CHICAGO, ILLINOIS • A die-hard Chicago Cubs fan and restaurateur paid in excess of $106,000 on this date in 2003 for a baseball so he could have the pleasure of destroying it.
With all due respect to Cub fans who want to blame Bartman, none of the “fans” around him appeared to have the foresight to clear the way so Alou could catch the ball.
Grant Deporter got custody of the ball Chicago Cubs’ left fielder Moises Alou was trying to catch before Steve Bartman got in the way. Deporter, a managing partner of Harry Caray’s restaurant, had the ball blown to smithereens on the former Cubs announcer’s birthday in February ‘04 as an act of exorcism.
With all due respect to Cub fans who want to blame Bartman, none of the “fans” around him appeared to have the foresight to clear the way so Alou could catch the ball, and help the Cubs get to their first World Series in almost 60 years. Everyone was focused on the souvenir. Bartman just happened to be the closest to it.
Had Alou caught the ball, the Cubs would have been four outs from the World Series. The Florida Marlins would have had two outs in the eighth with a man on second and the Cubs ahead 3-0. Instead, the Marlins had one out and Luis Castillo had new life. He ended up walking, and then the flood gates opened, aided by a botched double play ball to the Cubs’ shortstop.
The Marlins ended up scoring 8 runs beating the Cubs 8-3. The Marlins won again the next night and took the series. For Cub fans, wait till next year, again.
The exorcising of the ball may have worked. It took another 13 years, but, as we all know, the Cubs not only made it to the World Series in 2016, they won it.
Contributing sources:
The Chicago Tribune, October 20, 2003
“Price surpasses even Buckner’s ball,” by Darren Rovell, ESPN, Dec 19, 2003
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