreat.

But inside the clubhouse, busy hands arrange

the champagne for the inevitable celebration.

Mike Weissman is the producer and he's in my ear and

I say to Mike, what do I do if the Mets tie the game?

And he says, get your ass out of there as fast as you possibly can.

And it's gonna go to the backstop.

Here comes Mitchell to score the tie in line.

After Stanley's wild pitch, league officials picked up

the champagne in the series trophy and fled the clubhouse.

Costas stayed behind with a small skeleton crew.

Can you believe this ball game has changed?

Years later, I wondered why no one made more of that moment.

So the winning run... Until Stanley's wild pitch, a terrible mistake.

The Sox were ahead.

Why did no one focus on that moment?

Little roller up along first, behind the bag!

It gets through Buckner!

When the ball went through Buckner's legs, it was as if time stood still.

And then you got Knight coming home, and he's holding the sides of his head.

He's like delirious, like he can't believe what's happened.

Here comes Knight and the Mets win it!

The cameramen are backing out, they're pulling the cable out,

as quickly as you would break down and change a scene in a Broadway show.

In, out, gone, not a trace.

Four times in that final inning, the Mets were down to their last strike.

But they didn't lose, the Red Sox did.

I couldn't sleep for a week.

As the Red Sox came down the tunnel, there wasn't a sound from any of them.

And then somebody crashed a bat against a wall, broke it

in half, and I heard a single word, and that word was F***!

No one knew it at the time, but Buckner would

become the lone symbol of Red Sox futility.

I wondered why.

By the time the ball rolled actually to the side

of Buckner's glove, there had been a wild pitch.

There had been, you know, a pitcher who was scared to death, who started giving up

hits just when he had victory in his grasp.

So it's never that one thing.

Yet somehow, it was only the Buckner play that passed into legend.

Was it the cruel poetry of the image?

The ball passing between his legs and rolling into the empty outfield?

As I looked back and relived the play, which I've done many

times, I just couldn't understand how I missed the ball.

It's unfortunate that it happened, but that's baseball.

All I can say is, I've never played in the seventh game of the World Series,

and I get to play one now, and I hate to say it because

I missed the ground ball, but that's the way it goes.

The media immediately focused on the Buckner boot.

After the wild pitch.

They quickly moved past Stanley's wild pitch, and Stanley

himself seemed only too happy to cast the blame elsewhere.

It was just a sinker on the ground at first base.

Didn't make the play.

Like, so close.

Yeah, so close, but it's never over till it's over.

Pretty tough moment in the clubhouse.

Everyone went by Buck, and Buck was fine, but

we felt in the clubhouse it wasn't his fault.

The Buckner moment ends the game.

So it has the feeling of finality.

And Buckner gets not just a disproportionate amount of the blame,

he gets all the blame.

I don't think that any of us knew at that moment what this would become in terms of

symbolism, or Red Sox history, or Bill's unfortunate history.

As time wore on, the media tightened their focus on Buckner.

The next day, the media, they asked me, how are

you going to deal with this the rest of your life?

You lost this game for the team, and... I go, wait a minute.

You know, I didn't lose the game for the

team, and we haven't even finished the series.

Probably in the minds of someone ended the World Series.

They think it was Game 7.

But in truth, that was Game 6, and then it was tied 3-3.

The next night was a rain out.

Game 7 of the World Series still is on for tonight, following a one-day rain delay,

and the fact that there's a seventh game at all is

a nightmare without end for Red Sox fans everywhere.

And no one is more eager to end this nightmare than the man who had such a

prominent role in creating it, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner.

Tonight, I hope that I get a chance to win the ballgame.

I hope I come up with the bases loaded, and the two out in the ninth.

The Red Sox had a 3-0 lead, but lost the final game 8-5.

When the final out was made, Bill Buckner was on deck.

But as it turned out, this was not the end of Buckner's story.

It was only the beginning.

Behind the bag!

It gets through Buckner!

Here comes night!

I remember in 86, I almost sought psychiatric help after that series.

I was, you know, lying awake at night, wondering,

you know, why was it that I was still so upset?

Because it's not just a game.

Your heart is into it.

Right.

When the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs, it was personal.

It was different than it would have been in

any other city and with any other franchise.

People said to themselves, that guy let me down, not the team, not the franchise,

not the city.

Me!

Obviously, the New England fans were upset.

They felt like something got taken away from them.

And it's almost like they're on the team.

And, you know, when the team doesn't win, I didn't lose.

Buckner lost.

You know?

Point the finger.

The question is, why did the town need a scapegoat?

In Boston, all of life's disappointments, a lousy job, a bad marriage, a terrible

accident, why isn't life better, are all confirmed when the Red Sox lose.

Buckner was there to take the heat for us.

Well, I'm from Boston, so no matter what

you do to Bill Buckner, it's not bad enough.

That's, you know, that's just, you can't overrate what happened there.

You know, you broke the hearts of people in six states.

It was not all his fault, but the ball didn't

go between my legs, it went between his legs.

Bill Buckner doing one of these.

What can I tell you?

And I could handle that, but my wife was very upset.

That hurt more than any personal thing.

To me, the family was the most important thing.

Bucky dead, Bill Buckner.

Every time I turned around, he was getting a

**** between his **** legs, and he couldn't.

Billy Buck's got his pants adjusted, so he could fit three balls between his legs.

Keep his eye on the **** ball.

End of the World Series.

We've been waiting for decades to try to get a

championship, and this **** hole lets the ball go through.

Bill Buckner can rot in hell.

There have been other critical errors in the series, but

so far it is Buckner's error engraved on America's mind.

Who picked it out?

You know, who decided this was... this was it, you know?

Whoever decided on it, it remains an iconic image of futility.

And to millions, it will always be the way that Bill Buckner will be remembered.

There's a lot of guys that have careers like I did that will never be remembered.

Steve Lyons played with Buckner in 86, but

was traded away from the team in mid-season.

I think that we would all much rather be remembered for a, you know, seventh game

home run in the World Series that, you know, kind of

immortalizes your career, but mine was kind of off the wall.

I was trying to beat out a bunt, and I slid headfirst into first base,

and I was out, but they called me safe, so I was like, yeah!

Good effort by Steve Lyons!

And I stood up, and I felt all this dirt running down the inside of my pants,

and I forgot I was still standing on first base, and I

just brain cramped and pulled my pants down right there.

People ask me all the time what I was thinking, and clearly nothing, you know?

There was no brain waves at the time.

I'll take that over Bill Buckner any day.

In a career where he had played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs,

and the Red Sox, among others, Buckner had a batting title and more hits

than legendary sluggers Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio.

To be famous for an error was more than ironic.

It haunted a legacy that was spurred by a deep childhood wound.

My dad, he was an alcoholic.

Things weren't good at home.

He, you know, he killed himself when he was, when I was 12 or 13.

I think that when you go through something like that, you've got to escape some,

some way.

You know, I think my escape was to go into sports.

In 1993, Bill Buckner moved away from Boston for good.

In Chicago, despite op-ed appeals to move

on, the Bartman play still haunts the city.

Do you as a Cub fan still blame Steve Bartman?

Jim is in Lombard.

Jim, welcome to WGN Radio.

I was about 15 years behind Bartman when the incident happened.

You know, I feel a lot different now than I did when it originally happened.

I felt really bad for the guy.

He's been through and how his life has changed completely just by one incident.

One of the things I found interesting about the Bartman

story was just why there was so much focus on him.

It'd be really interesting to know just how

Bartman became the scapegoat at that game.

Chicago, like Boston, is a town with a baseball history of disappointment.

The Cubs had their own curse, the curse of the billy goat, named for an incident when

a tavern owner put a curse on the Cubs for banning

his goat from the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.

Murphy and I curse you!

The Cubs, they not gonna win anymore!

Just like in Boston, the pain of losing in Chicago was not a casual matter.

It was personal.

Yeah, I've been a Cubs fan my entire life.

My dad was a Cubs fan.

His father was a Cubs fan.

My dad lived and died without ever seeing the Cubs win the World Series.

The Cubs last won the series in 1908.

And for many years, that seemed to be enough.

There's a quasi-spiritual quality to being a Cubs fan because

you have to believe and you believe against all reason.

This is Bill Slater with new shots from our sports

album showing National League clubs in spring training.

And here come the Chicago Cubs!

It's gonna be a hot race this year.

You're not going to win, but you don't know it yet.

It's like the guy who's been divorced six times and still believes in love.

It's just what it is to be a Cubs fan.

Think about this in entirely personal terms.

There's this photograph of me in my Cubs uniform.

My fantasies as a six-year-old were just bound up in, you

know, playing shortstop for the Cubs and winning with the Cubs.

Unlike the Red Sox, the Cubs rarely came close to winning.

They played in Wrigley Field, known as the Friendly Confines,

where generous fans embraced their players as loveable losers.

But in 1969, it looked like things might change.

