Cubs Bartman Trip Blues

 

It was a head trip at the time, but it makes logical sense when I look back. I can’t change a thing, of course, but 20 years later, I’m at peace with the loss. The mushrooms were meant for a celebration. Why else would I have taken them that night? 

It was October 14th, 2003. Cubs fans still had no clue how to celebrate. No wonder it all went wrong. I didn’t know what it was like to see my dreams come true. It was like waiting for a tree to start dancing. Not gonna happen. Not even on drugs. 

Of course, there are other reasons why it all fell apart. The foul ball, Bartman reaching out to catch it, all that dwelling on the negative in the moment instead of regaining composure. Plus, the error by the shortstop, the relievers having panic attacks and showing it, and a string of good at-bats by the team that was to win the World Series. 

***

My Nokia phone sounded “The Mexican Hat Dance.” My brother was calling. I stepped outside the college house I lived in with six other guys. If that sounds like too many guys, it is. Hadn’t done it before, won’t do it again. Not recommended. 

I was 20 and enrolled at UW-Oshkosh. I was a virgin who dreamed of writing for Conan O’Brien. I thought I was pretty smart, and I had a lot of bad ideas to get out of my system. 

Outside I breathed in the fall air and took in the warmth of the sun. 

“Hello?” I said to my brother. His excitement was so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear, flashing a smile. My brother ranted happily. 

“Yup,” I said at last. “Division champs, baby!” 

The Cubs were going to the playoffs. The top of the order was getting on base and scoring runs, the heart of the lineup was crushing it, and best of all, the starting pitching was excellent. We were psyched. I stood at the foot of a shade tree, marveling at the leaves–burnt orange and buttered scarlet—feeling like a winner. 

We talked for 10 minutes. The moment I hung up, I got a call from another Cubs fan. My other brother. 

###

When I saw the most notorious Cubs game of my lifetime, with Bartman and all the cruel twists of fate, I’ll be honest with you: I was tripping on mushrooms. I split a bag with my favorite of six roommates and friend to this day, Adam. It went for 30 bucks apiece or thereabouts. Two decades later, I don’t think they cost much more. Isn’t that something? I haven’t tripped in several years and I never want to be the reason someone takes drugs, but with so much economic strife in the world, it does seem like shrooms are inflation-proof. Silver lining, I guess. 

The Saturday night before game 6 on Tuesday, Adam and I welcomed the young man with shrooms into our living room. As you may have guessed, the dealer wore tie-dye and a hemp necklace. We said our hellos, took our seats in the bizarre cluster of beat-up couches that made up our living room, and the dealer began to open his drawstring bookbag. Only, here’s the twist: Instead of books, this rebel without a comb was keeping drugs. 

We passed around a joint even though that wasn’t exactly legal. The hippie stranger pulled out the bag of mushrooms. 

“I tripped balls on these this summer at a Phish show,” he said as an endorsement. 

“Oh, was that at Alpine Valley?” I asked. 

“Nah, dude. That was in July,” he told me. “I did Molly at that show. I saw them trippin’ balls in August. In Maryland.”

Adam excused himself to the bathroom. Wish I’d thought of that! My gift for gab left me. I thought of excusing myself to the bathroom upstairs—I didn’t have to go, but the hippie stranger didn’t know that—but my black Airwalks were glued to the floor. 

“You like Phish?” he asked. 

“Uh, not really,” I said. 

I don’t lie about bands. Silence filled the room. I’d given this guy my money and now I had no comments. Somewhere between 30 seconds and 30 days later, Adam returned. 

In mock surprise, I blurted out, “Hey, Adam’s back!” I laughed, but no one else did. 

###

The day of game 6, I was counting down the minutes to the first pitch at 7:18 pm central time. It was a Tuesday. We had partied sufficiently the weekend before. So naturally, I cut class that night to drink beer and choke down my first hallucinogen. Hell, I even liked the class—Film Studies or something like that—but I was determined to see the Cubs clinch a berth in the World Series on mushrooms. Suddenly I was greedy for supernatural joy. 

Adam and I invited a couple friends over. Todd was and still is my all-time greatest drummer/ trucker friend. He didn’t really care who was going to win, but I’d been a Cubs fan since we met in second grade, so Todd cheered for the Cubs this one time. Carter was a Brewers fan who hated the Cubs. He was obsessed with the Dave Matthews Band, and the more you got to be his friend, the more he liked to call you a “pussy.” Carter only called me that once in a great while. 

