2003-The Year of the Zodiac Goat and Cub Collapse
The Chinese Zodiacs were celebrating the year of the Goat as a group of Cub fans traveled to Houston with their “Billy” Goat Virgil Homer. They bought the tickets but were denied entrance to Minute Man Park so they unfurled a scroll that proclaimed they were “reversing the curse.”
It was the 131st year of the Cub franchise on the North Side, the 128th in the national league and the 88th at Wrigley Field. Cub fans were four score and fifteen years removed from a World Series….. But this year of 2003, this fourth generation Cub fan and sooo many others who had never seen the Promised Land with the Cubs, were optimistic…
The 2003 Cubs had four Aces, sluggin Sammy Sosa and were delivering on their promise as they won the Central Division and then ran roughshod over the Braves in Atlanta. This set up a matchup between the oldest franchise against one of the youngest as the Miami Marlins were created as an expansion team in 1993 and yet here they were competing for another World Series championship. The Marlins had won in 1997 and were hoping to match the Cubs total for the 20 and 21st centuries in their first decade and they would win their second.
The Cubbies were cruising as they were ahead in the series 3 games to 2 and they were leading the sixth game 3-0 in the 8th inning with one of their top aces, Mark Pryor, getting stronger as he knew he was 5 outs from ending the longest drought in sports history – a proverbial curse…
Then it happened….. What transpired in that 8th inning was empirical data that a curse does exist and the gods somehow possessed Bartmen to not only prevent Moises from making the catch but Bartman blew the catch himself…..He shouda had it…. Or at least called for it to alert Alou of the impending doom—I mean, Bartman was a little league coach and knows the Wrigley winds where one has to communicate on pop ups.
The Bartman “catch” was a small fraction of the inning but the play did spark a firestorm of negative or positive bounces depending if you were a Fish or Cub fan.
The score was 3-0 with five outs to go and Pryor had a 2-2 Count on Castillio who fought off the pitch to serve it down the left field line which in most ballparks was an easy out but the stands in Wrigley down the line are almost on the field. Moises seemed to have the second out of the inning recorded when Bartman from his seat in Section 4, Row 8, Seat 113, flubbed the catch inches above Moises’s mitt. Moises Alou was furious as he thought he had the catch.
Castillio coaxed a walk with the last pitch being a wild pitch. The next hitter, Ivan Rodriguez, singled on a hanging 0-2 pitch to make the score 3-1. The next hitter bounced a two hopper to Alex Gonzalez, one of the best fielders in the game and Alex misplayed it for an error……This could have ended the inning but instead the bases were loaded for Derek lee who doubled and tied the score at 3-3. The next hitter was intentionally walked and then a sacrifice fly made it 4-3 Marlins with two outs but Sammy (“Say it ain’t) Sosa had missed the cut off man so the man on first went to second so Cubs manager Dusty Baker intentionally walked the next hitter to fill the Bases for Mike Mordecai who doubled scoring all three runs. Juan Pierre followed with a single to complete the Eight run 8th inning.
The next night the Cubs had their ace Kerry Wood on the mound with a 5-3 lead but the Marlins rallied again to win 9-6 and the Cubs have not won a playoff game since the year of the Goat and a world series since 1908 but we know the law of averages are with us and 2015 could be the year of the Cub!