Ron Santo clicked his heels in celebration for every win.

And there were many.

Then one day, a black cat wandered past Santo in the on-deck circle.

Another curse to the Cubs, who lost to the Miracle Mets in 1969.

How can they lose every year?

How in the hell can it be that the Cubs never even get to the World Series?

For all the talk of the lovable losers among older

fans, younger fans see the Cubs a bit differently.

I mean, in my lifetime, if you look at the

history of the Cubs, they've been really good.

So for me, I don't necessarily, you know, understand the heartbreak like

somebody who's, you know, 80 years old might.

In 1984, propelled by players like Bill Buckner, the

Cubs looked like a team destined for the playoffs.

In late May, in return for pitcher Dennis Eckersley,

Bill Buckner was traded to the Boston Red Sox.

I'm going to miss everybody.

They've got a great bunch of guys in the clubhouse and some great players.

You look at Leon Durham and Jody Davis and Ryan Saber.

They're three of the best young players in baseball today.

In the best of five playoffs, the Cubs won the first two games.

The World Series was a game away.

Those 84 Cubs, to me, they're like superheroes.

Those guys couldn't lose.

Then, ironically, it was left to Bill Buckner's replacement at first base,

Leon Durham, to fulfill the Cubs' destiny.

Ground ball hit to Durham, right through his leg!

Well, it didn't work out quite so well.

It was a ground ball that went through a

particular first baseman's legs in San Diego.

The Cubs' defeat in 84 would turn on an error that

would be eerily like the Buckner miscue two years later.

Supernatural fears were confirmed when curse-hunting fans discovered a photo

which revealed that Buckner's play in the field may have been haunted by a Cubs'

batting glove he had worn under his mitt.

While Cub fans lived in fear of curses, the team itself

did not strike fear in the hearts of opposing players.

For me, as a player, you always loved to go to Chicago.

Fans were great.

But you didn't go to Chicago worried about, oh my goodness, we're playing the Cubs.

But in 2003, Hope reared its head once more.

Dusty Baker was hired from San Francisco, where

he had just taken the Giants to the World Series.

Dusty Baker again pushed all the right buttons.

I had known Dusty Baker.

He kind of talked me into it.

I'm thinking, you know, alright, this is probably about it.

I've done what I wanted to do in baseball.

You know, I was past my prime.

I've played all this time in L.A., you know, try something new.

But I had no expectation that, you know, the season that we would have,

there would be anything like that.

The Cubs had great defense up the middle, aided by the sure-handed shortstop,

Alex Gonzalez.

There's one, there's two.

He also hit 20 home runs.

Deep toward left field.

We asked for it.

We have got it.

Cubs win.

5-4, Alex Gonzalez.

Moises Alou had 22 more.

He scored 20.

Sammy Sosa had 40.

Way out of this ballpark.

That one's down Catmore.

Over the tree.

And the pitching staff was impressive.

Carlos Sombrano.

Kerry Wood.

The one hopper behind the back.

Ole.

Throw him out.

And especially Mark Pryor, who dominated hitters all year.

And there is the strikeout.

He's got eight of them in the game.

Eight shutout innings against the Cardinals.

On September 27, 2003, the Cubs swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I ended up catching the ball.

We clinched the division.

Interestingly enough, the Red Sox were also a potent team that year.

Was this a year to break all curses?

This is 2003.

Somebody's long wait is going to be over.

Either 1908 or 1918, it looks like the Red Sox and

the Cubs are going to meet in the World Series.

In Yankee Stadium with a three-run lead in

the eighth inning, I was counting the outs.

It didn't help.

2003 slips away from the Red Sox when Grady Little sticks with Pedro Martinez

too long and Aaron Boone hits the extra-inning home run.

I was in the stands.

It was all too familiar.

Hope drowned in a sea of cheering Yankee faces.

They are waiting for him at home plate and now he dives into the scrum.

But in Atlanta, the Cubs had not faltered.

Swing and a miss, strike three.

Cubs win.

Bring on the Marlins.

They beat the Braves and prepared to play the Florida Marlins for the ML title.

Here comes Dusty Baker out and the Cubs will be home for

the National League Championship Series on Tuesday night.

Bring on the Marlins.

My experience in Chicago in 03, I feel like

every player should have that type of experience.

03 was a magical year.

There's no question about the Chicago Cubs were

the Cinderella team in baseball this season.

Maybe the feel-good story in all of baseball.

They haven't won anything in 95 years.

Dusty comes in, turns them from lovable losers into winners.

But if there's a glass slipper and if there's

a crack in it, it could be the Florida Marlins.

After dramatic wins in Florida, the Cubs returned

to Chicago leading the Marlins three games to two.

Only one more win and the Cubs would go to the World Series.

Where are we at?

Rayfield.

Rayfield.

My brother and me were up in the upper deck.

Alright, here's our seats.

There was a lot of electricity.

I think everybody thought, you know, the Cubs

were going to go to the World Series that night.

We welcome you to Wrigley Field in Chicago.

October 14, 2003, none of us will ever forget.

This was the Chicago Cubs playing one game to get to the World Series.

That day, I remember, the uneasiness almost of the crowd pervaded.

It was everywhere.

The years and years of frustration for Cubs fans was right at the surface.

It was ready to bust out.

I've never been this nervous at those ballparks.

This place is ready to explode, that's for sure.

I just wanted to see them in the World Series so badly.

It just really felt like it was going to happen.

I've been going to Cubs games since I was five years old.

It was pretty surreal, just, you know, get

to that point and be that close to the field.

It was exciting to see Pryor.

As Pryor warmed up that night, you could feel that he had his good stuff.

He is the candidate for Cy Young from this Cubs team.

It's the biggest game of his life.

If he wants that award, he's got to prove it tonight.

It seemed like after 95 years, this was going

to be the year and this was the game to do it.

You have Pryor on the mound and he's throwing a great game.

The Cubs struck first.

Fourth inning, bottom of the fourth, 1-0 Cubbies.

The crowd feels anxious.

I mean, I feel some anxiety.

We need to score some runs and I think we're going to.

So, I'll drink to that.

In the sixth inning, Dusty Baker tapped Eric Karros

to bat against the left-hander, Dontrell Willis.

I went in the middle of the game as a pinch hitter.

3-1 now to Karros, who is 2-5 in his career against Willis.

This may be the only batter Dontrell Willis faces.

And that ball gets away.

And the Cubs lead 2-0.

Wow, the wave is going crazy.

Cubs are up by two.

Things are looking good.

Cubs lead here 2-0.

We're in the seventh.

Can Mark Pryor be the pitcher to get the Cubs to the World Series?

I thought with Pryor on the hill, we're going to win that game.

I remember, you know, out at first base, you know, just trying to stay calm.

In the air, right field.

Sosa drifting, hitting over.

The Cubs.

Six outs away.

Despite the Cubs lead, there was still an undercurrent of nervous tension.

And then there was an omen in the seventh-inning stretch.

The ball came.

Take me out with the crowd.

A majority of the people were waiting for something bad to happen.

Backstone with root.

Root, root for the jam.

Jam!

Like Bernie Mac singing the Champs, you know,

in the seventh-inning stretch, whatever.

It's like, why did he do that?

One, two, three strikes you up for the old ball game!

As soon as that happened, people were like, I knew it!

I knew we were going to lose this thing!

It's like, we're still winning the f***ing game.

Relax.

Bottom of the seventh inning.

Wes Alonik, a floater into center field and a fall to hit.

They will wave around.

Bako, three-nothing!

Chicago!

Paul Bako scores!

We're a three-nothing!

They went up three to zero.

I feel like this is unbelievable.

The Cubs are going to go to the World Series.

Then the eighth-inning happened.

Here's what happened in the fateful inning, 2003, game six.

The 2-1 pitch.

Fly ball left field.

Shallow.

Alou waiting.

He's got it!

Five outs to go!

Five more outs!

Five more outs!

Five more!

First of all, you shouldn't count down outs.

You can ask any Red Sox fan, you never count outs.

Right?

I knew better.

I was counting the damn outs.

I was counting the outs from the fifth inning on.

I think most of the fans in the stands were.

We're not allowed to root for a team, but we were counting, too.

We knew we were on the border of history.

They were five outs away.

And I'm sitting there and, you know, hanging on every pitch.

Fires a strike.

It looked like, hey, this is the position that we want to be in.

And if you're the Florida Marlins, you know,

you're looking for something crazy to happen.

So, describe the crazy thing that happened.

Wow.

I had my cell phone in my pocket and my notepad

and I was waiting for history to be made.

And I see the ball off the left-handed bat kind of curl away out of my line of sight

because I was in the tunnel and my vision to the left was blocked.

I saw the foul ball go down the line and I saw it go

into the seats and didn't really think anything of it.

I mean, I figured it was going to be out of play or Lou's going to catch it.

When the ball got hit, I mean, to me, it was coming right at me.

