By
MONICA DAVEY
HICAGO,
Feb. 26 — One baseball — one ordinary,
slightly scuffed baseball — did
something Thursday night that few movie
stars or politicians can ever pull off
in this city. It shut down a busy
downtown street, lured camera crews from
around the world and drew a mob of
Chicagoans to stand, transfixed, for
hours in the chill.
They came
not so much to see the little ball as to
see it blown up. Or crushed, stomped or
ripped to smithereens. The form of
demolition, a subject of hype and
speculation for weeks, seemed to matter
less than the promise that the hated
ball, and all it meant, would be gone
forever.
This was
the ball from Game 6 of the National
League Championship Series last October,
the one that a Chicago Cubs outfielder
stretched up to catch just as a fan,
Steve Bartman, reached for it. After
that bobbled play, the Cubs, who had
been just five outs from winning a trip
to the World Series for the first time
since 1945, collapsed. They lost that
game and the next to the Florida
Marlins, who went on to win the pennant
and the world championship.
Fans
blamed Mr. Bartman. They blamed the
Cubs. Most of all, they blamed a curse
that people here say has condemned the
team to be losers for practically 60
years. Many came to view the Bartman
Ball as the embodiment of that curse: a
tiny, tangible repository of decades of
missed plays, late-summer swoons,
shattered hopes and lost seasons.
"I have
no intention whatsoever of exercising my
right to grant clemency or pardon or
reprieve," Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of
Illinois said shortly before the ball's
demise. "That baseball has got to go."
The
destruction ceremony, orchestrated by
Harry Caray's restaurant group (named
for the late Cubs sportscaster), lasted
longer than some baseball games, with
the national anthem and musical acts.
Organizers turned it into a fund-raiser
for diabetes research, selling shirts
bearing the message: "Destroy the ball,
find the cure."
Harry
Caray's bought the ball at auction from
a Chicago lawyer who had managed to
snatch it in the stands after it bounced
off Mr. Bartman's hands. The price hit
$113,824 after a long night of bids and
counterbids.
More than
20,000 people gave the restaurant ideas
for the destruction: drop it into a
volcano or a vat of molten steel; freeze
it in liquid nitrogen, then smash it
into a million pieces; bury it in center
field at Yankee Stadium under cover of
darkness, and on and on.
In a city
that once exploded disco records at the
White Sox' ballpark in a Disco
Demolition Night that raged out of
control, explosion seemed the obvious
method.
The job
went to Michael Lantieri, a
special-effects creator from Hollywood.
Even though Mr. Lantieri prides himself
on "wrecking things for a living" in
movies like "Jurassic Park," baseballs
posed a particular challenge, he said.
At least
one organization, the Chicago Historical
Society, rose to the ball's defense.
Lonnie Bunch, the society's president,
said the ball could have joined its
collection, beside a leftover Champagne
bottle from the Cubs' sudden collapse in
1984 and tickets printed in the 1920's
and 1930's for Cubs World Series games
that never happened.
"I don't
like to see any part of history
destroyed," Mr. Bunch said.
One
person was notably absent from the
execution, held in a tent in the middle
of Kinzie Street. Mr. Bartman, a
financial analyst, has remained mostly
out of sight since last October's game,
when fans threatened and splashed him
with beer. He was invited, said Grant
DePorter, managing partner at Harry
Caray's, but declined.
At
precisely 7:31 p.m., Harry Caray's
widow, Dutchie, gently led the crowd
singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
When they were done, a row of police
officers pushed people away from the
ball, which awaited its doom in a clear,
floodlit box hooked up with wires and
explosives.
There
were flashes, sparks and a series of
bangs, and then poof: the ball was just
a shaggy heap of cork, rubber and yarn.
The room smelled like gunpowder, and
somebody said, "The ball is dead."
The ball
was gone, but what about the curse?
Terrence Mullins, a fan from
Wrigleyville, seemed pessimistic.
"There's so much hype in all this, but
you know, this is a team set up for
doom."
So, on
the eve of a spring training season,
fans like Mr. Mullins wondered whether
this indeed marked a fresh start, or
whether this evening would turn out to
be the last, best party of the season. |
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