We waited for them to show. Adam and I sat on his futon, watching the pre-game on mute. An Outkast CD played on the stereo. Adam sniffed the open bag of chocolate shrooms. His face scrunched as he puzzled over the smell. He passed it to me. 

“Get an angle,” he said.

That was Adam-lingo for “check it out.” I took in the scent. It was earthy and staunch—not nauseating, but not exactly inviting either. Like Adam, I felt on the verge of gagging, but that quickly gave way to a shrug.

“Smells like a hippie getting buried alive,” I said.

We heard an aggressive knock at the door. Carter entered the room, Todd a step behind. Carter wasted no time running his mouth.

“Hey Adam, ya pussy. Olig, Cubs suck.”

“Yeah? How’d your Brewers do this year?” I said.

“Shitty,” he replied. “But at least I don’t cheer for a bunch of FIBs.”

Some Wisconsinites use this slur to describe our neighbors to the south; it means Fucking Illinois Bastards. I’ve always found the term stupid and petty. What a lame way to defend your awful, last-place team.

I was happy to see Todd, at least. I even stood up and gave him a hug.

“Hey, did you see The Strokes on Conan?” I said.

“Yeah, they rocked!” Todd said.

We made small talk. Then Adam glanced at his alarm clock. He got up, shut off the stereo, and unmuted the TV. It was 6:45, which meant it was time to take mushrooms and watch history unfold.

Todd and Carter put in their shrooms fee. Split four ways, this was sure to be one thrifty trip. We each nabbed a head and stem and choked down the chocolate fungi. It tasted like a hippie getting buried alive.

The first phase was anticipation. One tends to wonder, “What if this is a bust?” 

The TV announcers discussed the pitching matchup between the Marlins’ Carl Pavano and the Cubs’ 23-year-old All-Star Mark Prior. My mind went elsewhere at Carter’s mention of getting “fucking hammered at the Dave show.” I went over to the mini fridge to get a beer. That’s when I noticed a wine bottle-opener lying on the black surface. The kind with a corkscrew tail, two outstretched arms, and a handle that somewhat resembled a head. I didn’t call it a winged corkscrew, but that’s what it was. 

Adam and his girlfriend got drunk on wine sometimes. I stared at the silvery tool and recalled being a kid and playing with the thing as though it were a toy. I’d make it do jumping jacks and handstands until my dad told me to knock it off.

The next thing I knew, I was engulfed in the trip. Colors popped and swirled. Tiny atoms were in constant motion, bound together but fluid. My depth perception began to change. Things in the foreground emphasized that they were different from things in the background–nothing better or worse, just different and unified.

“Ope,” Adam announced. “I think it’s starting to kick in.”

“Also,” I said. “I mean, I also feel that way also.”

Todd and Carter soon confirmed we were all happily on-schedule with the shrooms. Ace Mark Prior was finishing his warm-up pitches. The crowd at Wrigley Field was electric. I was body-buzzing and in a funny mood. I grabbed the winged corkscrew and stuck it in the breast pocket of my blue-and-red–striped shirt. This thing should have a name, I realized, because imagination can bring things to life. And I’m feeling good, so I want there to be more life.

“Guys, this is my good luck charm,” I said. “Say hello to Coach Bob.”

This got a big laugh. Four freshly tripping young men could not have asked for better material. But I made it a point to laugh the least. I was going to take this character as long as it could go, so I had to be somewhat serious about him.

“Coach Bob is a Cubs fan, like me,” I said. “So, he’s gonna offer some words of encouragement to the team as the game goes along.”

Carter was cracking up. He thought I was weird.

“What in the absolute fuck?” he giggled “So… you really do gotta be outta your fuckin’ mind to cheer for the Cubs.”

Coach Bob spoke up. His voice was gritty like sandpaper. His tone suffered no fools. If I’m being honest, I was surprised to hear from him.

“Your team hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since the ‘80s and you’re in my house talking shit? Get real, son.”

Adam buried his face in his hands. “Oh, my Gaaaaaad.”

I was getting laughs, dissing Carter, and loving it. The bit was a nice distraction from my nerves, too. My heart was thumping in the top of the first inning. Prior got the leadoff man out, but then he gave up a single and a walk. With two on and one out, Carter was already jeering.

“Ooh, the Marlins want that early rally,” he taunted.

I was too nervous to respond, but Coach Bob watching from the dugout of my shirt pocket had something to say.

