ESPN does The Bartman

September 26, 2011

No, not the music video from The Simpsons, but one of their excellent “30 for 30” documentary films.

Catching Hell, which also tells the story of Bill Buckner’s ill-timed error in game Six of the 1986 World Series,  airs tomorrow on ESPN at 8 p.m. EST. It is one of the entries in the Baseball Hall of Fame Film Festival, which begins Sept. 30.

From the website:

In the eighth inning of Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field, Cubs fans had every reason to believe they would finally host a World Series for the first time since 1945. With their ace pitcher going strong, the Cubs led the Marlins 3-0, only five outs short of a pennant. And then the sky fell. Or a foul ball fell from the sky, tearing the cosmic fabric, when a home team fan, Steve Bartman, reaching for a foul pop fly, tipped the ball away from the outstretched glove of leaping Cubs left fielder Moises Alou, who seemed certain to make a spectacular catch.

As the TV cameras focused on the isolated fan, frozen in his seat and staring straight ahead as if in a trance, Cubs fans felt the familiar sense of doom and dread, one that quickly turned to anger as the Marlins then staged a lightning eight-run rally. Even though sure-handed shortstop Alex Gonzalez booted a routine inning-ending double-play ball and the Cubs still had a Game 7 left to try to win it and the mild-mannered Bartman made a sincere public apology, the fans focused their disappointment and rage on Bartman. He fulfilled the ancient need for a scapegoat to explain the inexplicable to Chicago — why, on the threshold of victory, the door was once more slammed in its face, capping a near-century of losing and frustration.

In a shift from addressing social big-picture topics such as the Enron scandal, the fall of Eliot Spitzer and the detainment of innocent political prisoners, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney explores the unsettling phenomena of scapegoating in sports with intimate looks at Bartman and Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner. The parallel stories are told in a suspense-filled style, made particularly chilling for Bartman. With never-before-seen footage of Game 6 from inside the stands of Wrigley Field, we see, step by step, how the Friendly Confines turned into a dark place as Cubs fans tried to hold Bartman to account for their collective nightmare.

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