Creamy Nougat

Monday, August 3, 2009

Steve Bartman

I suppose it's a little odd to write a post about an incident that happened 6 years ago, but I randomly had a thought about the Steve Bartman playoff incident that never struck me before.

Now, I've always felt bad for the guy. He just did what any other fan would do in his situation. You see a foul ball coming your way, your instinct is to try to catch it. People go lifetimes without ever catching one (well... not me... I got one and gave it to a little kid, so not only am I lucky, but insanely generous because I really did need a baseball), so I'm willing to excuse his inattention to the circumstances. Clearly, other people are reaching for the ball in pictures. It was just his bad luck to be the one right by the field. Most importantly, the Cubs still had to execute to get the final outs, which they failed to do.

Anyway, the random thought I had is in regards to his headphones, which essentially became the signifier of Steve Bartman after the play. I've seen many people wear headphones at baseball games and in all instances I'm aware of, they are listening to the radio feed of the game. This way they get all of the extra information and play-by-play. Makes sense to me. So, assuming that he was listening to the play-by-play, Bartman was hearing the color commentary of him getting in the way of Moises Alou! This strikes me as an incredibly surreal situation.

There's no way the broadcasters could have seen this scenario play out in time for Bartman to get away, but surely there had to be a point when the announcers saw the fan interference coming and announced it, to Bartman, as he went for the ball. We know he heard about it from the fans surrounding him, but how many of us get play-by-play of our biggest screw-ups in life?

In my search for images for this post, I found this video, and it makes me feel even worse for the guy.