On Oct. 14, 2003, a Cubs fan named Steve Bartman innocently reached up for a foul ball at Wrigley Field and initiated a cascading series of events that knocked his famously frustrated team right out of the postseason.
It also thrust Bartman into an extended, and no doubt painful, exile in which he was never seen at Wrigley in the seasons that followed. He continued to live and work in the Chicago area but declined to grant any interviews. Whatever blame Cubs fans wanted to hoist on him for what happened that night, whatever responsibility they wanted to attach to him for the team’s continued inability to win a championship, he declined to dispute any of it.