The ball is hit, we all stand up and we see the ball coming towards us.

Everybody's instinct at that point is, this is a great game, I want the foul ball.

When that ball first went up, I thought it was foul, like, right away.

I didn't think that it was in play.

I don't think most people thought it was in play.

A Lou almost had an amazing catch.

Good try, Lou!

Now Moises Alou is down here and the wall is pretty high.

It's high up.

The seats are angled weird.

I mean, I'm not even thinking, even though

I'm on the wall, it's pretty far down there.

So, the part about playing, you know, playable

ball never even entered my head at all.

About 20 people that were grabbing at that ball.

Everybody around us, I mean, it was pretty crazy.

I couldn't even see a Lou from the seat that I was at.

I mean, because we were looking up.

We're all looking up and there are those among us who are trying to get the ball.

Those among us who are trying not to get hit by the ball.

And those among us who didn't want to get trampled

by the people who were going to go for the ball.

I was one of the ones not wanting to be trampled by the people.

So, at the last second, the ball, which looks like it's going behind me,

blows forward.

The wind blows it forward.

Es el punto.

Que memebra dieserなので papel al final del tren de la película.

Es la reacción natural de los faneses de acuamos a esa fulza.

La reacción natural de cuando la pulga está

Y, ya sabes, es para hacer una playa.

Y estaba como... ¡Hole!

¡Hole!

Y sabía instantly que era mal, que podría haber tenido una playa en la bala.

Cuando lo sucedió, cuando lo vi Moises reagir de

esa manera, el tiempo quedó por un momento ahí.

No sé si eso ocurrió en la historia de hacer eventos, pero tenía que registrarme.

¿Dónde he visto eso?

Steve Lyons, I remember saying within seconds, this could be huge.

That could be huge.

There's no question that that was a huge play because

I totally believe that Alou would have caught the ball.

So I got to think down in the truck, all hell's breaking

loose because they're not even sure how to cover it.

We have how many cameras?

13, 14 cameras in a playoff game covering every bit of the action.

I probably got on my feet and screamed, I need to see everything we have on this.

Everybody show me what you got.

Let's go, everybody.

Prior immediately turned to the umpire and pointed at the fan.

The umpire's all over it.

The umpire right down there, Mike Everett's on the play.

That's awfully close to fan interference right there.

If Alou has to reach into the stands, it's

fair game for the fans to catch the ball.

If the fan reaches out over the field, then it can be ruled fan interference.

That is very, very close.

We had to use as many angles of that replay of the fan possibly interfering

with the ball to give the people at home and actually to give ourselves a feel for

exactly what had happened because it was undecipherable as to whether or not Alou

was reaching in ¿O el fan fue reaching out onto el fiel?

Reaching into the stands and couldn't get it.

Es riddled with a fan.

On the field, you can't really tell.

You're thinking, okay, the ball was in the stands.

But then his frustration when he does this, then I'm thinking, dang,

he could have... I mean, I think he thinks he could have caught that ball.

Obviously, he was upset that he didn't get a chance to catch it, but he really threw

kind of a little temper tantrum, you know, a little fit.

I was so surprised that he was over there in position to catch it.

I think that he was, too.

He was like, I'm over here, I got a chance to make this play.

And then you stole it from me?

I was just right with him.

What's with this guy?

What is with this guy?

And when he, you know, goes, you know, like, could have had it, could have had

it, everybody in the ballpark went, yeah, we could have had it.

And as soon as that happened, the entire dynamic in that stadium changed.

I remember the whole place, it was just like the air was let out.

What the hell happened?

Who touched the ball?

Who got in the way?

Josh Doust, sitting with his brother in the upper deck, captured the play with his

video camera from an angle never seen before.

I was shooting and, you know, just happened to follow the actual hit.

We didn't know from the upper deck, really, what had happened, except that

something had happened because Moises Lou was so disappointed.

Steve Bartman apparently deflects the ball.

It lands at my feet and one of the guys I'm with picks up the ball.

We all start high-fiving him.

The guy that grabbed it I seen turned out to be a friend of mine.

He was going to celebrate with the ball like, hey, I got a ball.

And I'm like, Jim, sit down, man.

You know, you have no idea what just happened.

All we see is this guy holding up the ball.

Somebody take the ball from him.

Initially, you thought he was the bad guy.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

The guy with the ball is not the one that caused the problem.

Someone had got, you know, a phone call saying, hey, it wasn't, you know, that guy.

It was, you know, the guy with the green turtleneck and the headphones.

It was you.

Somebody hit that!

Hit him!

I remember thinking, if they don't get out of this

inning, this poor guy is, you know, he's done for.

It's funny because in the dugout, we saw, you know, obviously the ball thing.

I remember Mark Redman, one of our pitchers, said, let's

make him famous, you know, make this a turning point.

ESPN Films presents The Vault, brought to you by Bank of America.

I hated him.

I hated Parker.

It's irrational.

It's not rational.

It's not fair.

It's not smart on any level.

You know, it's a pop fly down the third baseline.

Everybody's going to reach for the ball.

The worst part is, I don't even feel bad about the days that I hated Bartman.

And that's really bad.

But when you grow up with your team, and you live and die

with your team, and you have this happen, it's irrational.

And I know it's irrational, but I think most of us can't help it.

This ESPN Films presentation is brought to you in part by Bank of America.

For more exclusive ESPN Films content, log on to ESPN.com and search ESPN Films.

This ESPN Films time capsule is brought to you by Jameson Whiskey.

Taste above all else.

I'm a human being.

I'm a man just like everybody else.

The pitch gets away from Rocco, and advancing on to third is Pierre.

After Castillo got the walk, we thought that the Marlins, had another chance.

The next guy up got a base hit.

Into left field, a base hit.

Pierre scores to make it a 3-1 ballgame.

The tying run is aboard.

As a player, I'm not thinking, oh, here we go.

The wheels are coming off.

I'm not, you know, okay.

But it just seemed collectively like, this is it.

This is the beginning of how it all unraveled.

Round ball and the hole is short.

And bobbled by Gonzales and everybody's safe.

So, Alex Gonzales just bobbled a possible tailor-made double play.

Everybody thinks this is the end now.

It's almost self-fulfilling in a way.

You know, of course Gonzales boots the ball and they don't get the double play.

Looks like Gonzales is trying to just make this play a little too quickly.

This is an easy play.

You're talking about a shortstop.

Gonzales, who led the league in fielding that year, as sure-handed as they come,

just closed his glove too quickly and clanks it and it's sitting there.

There was a lead pipe cinched double play ball and he drops it.

I mean, they would have been out of the inning,

even with everything that had gone wrong.

Does anyone even remember this image?

Why isn't this moment played again and again?

Why was Bartman the one?

Alex Gonzales boots the ground ball.

You have a hard time getting people to explain why

it was that Bartman's play, you know, cost the game.

Because there were so many things that went wrong.

Hammered down the left field line.

Scoring is Castillo.

Scoring is Rodríguez.

It's a 3-3 a game.

Tie ball game.

Then it seemed as though the whole momentum of the game turned the Marlins

attitude into, we can do this and turn the Cubs and their fans attitude into,

oh no, not again.

Silence here at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

They are stunned, Tommy.

It was so reminiscent of game six in 86.

The Marlins have tied the game prior.

Once the Marlins started to come back, the Cubs started coming apart at the seams.

Were the players choking?

Or as many would later conclude, had Bartman's

grab for the ball invoked a Cubs curse?

Let go.

You don't think it was Alex Gonzales' error?

Alex Gonzales' error.

That hole out there.

It's at that moment, we really started to see that this fan

interference play really could be even bigger than we had thought.

You know, we've been looking at the footage.

There were a lot of people who go up for that ball.

You know, I went for the ball.

I mean, I... There's no way.

I mean, I obviously went for the ball.

I mean, but once I saw his glove, I mean, I had no interest in the ball.

Here at Wrigley, when the opposing team hits a

home run, they throw the ball back onto the field.

I'm surprised someone hasn't thrown that fan onto the field.

When he said that, I laughed, because I normally did when he came up with

something clever, and it was, uh, I thought it was appropriate.

I thought that was what some of those fans must have been thinking.

But the human element took over.

Yeah, that felt bad.

That'd be interesting.

You could tell it was obvious that he felt bad.

He seemed to be slumped over and had a sad look on his face.

I was thinking, oh my gosh, um, this poor kid.

And I was concerned that we showed his face too much.

I was concerned I did too many replays on him.

Now, keep in mind, Wrigley Field is the only stadium without a Jumbotron.

There's no big screen for replays.

And I think that's very important to know, because when that play happens,

if you're not sitting right around Bartman,

you don't really know what the heck happened.

But the fans outside the park were listening to radio, except for one guy was

standing out there with the television on his head.

And what's happening with the telecast at that point is

they keep on replaying the Bartman incident over and over.

Now, this famous f***hole, f***hole chant starts.

