The Curse of the Bully Goat
Oct. 1st, 2011 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI finally got to see the ESPN documentary called "Catching Hell," about scapegoats in sports. While the filmmaker began it as a study of the Bill Buckner grounder from the 1986 World Series, it ultimately wound up focusing more on the 2003 incident from Wrigley Field, where a first-row fan, reaching for a foul ball, turned the tide of a Cubs' game and produced a far worse fan reaction than Buckner ever got from Red Sox Nation.
There are dozens of online clips of the foul ball flub itself (this one's as good as any), but this 10-minute segment from the documentary, beginning shortly after the Cub collapse got under way in earnest, shows fans at their absolute ugliest:
I found myself thinking about the local bullying debate from the past two weeks as I watched this mob mentality unfolding. Thousands of people, pointing their vitriol at a single victim, who likely didn't even know he was the object of their derision until they started throwing beer and pointing death threats at him. (He was listening to the radio broadcast of the game, but it was on delay to match the TV audio, and he likely never connected what he'd tried to do with all the verbal oppobrium tossed at "some guy" in the waning moments of the game). Within moments of the game's end, the man had to be smuggled out of the stadium, hidden in a security officer's home, and ultimately driven into hiding.
Over a game, people.
I've lived through as much of this kind of shit on both sides, given my loyalties. My Mets were the beneficiaries of Buckner (and, years before, of the visit by the black cat to the Cubs' on-deck circle in 1969, which perpetuated the so-called Curse of the Billy Goat long before Bartman was even born.) But they've also suffered through their own curses- of never having a no-hitter (their closest likely being one broken up in that same '69 season by an unheralded Cub named Qualls), of blowing astronomical late-season leads in 2007 and 2008, and in having their 2009 season come off the wheels thanks to an error by the same Luis Castillo who hit Bartman the foul ball. And that's just the Mets; the Bills and Sabres have had mob-mentality moments of their own. Yet none of them made me feel the need to mark a player or manager for personal abuse, much less physical violence.
I'm positively sickened, seeing these moments from eight Octobers ago, and hearing so many Cubs fans still as passionately hateful even today as this documentary brings it all back. And I feel just a little more of what Jamey must have felt, as I look at and listen to them and wonder, why?
In the past few days, Jamey's school has suspended a student for conduct related, not to his death, but to the taunting of his older sister at a school event. That student remains safely closeted, other than her gender. I hope, in time, her name comes out, along with those of the front-line bullies who pushed this poor kid to his own death. They may not see prison, but a perp-walk and a permanent record card notation would give each of them a little taste of the fear, and the shame, that Jamey felt.
There are dozens of online clips of the foul ball flub itself (this one's as good as any), but this 10-minute segment from the documentary, beginning shortly after the Cub collapse got under way in earnest, shows fans at their absolute ugliest:
I found myself thinking about the local bullying debate from the past two weeks as I watched this mob mentality unfolding. Thousands of people, pointing their vitriol at a single victim, who likely didn't even know he was the object of their derision until they started throwing beer and pointing death threats at him. (He was listening to the radio broadcast of the game, but it was on delay to match the TV audio, and he likely never connected what he'd tried to do with all the verbal oppobrium tossed at "some guy" in the waning moments of the game). Within moments of the game's end, the man had to be smuggled out of the stadium, hidden in a security officer's home, and ultimately driven into hiding.
Over a game, people.
I've lived through as much of this kind of shit on both sides, given my loyalties. My Mets were the beneficiaries of Buckner (and, years before, of the visit by the black cat to the Cubs' on-deck circle in 1969, which perpetuated the so-called Curse of the Billy Goat long before Bartman was even born.) But they've also suffered through their own curses- of never having a no-hitter (their closest likely being one broken up in that same '69 season by an unheralded Cub named Qualls), of blowing astronomical late-season leads in 2007 and 2008, and in having their 2009 season come off the wheels thanks to an error by the same Luis Castillo who hit Bartman the foul ball. And that's just the Mets; the Bills and Sabres have had mob-mentality moments of their own. Yet none of them made me feel the need to mark a player or manager for personal abuse, much less physical violence.
I'm positively sickened, seeing these moments from eight Octobers ago, and hearing so many Cubs fans still as passionately hateful even today as this documentary brings it all back. And I feel just a little more of what Jamey must have felt, as I look at and listen to them and wonder, why?
In the past few days, Jamey's school has suspended a student for conduct related, not to his death, but to the taunting of his older sister at a school event. That student remains safely closeted, other than her gender. I hope, in time, her name comes out, along with those of the front-line bullies who pushed this poor kid to his own death. They may not see prison, but a perp-walk and a permanent record card notation would give each of them a little taste of the fear, and the shame, that Jamey felt.