Bartman Takes His Catch, Then Runs for Cover

The first and perhaps hardest thing for a sports fan to understand is that they are there to watch. It is a sedentary, fatalistic pastime. You sit while other people make things happen. You can pass comment but you should never enter the stage. On Tuesday night Steve Bartman - a 26-year-old global human resources company worker from Chicago, Illinois - forgot his role.

He is now in hiding. His error was to stretch out in an attempt to snag a souvenir ball but succeeded only in impeding Chicago Cubs player Moises Alou from making a catch that would probably have secured the club a place in the World Series for the first time since 1945. At the time the Cubs were leading 3-0 in the eighth inning. After Bartman's intervention the Florida Marlins scored an unlikely seeming eight runs to win the match and set up a decider, in the build-up to which Cubs' manager Dusty Baker said: 'We've got to win for that kid. For us, it's just a ball game. For him, it's the rest of his life.'

His brother Martin said: 'He's really hurting right now. I love him so much I'd give up a piece of my anatomy for him.'

Bartman, as is customary, issued an apology. 'There are few words to describe how awful I feel and what I have experienced within these last 24 hours... I am so truly sorry from the bottom of this Cubs fan's broken heart.

'I ask that Cub fans everywhere redirect the negative energy that has been vented towards my family, my friends and myself into the usual positive support for our beloved team on their way to being National League champs.'

They lost 9-6.

Some Cubs fans took it hard. Bartman received death threats, news cameras were camped outside his door and he was advised not to come into work. He was as unpopular in Chicago as he was popular in Florida where Jim Robinson, owner of The Trap bar, said: 'We'll give him free draught beer and all the lap dances he can handle.' And Governor Jeb Bush offered him asylum. 'Stuff happens,' said the US president's brother. It was a defeat that pushed some Cubs fans over the edge. Eric Neel wrote to a newspaper: 'We're just like Icarus today, baby, nothing but a close-but-nocigar mess of wax and bones. The Cubs didn't lose, the Cubs are losing itself. We define the concept so that winning has meaning. We are the yard-stick, the baseline. You get me?'

To understand Eric, some history is required. The Chicago Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908 when their star pitcher was Mordecai Peter Centennial (Three-Finger) Brown. A farm boy from Indiana, Brown was given his third name as he was born in 1876 and his nickname after a farm-machinery accident. He was an illiterate and a journalist, Ring Lardner, used to read his letters for him when they were on the road, and Brown was one of the inspirations for the early Lardner baseball stories. It was Three-Finger who outthrew the great Christy Mathewson to ensure that in the last match the Cubs beat the New York Yankees in one of the great pennant races. The Cubs triumph owed much to shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers and manager-first baseman Frank Chance, known as the Peerless Leader. Their double-play skills were so honed that the columnist, and Yankee fan, Franklin P Adams wrote the famous lament:

'These are the saddest of possible words - Tinker to Evers to Chance. Trio of Bear Cubs and fleeter than birds - Tinker to Evers to Chance. Thoughtlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Giant hit into a double, Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble - Tinker to Evers to Chance.'

In the World Series the Cubs beat Detroit 4-1. Since then, only a defeat in the 1945 Series.

'Anyone can have a bad century,' ne of their managers once said. The fans' fear is that having witnessed a near century of loss there is no guarantee the next hundred years will be any better.

A despair that is shared by fans of the Boston Red Sox. They haven't won the World Series since 1918 and were only five outs from reaching this year's contest when the Yankees struck back. 'Thus we have another gigantic log to toss on that Eternal Flame of Red Sox Misery,' wrote Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe. The Red Sox have made it to the World Series four times since the World War II and lost each time in the deciding game. They are said to be under the curse of the Bambino, which was cast when they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The Cubs, too, labour under a curse - the curse of the goat - which dates back to 1945 when 'Billy Goat' Sianis, a tavern owner, arrived at game four of the World Series with two tickets and his pet goat, Murphy. Murphy was denied entry. In that case there will never again be a World Series at the stadium, the man said. The Cubs lost that one to the Detroit Tigers and there has not been another.

For the neutral, it is a shame that the Cubs and the Red Sox didn't make it. What better way to celebrate the 100th World Series than a match-up between two teams seemingly destined and supposedly cursed to lose. What pratfalls would the two of them have contrived to ensure defeat from the jaws of victory? What epic howlers would have been committed? Who would have topped Bartman?