I am taking a break from politics tonight because I, like many Americans, will be immersed in baseball tonight. I have become more interested in this game tonight, this Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, for the sake of the guy who dropped the foul ball. This poor guy who made the innocent mistake of trying to catch a foul ball, has been treated so badly by Chicago Cubs fans that the police are staked out in front of his house for his safety. He had to call in sick to work today, and if the Cubs lose today, then his name will be synonymous with keeping the Cubs from the World Series. Nobody seems to want to talk about the fact that it was simply a foul ball. It didn't score any runs and it didn't put any additional runners on base. Nobody wants to talk about how it was the Cubs, and the Cubs alone, who fell apart after the foul.
It occured to me while watching the Yankees and Red Sox game today, and seeing some plastic sacks fly behind the catcher like tumbleweeds, that this game is still a showdown between two men: the batter and the pitcher. Mark Prior, the pitcher for the Cubs last night, pitched 6 and 1/3 priceless innings, but he watched that poor guy try to catch that foul ball, and he watched the leftfielder's (Moises Alou)tantrum-like reaction, and he was shook. He choked. He walked the next batter, and the hits just kept coming, even after he was pulled out of the game. It wasn't just Prior. The whole team was in a daze. Gonzalez, Chicago's normally flawless shortstop, missed an extremely easy ground ball, one that should have been a double play. He missed it because he was shook. He was so shaken that he was pulled out of the game after that inning. The Cubs had the curse in their mind. Their coach, Dusty Baker, doesn't want to talk about the curse. He waves it off and denies it over and over again. If you saw Baker in his post-game interview he was shook. If he didn't believe in the curse before, he believes now.
However, it wasn't just the team that fell apart, so did the fans. The poor guy who tried to catch the foul ball had to leave Wrigley Field under a shield of security, not to mention a film of beer and spit all over his person. The Cubs, the fans, and quite frankly all of Chicago should be ashamed of themselves. Even ESPN should apologize to this guy. They are not shy about putting his name on the screen, and they even showed a fairly close shot of his home. This guy was a little league coach for God's sake. He was such a big fan of the Cubs that he was not only wearing their cap, but he was also listening to the local commentators on a headset. This is a guy who was a diehard baseball fan, and maybe that is where we all go a litte wrong. We take this stuff too far, too seriously. The world will continue if the Cubs don't win. The Cubs will be back next year whether they win or not. They may be back with one less fan, and we know what happened once before when they escorted out a guy they treated badly, they kicked him and his goat out of Wrigley Field and he cursed them. The Cubs and their fans better hope that they didn't make that poor guy too mad, or they might just be in for another sixty years without winning a championship.