CLASS RING
Cubs award World Series ring to Bartman, seek to provide closure, healing
The way Steve Bartman was treated, you would have thought he was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and had burned down a whole city.
Now, 14 years after Bartman’s ridiculous vilification, the Chicago Cubs have presented him with a 2016World Series championship ring, and it’s hard to say who’s classier, the Cubs or Bartman. The gesture is lovely, and the recipient is more than deserving.
For all these years, Bartman has been reviled, including by more than a few goofs in the media, for the unpardonable sin of reaching out and tipping a foul ball in the sixth game of the 2003 National League Championship Series, foiling an effort by a Cubs outfielder to make the catch.
As if plenty of other fans would not have done the same. As if this were not just a baseball game.
The Cubs went on to lose the game and the series, and Bartman became a horribly treated scapegoat. Gov. Rod Blagovich said there would be “no pardon.” Sports radio hosts and callers ripped him daily — and monthly and yearly. A local restaurant bought the ball in question and blew it up. People made fools of themselves.
And what did Bartman do? He said he was “truly sorry.” And then he went silent. No interviews, no fighting back and no attempts to cash in on his notoriety, which would have been the American way. He turned down $ 25,000 to autograph a picture of himself. When fans of the winning team that fateful night, the Florida Marlins, sent him gifts, he asked them to make donations instead to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
But now the Cubs have presented Bartman with a World Series ring, which is pretty great, and he has accepted the honor with a graciousness his critics do not deserve.
“My hope is that we all can learn from my experience to view sports as entertainment and prevent harsh scapegoating,” he said in the statement on Monday, “and to challenge the media and opportunistic profiteers to conduct business ethically by respecting personal privacy rights and not exploit any individual to advance their own self- interest or economic gain.”
And, he added, he won’t be doing interviews.
This brings us back to Mrs. O’Leary. She was scapegoated, too. There is no evidence— zero— that the Chicago Fire of 1871 was started in her barn by a cow that kicked over a lantern. And though she was hounded for the bum rap the rest of her life, she clammed up and said nothing.
Some years after the fire, a representative of P. T. Barnum, the circus man, knocked on Mrs. O’Leary’s door. He wanted to invite her to join a traveling show in which she would sit on a milking stool next to a fake cow. They’d charge the rubes just to gawk at her.
Whoever answered the door that day slammed it shut. Good for you, Mrs. O’Leary. And good for you, Steve Bartman.
Bartman has accepted the honor with a graciousness his critics do not deserve.