They're all chanting f***hole.

They want that guy booted.

They want that fan booted.

They want the fan who interfered booted.

They're chanting out here.

Before you know it, Waveland Avenue's chanting.

Now the bleachers are chanting.

You know, now the grandstand's chanting.

And that chant and the anger builds and builds and builds.

¡Hazard!

¡Hazard!

¡Hazard!

People start pointing at him and make him the scapegoat.

And it gets to a kind of fever pitch and fever intensity

until you have something pretty strange going on.

¡Rot in hell!

Everyone in Chicago hates you.

You suck.

¡Hazard!

My phone started ringing and just wouldn't stop.

I think I answered the first couple like, hello, like, did you hit that ball?

Did you hit that ball?

I mean, that was just, you know, people I couldn't even understand who it was.

I'm like, I didn't touch it.

Nice kick, f***hole.

Yeah, so, there you go.

Everyone remembers Steve Bartman as being utterly alone.

But Bartman had bought three tickets to the game.

There were two seats in between Steve and I,

his buddy and then his buddy's girlfriend.

Maybe why people think that he was alone, because he had his headphones on.

I mean, he seemed somewhat into his own world.

While Bartman looks off in the distance,

his friends don't seem to know what to say.

I remember saying something I regret.

But I was having fun doing it at the time.

I remember reaching down to speak to him, gave him my card and said, my God,

man, do you realize what you've just done?

And the look of sadness on this poor man's face, immediately I felt bad about it.

The fans are still mad at that fan over there.

They're all chanting.

They're all chanting, well, a word I can't say.

I heard, you know, there was a lot of a**hole being screamed.

There was a lot of, we're going to kill you.

We were going to, you know, this.

And, you know, at that time we were like, man, this is getting kind of out of hand.

It's just a foul ball.

Yeah, we're going to kill you.

This is one kid against an entire city.

When the whole crowd started turning on him, I think the security guards were

instructed, hey, you've got to protect this guy because

there's going to be, there could be some big problems.

The next thing I remember is that some security guards came.

Security came to me originally, and they were going to throw me out.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, what's going on?

They're like, come with me.

I'm like, I'm not going anywhere.

I didn't touch that ball.

And, I mean, on the camera, it kind of looks like

I'm pointing at Bartman, which I really wasn't.

I'm just saying, I didn't touch the ball.

I don't know.

I go, ask your people.

He's like, so he's on the radio, you know, like,

you know, Gray Squirrel to Brown Fox, you know.

That's when they, whoever's looking at the replay, and

that's when they said, okay, it's this guy over here.

And we said, no, no, no, he didn't deflect the ball.

Go back and look at the replay.

In the meantime, Steve Bartman turned around

to us Y me dijo, ¿qué es lo que hicieron?

¡Vamos a jugar con un doble por Mordecai!

¡Double off the wall and on his runs being scored and that's kind of when I,

not kind of, that's when I went down there to go get my two cents worth, I guess.

So I didn't know who it was specifically until I walked down,

got down that aisle and I said, you know, where's the guy?

I said, where's the a**hole, is what I said.

And then everyone was pointing.

So they gave him up right away.

I go, you think it's funny?

I said, you know, let's go outside, we'll see how funny it is.

And he just kept looking and just, I think, just turned around and sat down.

That's when the ushers were telling me to get back to my seat.

Twice they told me, I said, no.

And then the third time they said, you're out of here.

I said, I'll go back to my seat.

And I said, no, it's too late.

I remember there was one particular guy I wanted to get out of there.

I don't know what he did.

Maybe the guy who threw the beer.

This one guy thought we needed to get out of the ballpark.

Has you ever been tossed out of a game before?

I think maybe once, twice.

Oh, look at this.

Throwing beer on him.

Look at this.

Where is he?

Yeah, now there he is.

Oh, they are throwing beer on him down there, aren't they?

Okay, I see things being thrown.

Bad aim because they're ending up on the field.

And I start looking up, people are just hurling beer and brats and pretzels.

I remember one guy was trying to throw a whole slice of pizza at him.

You know, it was just crazy.

And they're all dropping F-bombs his way.

It felt pretty threatening.

We don't f*****.

We don't f*****.

Enjoy your season, f*****.

Poor Steve.

Never took his ear funds off, though.

The thing that always bothered me is that he had the radio headphones on.

He had to be hearing the play-by-play.

I mean, I've never gone through the exercise of matching the broadcast.

Leave it to a former prosecutor and a crime novelist

to come up with a good idea for collecting evidence.

We match the radio broadcast with the play.

3-2 pitch.

Fly ball to left.

Toward the line.

Alou over.

Does he have room?

And leaping up, Alou cannot make the play.

And Moises is unhappy with the fans.

Well, no surprise there.

Except, we later learned that to match the telecast,

the radio broadcast was subject to a seven-second delay.

Steve Bartman is listening on a headset as a ball is flying at him.

He may have reacted late because he never heard

it because on the radio it hadn't happened yet.

So we set back the radio seven seconds to hear what

Steve Bartman would have heard on his headphones.

Barnesworth loosens up for the first time tonight.

3-2 pitch.

Fly ball to left.

Toward the line.

Alou over.

Does he have room?

And leaping up, Alou cannot make the play.

Listening to the radio did not help Bartman know about Alou.

And because Bartman wasn't watching TV, he may not

have understood which fan the radio was talking about.

After all, he wasn't the only fan who reached for the ball.

This ball was in the seats.

If a fan just gets his hand out of the way, Moises makes the catch.

Well, he also has a Cub hat on, which is even more frustrating.

To make matters worse, the Marlins were relentless.

Blind into right field.

A base hit.

They're going to wave around Mordecai.

He will score.

It is an eight run Florida eighth inning.

The bloody Marlins just never stopped hitting.

They just hit and hit and hit.

And this crowd at Wrigley Field stunned in disbelief.

Wheels fell off.

We in the booth, along with the Cub fans, we were

pretty shell shocked that it happened the way it did.

And then as quickly as it did.

Eight runs.

The collapse was so catastrophic.

It's three nothing.

And the next thing you know, it's eight to three and it's over.

Right.

It's over in that inning.

And so they see the, everybody sees the Bartman moment as kind of the inciting

event.

Can't believe this.

It was an eight run inning.

It wasn't like it just, oh, they went up four to

three or, you know, they scored eight runs game over.

And it was, it happened like that.

And instead of going to the World Series, now you're

looking at trying to come back and win a game seven.

Very, very similar to what happened to the Red Sox in 86.

It truly went from this Mardi Gras atmosphere to funeral.

And it took a half an inning.

The game was over at that point.

And everyone felt this crushing weight of expectation

that they had no chance to win game seven.

That's what the fan thought.

And so they saw Bartman and they took their ire out on him.

I think he just kind of stood out and I think that, you know, sweatshirt with the

turtleneck and the hat and the, you know, the, the, the headphones and the glasses.

And you just think, you know, he kind of looks a little dorky like that,

you know, and I think people are just like, God, you

know, have it, have it be felled by a dorky cub fan.

¡Oh!

¡Totally fitting!

You get a sense of this person alone and all

these other forces pushing down upon them.

It was a man being deluged by a mob.

I was in the dispatch room.

I just was hearing a lot of traffic on the radio.

I asked if the assistance was needed and they

said, yeah, please go ahead and join them.

So I went down to that area of the ball field

at the time, not knowing what was going on.

When I arrived, I had a beer cup land on me and I got beer all over me.

I had never seen that reaction before to one fan in the ballpark at all, ever.

That's when the security guards came and they realized how dangerous it was getting

and they escorted not only Steve Bartman at it, but his friends also.

Whether we did anything wrong, it didn't matter.

I just thought that it was going to get heated.

Let's get them out of here.

It was a concerning moment just because there were fans then jumping down from

their seats, getting in our faces, trying to stop our progress.

If that guy's smart right now, he takes that hat off, he takes his

glasses off and he changes his freaking sweatshirt.

I didn't realize, look at all the people yelling at him, going out.

I got there and, you know, I've been covering sports for 30 some odd years and

I've been to English football matches, World Cup matches, drunken NFL,

final two minutes where guys are really

aggravated and this kid was taking a lot of abuse.

He was right near a stairwell.

So we tried to block the stairwell, just trying to keep the media away.

I'm calling to my cameraman.

There he is.

There he is.

Security guard Erica Amundsen had never seen

something so unfriendly in the friendly confines.

The crowd was more violent than I've ever seen at the ballpark.

He was holding like a sweatshirt over his face and I ripped the sweatshirt down over

his face and then the security guards pushed me against

the wall and then they came running up here with him.

Why did you do that?

Because I wanted to expose him for ruining

what could be a once in a lifetime experience.

Step back!

Step back!

The concourse was jammed with people.

We were going through a crowd and everyone was just yelling.

We're gonna kill you!

This was like a lynch mob mentality.

