Friendly Confines?

Being a Cubs fan is like the guy who's been divorced six times and still believes in love.
- Scott Turow, Author and Cubs fan

Although the Milwaukee Braves were my team, I have followed the Chicago Cubs ever since The Marquis took me to my first MLB game, Cubs vs. Braves, at Wrigley Field in 1956.  Shortstop Ernie Banks, "Mr. Cub," was the star player.  Pitcher Bob Rush, who won only thirteen games that year, was their "ace."  As a Braves fan I did not really have a favorite Cubs player, but my mother and sister liked first baseman Dee Fondy, maybe because of his cool name.  That team also featured the worst defensive catcher who ever made it to the Bigs, Harry Chiti.  The Marquis used to say that Chiti couldn't catch a belt-high change up. 

All of the Cubs' home games, and those of their cross-town rivals, the White Sox, were televised on WGN.  Jack Brickhouse handled play-by-play duties.  (He had the same job on the Bears' radio broadcasts, thus making him the one guy in all of Chicagoland whose career everybody wanted.) Jack and his partner, Vince Lloyd, were shameless homers.  They were especially adept at encouraging their viewers to come out to "beautiful Wrigley Field."  I don't recall them ever referring to Wrigley Field without that adjective, "beautiful," preceding it.  All of the Cubs games were in the afternoon, and Ladies Day, which occurred every Thursday, was always heavily promoted.  A perfect way to spend the day was to visit what was universally known as "the friendly confines of Wrigley Field."  Even to this day, if you ask most baseball fans, "What are the 'the Friendly Confines'?" they will know; it's the ancient revered park on Clark and Addison, the pride of the North Side.

The irony of the term "Friendly Confines" was brought into focus on the evening of October 14, 2003.  It was The Bartman Game, Wrigley's darkest moment.  Today is the twelfth anniversary of that infamous event.

To fully understand the incidents that transpired during the Bartman Game, one has to appreciate the dismal team history of the Cubs.  Even their most ardent fans tend to label them as "lovable losers," and for good reason.  Do you remember when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004?  The Red Sox fans were ecstatic, and rightfully so, as the franchise had gone eighty-six years, from 1918, since their last world championship.  The Cubs fans have waited even longer, since 1908, for theirs.  In 2003, only those Cubs fans older than age ninety-five had experienced a Cubs championship in their lifetimes.  My grandfather used to opine that the Cubs liked to "stay in the cellar where it was nice and cool."  Cubs fans usually figure that, even when their team has a late inning lead, they will find a way to lose.

Following their championship season in 1908, the Cubbies made it to the World Series a total of seven times, the most recent one being 1945 (the final year of World War II).  They managed to lose each and every one of those series to the American League pennant winner.  In the post-war era leading up to 2003, the North Siders had qualified for the National League playoffs only three times. That's three times in a span of fifty-seven years!

In 2003, the Cubs won the NL Central by a game over the Houston Astros, and knocked off the Atlanta Braves in a best-of-five NL Division Series (NLDS).  That set up a NL Championship Series (NLCS) with the Florida Marlins, who had upset the favored San Francisco Giants in the other NLDS.  The winner of the seven game NLCS would advance to the World Series against the American League champ (which turned out to be the New York Yankees).

The Cubs and Marlins split Games 1 and 2 at Wrigley.  Then the series moved to Miami's Pro Player Stadium (now known as Sun Life Stadium) where the Chicagoans surprisingly took two out of three games from the Floridians to go ahead in the series three games to two.  (An aside: The original name of Sun Life Stadium was Joe Robbie Stadium, which opened in 1987.  Financing for the construction of Joe Robbie Stadium was mostly furnished through the sale of bonds.  The Pook was the lead secretary for the chief bond counsel, Jerry Mahoney of Dorsey & Whitney.  Today, Sun Life Stadium is the home of the Miami Dolphins and the Miami Hurricanes, and was the Marlins' home until the 2012 season.)  All the Cubbies had to do was win either Game 6 or Game 7, both of which would be played in the Friendly Confines, to get to the World Series.

The starting pitcher for the Cubs in Game 6 of the NLCS was Mark Prior, who was the Game 2 winning pitcher, giving up only two earned runs in seven full innings of that earlier game.  Prior is well known to Twins fans because the Twins opted to select Joe Mauer with the number one overall pick in the 2001 draft, notwithstanding the fact that Prior, a Southern Cal Trojan, was widely considered the top prospect in that draft.  Everything was coming up roses for the Cubs through the first seven innings in Game 6.  They were ahead 3-0, and Prior looked unhitable.  Not only was he hurling a shutout, he had given up only three singles and had retired the Marlins three up and three down in the sixth and seventh innings.  He also induced the leadoff hitter in the top of the eighth, Mike Mordecai, to fly out to left.  The Cubs were just five defensive outs from going to the World Series!

Even the glass-half-empty pessimists were hopeful.  The Curse Of The Billy Goat would expire.  Wrigley Field's capacity crowd, announced at 39,577 but surely closer to 42,000, was going nuts, and so were the overflow masses crammed together on Waveland and Sheffield Avenues behind the bleachers.  Living and dying with every pitch.  Thankful that not only themselves but their parents and grandparents might finally see a World Series champion before they went up to that big baseball diamond in the sky.

But remember, these are the Cubs we're talking about, and what followed is why it is called The Bartman Game and why the Billy Goat Curse lives on.

