Imagine your life as being really good: you have a good job,great friends, great family, you coach a Little League baseball team where all the kids love you, and you live in a nice, big home in a wealthy community.
Now imagine yourself going to a baseball playoff game, having front row seats, then leave after the game having your whole world collapse in the blink of an eye.
The setting is October,2003 at Wrigley Field. The 8th inning of Game 6, and the Cubs are in the lead, just 6 outs away from surpassing an almost 100 year curse of collapses in making it to the big dance and winning a World Series Championship. A young Cub fan in his early twenties named Steve Bartman reaches out for a foul ball obstructing the field of play for the Cubs outfielder. He's then made the scapegoat, adding to 100 years of frustration for Cubs fans.
Catching Hell is a recent documentary of that fatal day for Cubbie fans of America. Nobody died, nobody committed a crime, nobody was physically hurt, but yet America treated this kid as a criminal. I love this film because it shows the idiot fallacy us humans can be:
1.The media. Oh my, I had no idea it was that bad until I saw this film. Steve Bartman was America's poster child of ill-fated history for quite a few weeks. From local to national news media he was their whipping boy. One newspaper reporter who was sitting nearby at the game angrily questioned Bartman,
"Do you have any idea what you have just done?"
The reporter would issue an apology in this film. All of the local t.v. sportscasters hung Steve Bartman out to dry,claiming he did interfere with the catch and he was to blame. Another television news reporter during a newscast gave out Bartman's home address and where he worked at. And even the Governor of Illinois declared,
"He will never get a pardon from this Governor!"
I was completely appalled at the behavior of the media after seeing this; and came away with the least respect for them as journalists.
2.The fans . This film shows never-before-seen footage of what happened in that section of seating where Steve Bartman sat, and includes interviews with some of those who sat around him during the game. For being a playoff game of epic proportions related to making history, there were extra broadcasting cameras at the game. Some cameras had stayed focused on this isolated fan and the section which became the darkest place next to hell. Steve Bartman disregarded his own safety and didn't want to leave the game until it was over.
In this piece of the documentary you see what Steve Bartman had to endure. Fans came up to him and threw beer on him, fans were yelling obscenities toward him, some threw food at him. When security finally realized they had to get him out of there for the sake of his life, they would escort him through an angry lynch mob. One fan would yell out,
"You ought to take a shotgun, insert it into your mouth, and pull the trigger."
It was at about this stage of the film where I suddenly realized that I really felt sorry for this poor innocent kid. I had no idea how bad people could get in the heat-of-the-moment when it involves witnessing a part of history, but yet, geeze, it was only a baseball game.
As they escorted Bartman out of the seating areas, the lynching continued and security had to lock him in a stadium office for his safety until hours after the game. With crowds outside the stadium still lingering three hours later waiting to get their licks in on this kid, a head of security snuck Steve into the backseat of her car and took him to her apartment close by until the morning.
As morning approached, and Bartman up all night watching his face get plastered all over the t.v., several police were at his home to protect his family from harms way.
3. The truth. A different camera angle proves that Steve Bartman was made a scapegoat. From his viewpoint Bartman could not actually see the outfielder coming toward the wall to make an attempt to catch the ball. And lest we even forget that later in that same inning the shortstop booted an easy grounder that let the Marlins score the tying and winning runs.
There were in fact at least 3 other fans who went after that foul ball, it was just unfortunate that it was the hand of Bartman who had touched it before the ball could lay in the glove of the outfielder. Another fan did come up with the baseball, but Steve Bartman was still the one everybody wanted to kill.
It was ironic that even though the Cubs lost that game, there was still one more game to play at Wrigley and they still had a chance to win and go to the Series. But everyone dwells on that one fatal night in October. A night where one Cubs fan named Steve Bartman would soon forget. And yes, the Cubs lost game 7 as well.
Steve Bartman had to eventually move out of the state, turned down thousands of dollars for interviews, and I imagine probably changed his name.The director of the film couldn't even find him.
Imagine having to leave your family and friends, your job, the kids baseball team you coached and loved doing, all because of a game.
If there's one reason why every American should watch Catching Hell it is but to save ourselves from ourselves.
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