Go to prison!

Took him up the back ramp.

People continued to scream at him and throw things at him.

Like Frankenstein movie, you know, at the end where everyone wanted to get him.

It was kind of like that.

It was pretty crazy.

Put a 12 gauge in his mouth and pull the trigger!

That was the last... we really saw it.

It was like this big huddle of people going up this ramp with a guy with a

sweatshirt over his head and then I never saw him again after that.

Erica and two other security guards led Bartman away

from the crowd and found refuge in the dispatch room.

When we got into the dispatch room, he was really quiet, shaken.

There were certainly a lot of replays being shown.

We do have the game on so we can see different perspectives of the game.

So the game was on, there were a couple shots

of him, you know, trying to go for the ball.

This must have been a strange moment for Bartman.

He had been in the middle of a frenzy in the stands

without understanding exactly what had happened.

Now, suddenly, he was on the outside looking in at himself.

Was this the first moment Bartman had realized that he was the one?

Back on the field, the dream of breaking the curse was about to die.

Popped up in the foul ground, Mike Lowell with room and we are going to a seventh

game in this National League Championship Series.

I think October 14th, game six, was the darkest hour in Wrigley Field history.

Not only because of the eight runs that the Marlins put up on the board,

but because it was the first and only time I've ever been

there or witnessed where some fans turned to a real dark place.

Every Cub fan has to be wondering right now,

is the curse of the billy goat alive and well?

There's nothing to do with the curse, it has

to do with, like I said, that fan interference.

The very uncharacteristic error by Gonzo, I mean, he doesn't miss anything.

The best thing to happen to Alex Gonzalez is certainly Steve Bartman.

Do you have any words for that gentleman who stuck

his hands there and took up the ball away from Moises?

You know, I mean, I didn't see it.

I didn't see it actually until after the game because where we are at the angle in

our dugout, we can't see down that corner down there.

The only words I have, maybe he was a Marlins fan.

That's the only thing I can come up with.

There is anguish and disbelief at Wrigley Field tonight in game six showdown.

If someone ever convicts that guy of a crime,

he'll never get a pardon out of this governor.

I remember when we were leaving the stadium, my friend Jim who had the ball,

one of us said, if the Cubs win tomorrow, everyone's going to forget this.

But if the Cubs lose tomorrow, this ball is going to be worth a lot of money.

While one man was thinking about how to protect the ball, Erica Amundsen was

figuring out how to protect the man who had touched it first.

He's been shown now so many times on TV.

These people know what he looks like and they're

going to be waiting for him outside the ballpark.

Now our job is to make sure that he gets home safely.

His friends had left when we went back to try to find them for him.

They had completely gone.

He couldn't get a hold of them.

So we thought that if we disguised him in such a way that he looked like an everyday

part of the ballpark, that we would probably get him outside the ballpark easier.

And we took off his hat, his glasses, his Walkman, everything that would make

him seem like the dude who caught the ball.

And we changed his appearance.

We put him in a white jacket of the Safety Services uniform.

I think he put on a ball cap as well from Safety Services.

We actually went the back way out of the Cubs supervisory offices.

There were a whole bunch of people still at Gate K.

So we bypassed them.

We went along the backside and went out through Gate F.

When we walked out onto Gate F, it was quite a sight.

There were mounted police officers and it was just busy all get up.

My adrenaline was going and I'm like, okay,

we're going to go ahead and find you a cab.

And while we do that, we'll just pretend you're part of our security team.

And we started walking westbound on Addison.

And then we ducked down to Eddy Street so we can get

out of the major crowd areas looking for a cab for him.

He was very demure, very quiet, just kind of like went along for the ride.

When one angry fan in the street saw through the

disguise, Erica took Bartman to her apartment nearby.

He could hide out there until the coast was clear.

That's when he started really kind of talking.

He wanted to call his parents, let them know that he was okay.

And it was a short, brief conversation.

He then asked to see if he can turn on the TV.

So I gave him complete control over my cable.

And he started flipping through between ESPN and WGN News and Channel 5.

And he was going through everything.

Here's the play they're talking about.

Look at that right there, a fan interfering.

There's the guy right there.

The fan definitely, without doubt, changed the momentum in that game.

Watch as an average citizen becomes public enemy number one in Chicago.

He started asking questions then, you know, how many outs were there?

What happened afterwards?

How did we get out of the inning?

What was the score?

I mean, he had no idea.

His concern was, did I really ruin the game?

And I'm like, no, no, no, you were fine.

You were fine.

You were just reacting like any other fan would react.

It wasn't your fault.

You know, I would just try to make him feel better.

He was devastated.

He was just devastated.

Who deserves the blame for this fiasco?

We will rank the possible culprits in Food Chain.

Who's first, Michael?

All right.

Headset man, the fan who grabbed the ball out of the hands of Moises Alou.

So I'm putting him to start.

Let me tell you something.

Right up here.

This kid is meat.

Right now, this kid is meat.

Erica had arranged for a security officer to pick up Bartman from her apartment.

He would take him to the hotel room Bartman and his friends had rented to

celebrate what they thought would be the Cubs' victory.

We started driving towards Wrigley Field.

He got a little anxious.

He ducked out of sight in the van.

He didn't want to be seen.

He didn't want people to look into the van and recognize him at that point.

We had to really try to calm him down and say, you know, it's okay.

We're fine.

We're just dropping us off at the ballpark.

You know, our evening has ended.

Good luck to you.

Hope all is well and you'll be safe, you know,

and we'll get you back to your hotel room.

That was the last time I saw Steve Bartman.

This ESPN Films presentation is brought to you by Buick.

Bartman was a deeply meek kind of wounded character.

We don't know that much about him, but we know he was not forceful.

He was not big.

He was not strong.

He was a kind of perfect victim in some way shape or form.

The idea that he sat there looking straight ahead, no expression on his face.

A kind of deer in the headlights.

With the headphones on, I think that bothered people.

It's like he wasn't paying attention.

It was like he was begging to be left alone.

He seemed to be frozen in this moment.

And he seemed not to quite understand what was going on.

The story is more important and bigger than Steve Bartman.

So in that sense, I felt I had a responsibility to tell the story.

Who is the mystery man who may have changed the course of baseball history?

The big mystery was, who was this guy?

A fan hunt is underway in the Windy City today for Chicago's Most Wanted.

They don't even know his name at the time.

It's just a fan.

He's described as 26 years old, a computer

consultant who also coaches youth baseball.

Friends describe him as a quiet man who wouldn't intentionally hurt a fly,

let alone his beloved Cubs.

That morning online, the Chicago Sun-Times published the information first.

Bartman's name, the firm where he worked, and the town where he lived.

The media descended, sparking an ethical debate in newsrooms across the city.

And at the editorial meeting that afternoon, I remember we had a

conversation about how far do we go in identifying this guy.

You have to remember at the time, there was

still a game seven to be played that night.

There was an expectation by some, not me, but some,

that the Cubs were still going to win this thing.

And so it was felt, it's a footnote.

It's an interesting story, but it's just a footnote.

So we can go out there and talk about him and give his name and show where he lives.

Bartman, who didn't show up for work today,

lives with his parents in this Northbrook home.

Ironically, just down the left field line from a little league field.

Bartman played second base in high school, and now

coaches a youth league team in the north suburbs.

Go Coach Steve!

Go Coach Steve!

Go Coach Steve!

Bartman had worn to the game the sweatshirt

of his little league team, the Renegades.

He was one of our best coaches that we've ever had.

He knows a lot about baseball, and he was always there for us when we needed help.

They just want him to come back home and live a normal life, and right now that's

not possible, it seems like, because everybody's hounding him.

It was clear from the very beginning that he did not want to talk to the media.

He wanted to maintain his privacy.

Neighbors talked on his behalf.

He would never intentionally, you know, do something

to hurt the Cubs' chances of winning a game.

Friends and neighbors of Steve Bartman say the 26-year-old

lifelong Cubs fan is in hiding and very, very upset.

Police surrounded his house in an effort to keep him safe and keep others away.

Police and news reporters camped outside his house.

That was when it really started getting surreal and bizarre around here.

He was just like, wait a minute.

It was like they were treating him like he was a guy who had somebody held hostage.

Even that morning, I remember the emails start going.

Cubs ticket, $15.

Blowing your team's chance at the World Series, priceless.

Somebody sent me a JPEG image that had a picture of Steve on like a dartboard.

And what are we going to do?

Are we going to take him out to the center of town

and, you know, throw snowballs at him or something?

I mean, like how... It's a sickening feeling.

I blame Steve Bartman.

Let's go find that and lynch him.

On the show, we finally got a call, some guy saying we have his address and

we're going to go out and we're going to kill him tonight.

I was on the air, A, as a therapist trying to talk people off the ledge, and B,

trying to calm people down saying, it is not Steve

Bartman's fault that this team gave up eight runs.

And he released a statement too.