With one out, the second batter of the inning, Juan Pierre, lofted an 0-1 pitch high and foul toward the box seats three-quarters of the way down the left field line.  At first it looked like it might land eight or ten rows back, but the strong left-to-right wind which had been gusting all night was blowing the ball toward the nine foot high wall which runs parallel to the left field foul line, just beyond the Cubs on-field bullpen.  As Cubs left fielder Moises Alou sprinted over toward that wall, many of the fans in the first two rows did what baseball fans do; they reached for the descending ball, hoping to catch a souvenir.  With glove extended, Alou leaped high against the wall, and maybe -- maybe -- could have caught the ball were it not for that gaggle of arms, hands and mitts belonging to people attempting to do the same thing.  One young man, sitting in the front row up against the wall, appeared to make the initial contact with the ball, but it clanked off his outstretched fingers and fell to the concrete floor, where it was then pounced upon by four of five other folks, one of whom ended up with the trophy.  Alou was beside himself, slamming his glove against his thigh, screaming toward the seats where he'd been deprived of his important opportunity.  With anguished pain on his face, he resumed his left field position.  Prior and some of his teammates tried to convince left field umpire Mike Everitt to rule fan interference, but the ump correctly decided that since no fan reached over the wall, they were entitled to go for the ball.

From that point forward, things could not have disintegrated more swiftly than they did for the Cubs.  Pierre promptly proceeded to line a double to left (thus enabling the still-steaming Alou to finally touch the baseball).  Prior, also still steaming, threw a wild pitch sending Pierre to third, and then walked Luis Castillo.  Runners at the corners, one out, still 3-zip Cubs.  The fourth batter of the inning, Ivan Rodriguez (who was later selected the MVP of the NLCS), lined a single to left, scoring Pierre with Castillo stopping at second.  Now it's 3-1 Cubs, one out with runners at first and second.

The next at bat should probably go down in history as the most overlooked important play in the saga of the Friendly Confines.  Marlins cleanup hitter Miguel Cabrera, a tremendous player but stocky and slow afoot, hit a tailor-made double play ball to the Cubs' young slick fielding shortstop, Alex Gonzalez.  Gonzalez muffed the routine play (E-6), and everybody was safe.  Now the bases were loaded.  Derrek Lee followed with a line drive left field double to tie the game, and Prior was done for the night.  The air in Wrigley Field had been let out; the whole dynamic had changed.

 

While relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth made his way in from the pen, attention turned to that young man who initially touched Pierre's foul ball.  He was kind of nerdy looking, wearing headphones underneath, of all things, a Cubs hat.  He had on a dark sweatshirt and a green turtleneck, and wore dark rimmed glasses.  That green turtleneck was easy to spot from afar.  While Fox Network was waiting for Farnsworth to warm up, they showed rerun after rerun of the Pierre foul ball and Alou's angry reaction.  They panned in for a closeup of the "kid" with the green turtleneck.  The focus of their attention, the accidental celebrity, the guy with the Cubs hat, the headphones and that turtleneck, turned out to be Steve Bartman.

 

Wrigley had no jumbotron, but the Fox replays could be viewed by the crowd on Waveland.  Some big dude had a TV on his head.  The fans on the street started chanting an unflattering term meaning "anal orifice," and before a minute was up the bleacher bums picked it up.  Soon the Bronx cheer spread throughout the grandstand and the entire stadium.  People were pointing at Bartman, swearing at him and (as audio proves) threatening to kill him.  Beer, brats and slices of pizza were hurled at him, sometimes by people who had come down from one of the upper sections specifically for that purpose.  Wrigley security was absolutely no help when they finally did arrive.

 

Farnsworth was likewise of little help.  He faced four batters and retired only one, thereby giving a fresh illustration of adding gasoline to the fire.  The big blow off Farnsworth was a bases-clearing double by Mordecai (who had led off the eighth) with the bases loaded.  By the time reliever Mike Remlinger came in to put Farnsworth out of his misery, it was 7-3 Marlins.  Remlinger gave up one more run, the Cubs went three up and three down in the eighth and ninth, and the game finished 8-3.

 

Bartman was taken away by security while the Cubs batted in the eighth.  Even as the guards were leading him down the stadium stairs, fans continued to throw things at him, threaten him and berate him.  The chief of Wrigley security had to sneak him into a cab and even brought him to her apartment for a few hours until the Wrigleyville mob had dispersed.  Even Mother Nature had no pity for Bartman.  Game 7 had to be postponed, thus giving the media time to seek out Bartman and investigate his background.  The poor guy had to hole up at his parents' house in suburban Northfield.  To this day, Bartman remains secluded.  His only sin was doing what 99% of all other fans would do: reaching up for a foul ball.

 

The $64,000 question remains.  Why did the fans turn on Bartman, when the biggest blunder, by far, committed during the top of the eighth was by Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez?  If he fields the Cabrera double play ball, no one would have ever heard of Steve Bartman.  One explanation is mob mentality; let's pick on the nerdy guy instead of the pro athlete.

 

By the way, the Cubs, with excellent pitcher Kerry Wood as their starter, lost Game 7 to the Marlins, 8-3.  The Marlins went on the beat the Yankees in a six game World Series.  The Cubbies are still trying to shake off the Curse Of The Billy Goat.