Bartman issued a written apology read by his brother-in-law.

There are a few words to describe how awful I feel and

what I have experienced within these last 24 hours.

I've been a Cub fan all my life and fully understand the

relationship between my actions and the outcome of the game.

To Moises Alou, the Chicago Cubs organization, Ron Santo, Ernie Banks,

and Cub fans everywhere, I am so truly sorry

from the bottom of this Cub fan's broken heart.

Just like the Sox in 86, there was still a Game 7 to be played.

But why did everyone feel like it was over?

Was it fate?

Were the lovable losers destined to lose?

It went from, I'm glad we didn't win in Game 5 in Florida so we could celebrate

Game 6 in Chicago, to, it doesn't matter that there's a Game 7.

I mean, that's how people felt.

As fans gathered for the seventh game, many were still haunted by Game 6.

More and more convinced that the blame rested with a kid with the headphones.

The night of Game 7, Steve Bartman remained in hiding.

Although the media were determined to get him to talk, an uneasy silence hung over

his house and the Little League field behind it.

Steve Bartman, a lifelong Cub fan, is joining us now via the phone on SportsCenter.

Have you received death threats, Steve?

Yes, I have received at least five death threats, calling my parents' house and,

you know, people get, you know, especially from the news, they've been calling.

And I'm pretty much right now, you know, hiding out right now.

Can you stay in the Chicago area?

Do you like Howard Stern's butt cheese?

We've been had.

That was not Steve Bartman.

Cubs Marlins, World Series for one, spring training for the other.

About to go into Game 7.

Got the Wood jersey on.

The miracle starts today.

Starts right now.

Even though Kerry Wood was pitching, even though the Cubs were playing at home,

I felt my native skepticism about the Cubs flowing back into me.

And if I had to bet, I would have bet that they would have lost.

Moments away.

Moments away.

Game 7.

We welcome all of those of you joining us around the country here on Fox.

It's Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

Well, we had a wild game here last night, to

say the least, and Steve Lyons for the Cubs.

How important is it for them?

Is it more important for them to get an early lead to shake off what happened here?

Well, no question.

They're the team that walks away worrying about last night's result from the game.

Game 7 of the League Championship Series almost took a

backseat to what happened in the stands with Steve Bartman.

It's Game 7.

The Cubs got a win to move on to the World Series.

You know, they're going to play against the Yankees.

Oh, but by the way, did you see how they lost Game 6?

It was this idiot in the stands who interfered

with a play, and his life is being threatened.

The stories were equal, maybe even more so on the Bartman side.

I know I wanted to talk about it.

This is last night's ball game with Castillo hitting the ball going into the crowd.

And Steve Bartman, I tell you what, he's taking a lot of heat.

But this guy, this guy, this guy.

Steve circled all the people around Bartman that were trying to get the ball.

It looked like the Olympic rings were on there.

He circled all the people in the replay that were trying to get it as well.

Every one of those people would have done the exact same thing as Steve Bartman did.

I was consumed with talking about the Bartman play.

One, because I wanted to defend what he did.

And two, because it had an impact.

Whether you want to say it was the biggest play or

not, it had a huge impact on the outcome of that game.

In the air, deep left center field, and the 20-year-old Cabrera.

Game seven did not start well for the Cubs.

3-0 lead in the opening.

When Cabrera hits a three-run shot, you know, and I'm standing out of there

first, I'm going, wow, it's not too good here right now.

But again, I'm not thinking Bartman at all right now.

Eric Karros answered back with a base hit.

Shot in the right field, a base hit by Karros.

I'm just thinking, we're going to win this game.

Last night's GOAT, Alex Gonzalez, doubled off the center field wall.

Against the Ivy.

On his way to third, Karros.

They're going to hold him there on a cover by Alex Gonzalez.

And Kerry Wood, the Cubs' second best pitcher, surprised everyone.

In the air, left center field, Kerry Wood plays long ball.

This place just went up for grabs.

Kerry tied the game over the homer, this place went crazy.

In the next inning, Moises Alou, as if to redeem himself or to save Steve

Bartman, rocked a two-run homer to put the Cubs back in the lead.

You would have thought... you would have thought that they would have had the

internal stamina at that point to get over the finish line, but they didn't.

...does not get it.

Codine scores, they're going to wave around the next runner.

I don't remember a thing about Game 7.

I don't remember calling Game 7.

I don't remember a thing about it.

I remember what happened in Game 6.

I remember the Bartman play.

And I think that makes me typical.

And it shouldn't.

I should remember something about Game 7.

It wasn't that long ago.

But it was the footnote to what happened.

It wasn't important anymore.

The humid air was thick with a stench of defeat Y, increasingly, anger.

In the air, left field.

And the Florida Marlins have come back from three

games to one down to win the National League Tennis.

My wife, I'm sort of a newer Cub fan.

And when it was finally over, I look over at her, and she's crying on the couch.

I mean, she's just bawling her eyes out.

And I sound like such a jerk, but I'm like, you can't cry.

Like, you've known this for, like, you've known Cub fan fandom for,

I don't know, four or five years, like, this is 30 years for me.

This is me and my dad, and going to the... Like, who are you to sit here and cry?

The Florida Marlins, for the second time, are going to the World Series.

It is obvious, in retrospect, that there was a really great ball club.

But, holy smokes, in the moment, it seemed incomprehensible.

That, you know, these sort of kids who seem to have graduated from Little League

about six minutes before, were beating the mighty Cubs.

2003, that was the lesson.

Until then, I was just happy, and someday it'll happen, and...

Aw, shucks, and then, you know, and then that season, just...

The fans wanted to lay blame at something other than their beloved Cubs.

So then, what's the easy thing to blame?

That foul ball.

That foul ball.

That's the easy thing to do, is just point at that,

and everybody can throw their angst onto Steve Bartman.

Until two nights ago, Steve Bartman was just a guy.

Today, he's the most famous, infamous fan on the planet.

In a matter of seconds like that, his life has changed forever.

How would Harry Carey have called the eighth inning of game

six of the NLCS with the Marlins with the fan interference?

The pitch.

Foul ball.

Down the left field line.

Moses Alou.

Leads.

The fan got in the way.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

It took on a life of its own.

And I did a number of stories related to the Bartman phenomena.

One of which was on Halloween.

Halloween that year, I mean, everyone was Bartman.

I mean, it was crazy.

Even my sister.

I'm like, what are you doing?

The other thing about Steve Bartman is this guy was offered everything.

People offered him cash, vacations.

He never took anything.

He never took a dime.

Well, then the guy who got the ball, that guy went and sold it for $100,000.

He was listening to the game on radio.

You've got to be a true fan to be there and listen to the game on radio.

I remember seeing an interview with him a day

or two later, and all it was was a shadow.

How perfect is that?

From your grief, gave him $100,000, and you don't know what he looks like.

You don't know his name.

The ball, as I recall, was sold to Harry Carey's

restaurant, and they decided to blow up the ball.

This is the eve of destruction for this infamous souvenir.

Tomorrow, it will be destroyed at Harry Carey's restaurant, and Cubs fans are

hoping that when it is finally gone, it will help lift the

curse and clear the way for the Cubs to win the World Series.

Playing the ball, see Wrigley for the last time, you know.

Then we're on our way to the hotel for its long night's

sleep and its steak and lunch for dinner and its massage.

I know the ball did get a fancy room service that night before.

It was sitting on a pillow on the bed, and it had a room

service tray and a bottle of Louvre Clicquot, I think.

So, the ball was treated better than a lot of people that I know.

The ball is gone.

The curse is over.

It's over.

It's over!

It's over!

The remnants of the exploded ball were boiled in beakers, and

the steam was piped into a special scapegoat spaghetti sauce.

There was one mystery left to solve.

What would have happened if no fans had reached up for the ball?

Moises Alou was not a great fielder.

Would he have made the catch?

To find Alou, I traveled to the Dominican Republic.

In Latin America, this is baseball's mecca, a small half-island of sugarcane

fields, beautiful beaches, and baseball diamonds.

It's a poor country where power lines are festooned with

thickets of wires leeching electricity into needy homes.

But in the sandlots of the stadiums, there are dreams of success.

Per capita, the DR sends a higher percentage of kids to

the major leagues than any other country in the world.

This is our director, Alex Gimney.

Alex, how are you?

Great to meet you.

All right, let's give it a shot.

I'm convinced 100% that I had that ball in my glove.

I knew I had it because I wasn't very good going, like, trying to rob a home run,

because I used to look down for some reason.

I never did this, and I remember perfectly that day, I did everything perfect.

I had my eyes on my glove, and I see the ball

right here coming in my glove until four, six arms.

They got in the way, and Bartman, fortunately for Bartman, he touched the ball.

But I knew I had it.

With everyone, including Bartman, removed from the shot,

it seems clear that Alou would have caught the ball.

And then I was upset, very upset.

In that moment, you did get pissed, but then you looked at him.

Did you ever think back, maybe looking back at him, you

know, kind of focused everybody's attention on Bartman?

People don't think about stuff like that at the moment.

I mean, I didn't think about just yelling at him.

And I don't think he understood what I told him, but...

And right away, I knew that after that, something worse was coming.

And it did.

Now the ball in the hole is short.

And far off by Gonzales, and everybody's safe.

The stadium just went quiet.

I mean, the only thing you could hear was the crack of the bat from the Marlins.

And they scored how many runs after that?

Six, seven, eight?

And Marlins, like, stop.

We couldn't stop him after that.

I remember myself and Aramis booking a flight home, even before game seven,

just in case.

But, you know, that's the thing that we would have done if we felt positive about

the outcome of our next game, because of all the things that happened before.

Oh, I see.

So you actually, you figured after losing the sixth game, you figured there was a

sense that it was not going to happen for you.

It was a bad... we had a bad feeling about it.

Alou's bad feeling came to fruition.

My own acid flashback nightmare, wave after wave of cheering Yankee fans,

was, for Alou, a sea of Marlins.

His dreams of another shot at the World Series would

be forever haunted by the image of a missed foul ball.

Unfortunately, I even had gone to car shows in Chicago and

I had to sign thousands of my pictures going like this.

Now you know me for the guy, the barman.

They almost had it, you know.

From a famous baseball family, Moises Alou is

a lifetime 300 hitter with over 300 home runs.

One year he batted 355.

But despite his greatness as a player, it's not

success, but failure that haunts his legacy.

Like Bill Buckner, I feel back for Bill Buckner after what happened to him.

A guy with a great career and people remember him for

a physical error that he made during the World Series.

And I'm sick and tired of that, you know.

And here we are, here we are asking you again.

Ask me about, ask me about...

But why do you think, why do you think everyone's so interested in it?

Did you ever... I don't know.

You guys know, you have it on your 50th greatest moment or worst moment on ESPN.

But now after the Red Sox won, they kind of, so I'm hoping the Cubs win soon.

So they keep, they quit asking me about it.

Now you've got to wait for Chicago to win.

Yeah.

Moises Alou retired from Major League Baseball in 2008.

He is now the general manager for the Escojito Lions.

In his first year as GM, Alou led his team to the championship.

On this night, Alou's team is playing their rival, known as El Glorioso.

You can definitely feel the passion at the ballpark.

But there is no dread, and despite traces of voodoo in

their culture, no fear of baseball curses, just fun.

But in Chicago, the joyful resignation of the bleacher bums was now replaced forever

by the anguish of what might have been.

The tombstone where Hope was buried, Aisle 4, Row 8, Seat 113.

Visiting the seat has become a kind of zany pilgrimage for Cub fans.

Stop 1 on the Tour of Pain.

Here is the view from the infamous Steve Bartman scene in Wrigley Field.

The railing.

Reach over.

This fan imagines the play as a clear case of fan interference.

But was it?

And if so, why was it so special?

There have been many other cases of fan interference.

One of the most famous was the case of Jeffrey Miner.

In the right field, Tarasco, going back to the track, to the wall.

He contends that a fan reaches up and touches it.

Major League Baseball developed a rule to deal with that borderland, where the world

of the players meets the world of the fans.

That rule in the Bartman case became the focus of a weighty

report, assembled by two self-appointed commissioners.

It reports approximately 180 pages.

It's designed to cover one play.

I don't think there's ever been a book about one baseball play.

What made you guys qualified, uniquely qualified,

to form the commission on the Bartman play?

Well, I think part of it is that we're both attorneys by trade.

Thomas Hoffman is a leasing attorney.

Walter Yerkenen specializes in real estate.

We're also lifetime baseball fans, diehard Cub fans.

So with the legal training and with our knowledge of

baseball, we thought we would, you know, be qualified.

I think maybe I'll start just by drawing the wall.

Ah, yes, the wall.

That fragile line that separates the fans and the players.

The rule about the wall, like the Yerkenen-Hoffman commission report,

is at once deeply simple and excruciatingly detailed.

What happened on the play is, the ball's coming down, and as it's approaching a

loose glove, you've got Bartman's hands reaching out right above the glove.

Now, the application of the rule is, should a spectator reach out on the

playing field side of the fence, rope, or railing, and plainly prevent the

fielder from catching the ball, then the batter's out?

Now, stop the show.

If this guy reaches out over the, on the playing side of the fence or

railing, which we think Bartman did, the batter

should be called out for fan interference.

We think Luis Castillo should have been out.

We should have had two outs, four outs to go, and win the World Series.

Was there anybody else besides Steve Bartman who was

actually reaching out and trying to catch the ball?

We believe so.

Yes.

Pat Looney.

I mean, I think you can consider him Shadow Bartman.

And had Bartman not been where we were sitting, we

would have had a commission report on the Looney play.

And... Lucky for Looney.

If the wind hadn't been blowing out that

night, this film would have been about him.

In 2005, the torment of Game 6 became a nightmare for journalist Wayne Drays when

his editor at ESPN.com asked him to track down the reclusive Steve Bartman.

The assignment was two words.

Find Bartman.

I mean, my stomach just instantly was just turning

around and I felt like I was going to throw up.

And I was like, don't you think the guy should be left alone, you know?

And he's like, nope.

So I came to Chicago to start my reporting.

The reaction we got from the people who I would reach out to that knew Steve was

either I'm not talking at all or he's doing fine, he's moved on, leave him alone.

And so I'm doing all this, like, reporting around the actual assignment of

actually going to find Steve because I didn't want to find Steve.

You know, eventually I got a talking to from my editor or whatever.

He's like, you need to go and try to find him.

So Drays staked out Bartman's house and

followed the first likely suspect to leave him.

You know, I immediately try to follow him, find him, see who it is.

And I pulled up next to him and there was a stoplight or something at some point I

looked in the car and, uh, and it was totally Steve.

I mean, it didn't, it was him.

My heart's like racing and, you know, like, what am I going to do?

What am I going to say?

And I started looking, I'm going to follow him to his

office and we'll just sort of figure it out from there.

Drays pulled into the garage of the company where Bartman worked.

For over seven hours, Drays waited.

His eyes trained on the elevators.

Every time those doors opened, I mean, it was like, I think it was like

after seven o'clock, the door opens and I look and, uh, it's Steve.

And he walked in front of the car where I was at and I hopped out of the car and

he's over by his car and I kind of followed him

there and I said, Steve, uh, do you have a second?

And he kind of startled, obviously, he turns around and I said, my name's

Wayne Drays, I'm a feature writer for ESPN .com and I've been assigned to do a story

on you and as awkward as this is, I want to ask you for an interview.

And his answer to me was, um, he took my card, he said, thank you, I appreciate it.

Um, and he said, uh, I'm going to talk with

my legal team and we will get back to you.

And I was so sort of rattled by that that I had no, I had no response to that.

Uh, you know, like, Steve Bartman has a legal team?

And before I turned to leave, I remember standing there and being like,

okay, like, I have Steve Bartman in front of me

and this is like the, like, ultimate crossroads.

Like, okay, like, I can go the route of the journalist and,

like, ask some question and get some response out of him.

Or, my journalism school teacher would probably

hate this but I chose the path of the Cub fan.

Um, and I said, look, I said, you know, I don't know how many people have talked

to you, I said, but just, you know, on behalf of Cub fans, you know,

I'm sorry, I think it sucks what you've had to go through.

And he looked at me and he said, you know, thanks, he said, I appreciate that.

He did say one other thing, he said to me, just so you know, for future reference,

not a great idea to jump out of your car and

ask for an interview in a parking garage.

Not the best way to get somebody to agree to an interview.

And, uh, he closed the door and I walked back to the car and, uh, that was it.

You know, he drove away.

I'm as torn about it as I've ever been.

This is one of the things that my journalism

career has sort of, you know, been defined by.

It's defined by this thing that sort of tears me up inside.

Um, being the guy who jumped out of the car to interview Steve Bartman.

It's never going to go away.

You know, there will be writers like me or situations where there's a documentary or,

you know, the ESPN special, Don't Blame Bartman or whatever,

that will be asking the question and bringing it up.

What is it about Steve Bartman and his story that we can't let go?

Is he fulfilling some role that we need him to play?

I found this story because I was looking for a way

to introduce the idea of scapegoats in a sermon.

So I plugged in scapegoat and that led me to the story of Steve Bartman and the

Chicago Cubs and, um, Steve Bartman as seen as the scapegoat.

And then the interesting part of the connection with the curse of the goat and

the Chicago Cubs, it was just too good to pass up.

The Chicago Cubs were leading the game 3-0 when Louis Castillo...

Reverend Kathleen Rowlands, a Unitarian minister in Rocky River, Ohio,

devoted an entire sermon to the Steve Bartman play.

Steve Bartman stepped up and appeared to knock the ball away.

The religious history of scapegoating goes all the way back to ancient times,

certainly back to the book of Leviticus when they

describe what was done every year on the Day of Atonement.

On the Day of Atonement, a goat was chosen.

The priest then would take the goat into the temple, would pray over the goat,

lay his hands on the goat, and that was to

confer the sins of the people onto that animal.

And then the animal was led out of town, and the people of the community would then

jeer and insult and throw their sins onto the goat.

And then they would lead the goat outside the city, shut the

gates, so that the goat could never again return to the fold.

Some stories say the goat is thrown over a

cliff, thereby expunging the sins of the people.

And then, of course, the whole idea of Bartman being led out of the stadium

amidst jeers and boos and people throwing stuff at him.

It reminded me of what happens with a scapegoat.

The goat is innocent.

The whole idea of a scapegoat is you take an

innocent thing and you put your sins upon it.

Scapegoats are solitary and vulnerable.

So in that sense, he was the perfect scapegoat.

To get crucified the way he did was mind-boggling.

He didn't do anything.

He didn't do anything different.

You take a major league baseball player and sat him in

that seat, he'd have done the same thing that Bartman did.

I mean, I would have done it.

If anyone understands what it means to be a scapegoat, it's Bill Buckner.

For years, he became the poster boy for the

annual disappointment that haunted New England.

But it was more than a metaphor that gnawed at Buckner.

It was the play itself.

For over 20 years, he still couldn't understand how he had missed the ball.

Most of the time when it's, you know, I've shown on TV, which, you know,

I see at least once or twice a week for, you

know, 23 years or however long it's been.

When it comes on the TV, I switched to station.

But about six months ago, they were showing it in slow motion and I kind of,

for some reason, just took a good look at it.

His ankles may have been weak, but he got to the

ball in time and his glove was on the ground.

The ball couldn't have gone under his glove.

I liked a really loose glove at first base.

And I saw as I moved to the left and got in position to feel the ball, when I put

my glove down, I noticed that that right side of the glove, with the momentum that

I had going to the left, when I stopped, that glove automatically closed.

So where that glove closed, the ball went right by to the right side of my glove.

So if the ball didn't go underneath, you know, everything was perfect.

But because of that glove being so loose, it closed automatically.

And in reality, it didn't make anything any better or whatever, but at least in my

mind, you know, I knew why I missed the ball.

On October 23rd, 2004, Bill Buckner tuned in to watch the Red Sox play in their

first World Series since that 1986 loss to the Mets.

But after seeing his error replayed during the pregame show... Behind the bag!

It gets through Buckner!

Buckner turned it off and refused to watch any more.

Buckner turned off his TV for the entire series.

And so he missed the moment that would lift his curse and the curse of the Bambino.

The Boston Red Sox are world champions!

There were still omens and signs.

The pain of 86 ended 86 years after the curse of the Bambino.

But the suffering was over.

Oddly, as the pain of past defeats receded in victory,

seasons would not mean as much as they had in the past.

There was also a sense that it was time to heal old wounds.

The Red Sox reached out to Buckner.

Won't you please join us in saluting Mr. Bill Buckner!

But Buckner declined all invitations to reunions or tributes.

After the Red Sox won the series for a second

time, the Red Sox reached out to Buckner once more.

The idea of people saying, Bill, we forgive

you, that's an unfortunate way to phrase it.

But the idea that he's off the hook is true, because he's part of the story that

was the weight and the baggage they were carrying

around, that they're not carrying that around anymore.

In 2008, Buckner finally agreed to return to

Fenway to throw out the first pitch of the season.

One of his daughters, now a TV reporter in Idaho, was on hand to cover the story.

It was hard to predict how the fans, or Buckner, would react.

Probably about as emotional as it could get.

Did you have any thoughts about not doing it?

Yeah, I had to, you know, I had to...

forgive the...

not the fans of Boston, just per se, but I would have to say in my heart,

I had to forgive the media

for what they put me and my family through.

After I did that, it was, you know, it just... it made it okay.

It made it okay to go back there.

I'm over that.

You over that, Kristen?

Yeah.

That's my daughter.

She's a... she's one of you guys now.

She's, uh...

Believe it or not, so I guess I've... I've accepted you guys back in the family.

That's hard to do.

It's hard to do.

It took...

what?

20 years?

Or... 21 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the greatest players to wear the Red Sox uniform.

Please welcome back to Boston number six, Bill Buckner!

It was quite the thrill.

You walk out in front of 40,000 people and they're all in support of me.

You know, tears came to my eyes immediately.

You know, you... when I was going out, I could reflect on and see people and I...

you could... you know when things are genuine and when they're... they're not.

I could tell people they wanted me to feel good.

They wanted me to feel better.

Flashbacks going out there and they're all positive, you know, all the great things

that happened there and the fun and the excitement and the wins and the teammates

and having Dwight Evans there throw the first pitch too.

We were very tight.

Probably the best friend guy hung with having him.

And I know how... how that series hurt him that we didn't win.

It's hard to absorb all that.

Thank you again, Bill Buckner.

Bill Buckner has been a member of the public eye for 30 years.

You know, he signed up for that.

Steve didn't sign up for any of this.

You know, he went to a game as a fan and that was it.

But fans like the limelight too.

Even Steve Bartman.

A careful scan of the sixth inning game tapes reveals

Bartman doing all he can to get the camera's attention.

His waving hands are fateful signals.

Be careful what you wish for.

Bartman quickly became a very interesting cultural icon in Chicago.

In large part because he just disappeared.

I mean, he's the J.D.

Sollinger of Cubs fans.

Bartman still lives in Chicago but his lawyer won't say where.

And he won't speak to me or anyone else about the incident.

Bartman has refused offers for hundreds of thousands

of dollars to appear in commercials or card shows.

There are rumors that even to this day he cannot

use a credit card lest his name be revealed.

In a weird way it kind of adds to the mystique doesn't it?

I mean, no one knows where he is.

No one, you know.

No one's ever talked to him.

It's very odd.

I heard he had moved to London and he had left and gone to Florida and he'd been

transferred here and done, I mean, there was all these ridiculous rumors.

I heard he had to quit his job.

I heard that he had to move from Chicago.

Obviously, he's either got a lot of loyalty, he's got some very good friends

or else he's living in a 10 by 10 foot room and having his meals brought in.

I don't know him.

Nobody does.

Looks like kind of a meek guy to me.

Just don't think he wants the Yahoo out there 7, 8, 9, 15 years later to take a

swipe at him because there's Steve Bartman walking down the street.

Would you know what Steve Bartman looked like?

I wouldn't know what Steve Bartman looks like.

If he's not wearing the headphones, the hat, the green turtleneck, nobody knows.

That's why he's a genius after all this.

We have one shot of him.

We have one image of him.

He can go to any bar.

He can go to the grocery store.

Nobody knows who he is.

This was bigger than baseball this story.

This was human.

As the documenter of a historical event, I had to do my job.

But as a human being, I don't know if I'm even proud of it.

If I had, if we had something to do with

this young man's life and how he's had to live since then, I feel bad about that.

Of all of us there, including me for teasing them at the

time, Bartman had the most honor among all the people there.

He made a mistake.

He admitted his mistake.

He asked forgiveness of the Cubs and of the there's a lot of regret I think in

Chicago about how his name was changed into a verb.

It was his total demeanor I think that has stuck with me throughout the years.

He was humble and kind and he was a perfect guy for this.

If we accept the premise that Bartman appears less than dynamic if anything in a

fair world that should increase people's sympathy for him.

Can anyone feel worse than him?

How mean-spirited and dopey do you have to be to rub it in on the poor guy?

He made a mistake.

We need to look at what damage the idea of scapegoat does and not only to the person

who becomes the scapegoat but to those people that are

jeering and berating the scapegoat it diminishes our humanity

¡Fans there need to step back and kind of look themselves in the mirror.

Where are we as fans or as, you know, people?

I guess it's a reminder that it could have been any one of us sitting in that seat.

Any one of us could have stuck out our hand in all innocence.

And it could have been us.

It was Steve Bartman.

As time passes, the city is haunted more by what

it did to Bartman than what Bartman did to Chicago.

There are many who say the city should forgive Bartman.

But it's really up to Bartman to forgive Chicago.

If the Cubs win it, will people still care about that moment as much as they do now?

Not if the Cubs win.

Then everything disappears.

What do you care anymore?

Because it's not some evidence of some mysterious curse,

some torment that everybody's got to live through.

It's that release.

But that's easy for me to say.

As a Boston fan, my team has two World Series rings in the last seven years.

If I lived in Chicago, moving on would be left to my imagination.

And what might have happened if Steve Bartman and all the other fans around him

had sacrificed his dream of catching a ball and pulled his hand away so that the

ball could have dropped in the outstretched glove of Moises Alou.

A sensational catch by Moises Alou.

The Cubs are going to the World Series.

The Cubs win it all.