“We all get butterflies in the gut sometimes,” Coach Bob said. “And this young man on the mound is about to kick those butterflies in the ass.”

That was a vote of confidence in Prior, who was 18-6 with a sparkling 2.43 Earned Run Average on the year. Sure enough, Prior responded. He got future Hall-of-Famer Miguel Cabrera to fly out to center, then he got the great Derek Lee to strike out swinging to end the inning. The Chicago crowd roared. Adam gave me a high-five and I saw tracers of his arm in motion. We looked into each others’ dilated, cartoon eyes and giggled about that during the commercial break.

In the home half of the first, the speedster Kenny Lofton led off with a line-drive single. Second baseman Mark Grudzielanek had one hard-to-spell name, but he personified a solid ballplayer. Mark G sacrifice bunted to get Lofton into scoring position. Next up was Sammy Sosa—a legend who belted over 600 career homers but also kinda cheated by allegedly taking steroids. And when I say “allegedly,” I mean he 100% did that shit, but so did many star players during this exciting but shady era of America’s Pastime.

Aaanyway, Slammin’ Sammy doubled to drive in the awesomely radical Kenny Lofton. The Cubs had a chance to add to the lead, but they didn’t. Still, we were up one-to-nothing, early.

Much of the game passed with the North-Siders up a run. Prior was dialed in, making Marlins hitters look silly. He did allow a few hits, but they were only singles—no extra base hits. 

We had a tense moment in the fifth inning when Juan Pierre, the Marlins’ blazing fast leadoff man, got on base with one out. He was a threat to swipe second base, but thankfully Coach Bob had some words of advice to the Cubs’ catcher, Paul Bako. 

“Listen Bako, if Pierre tries to steal second, you gotta gun him down.” 

Seconds later, as Prior threw his pitch, Pierre was off to the races. Bako caught the ball, tore off his mask and popped to his feet in an eye blink, and threw a dart to Mark G at second base. He put the tag down on Pierre’s outstretched hand to get the threat off the bases. Two outs. I swear, with my bug-eyed perception, this play was an hour-long symphony that the universe compressed into a few seconds.

“Hell yes!” Adam cried.

“Coach Bob told him to do that!” Todd said.

“Aw, dammit,” Carter said quietly, sipping his beer.

As for the Marlins’ starter, Pavano was no slouch. He cut down all three Cubs hitters via strikeout in the bottom half of that inning. Still, I believed in the Cubs with a sort of euphoric tension.

“Just keep pitching and playing defense and we’ll win this game,” I said, rocking back and forth.

“Fuck that, they gotta add on some insurance runs,” Adam said.

“They’re gonna blow it,” Carter said. “You know they’re gonna blow it.”

Coach Bob wasn’t having it.

“Your miserable team hasn’t had a winning record in a decade, and yet you keep running your mouth under my roof."

“It’s not your roof,” Carter said. I caught him pointing at the shiny thing in my shirt pocket more so than me. Then he looked me in the eyes, whacked out of his mind and humbled for a second. I grinned with triumph.

“Olig, please stop making me talk to a wine opener.”

“I’m not making you do anything,” I said. “Keep me out of this.”

The sixth inning began with Prior striking out another future Hall-of-Famer, catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez. When the Cubs ace got to two strikes on the next hitter, Coach Bob impacted the game again.

“C’mon Marky, sit his ass down with a curveball.” 

On cue, Prior tossed a bender that plunged out of the strike zone. Cabrera swung over it for the second out.

Todd gave me a high-five in celebration. He pointed to my good luck charm.

“You’ve done it again, Coach Bob.”

“Yeah, he’s not just some regular Bob,” I explained. “He’s also a coach."

In the Cubs half of the sixth inning, Sosa singled. Next, cleanup man Moises Alou singled. Then Aramis Ramirez grounded into a double play. Adam cursed repeatedly. He chugged angrily from his liter of Gatorade. I was amazed that someone could be mad on mushrooms. I stuck with my usual depression and disappointment. 

“Coach Bob didn’t tell him to do that,” I noted softly. 

Suddenly, there were two outs. That’s baseball. Sosa had made it to third base, at least. The Marlins went to their bullpen and brought in Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis. The lefty shocked us all by throwing a wild pitch. Sosa darted home to give us a two-run lead. 

The Fish went down one-two-three in the top of the seventh. As was tradition at Wrigley Field, the organ player teased the opening C-note of “Take Me out to the Ballgame.” I stood in reverence, took off my Cubs hat and began to sway. This charming ditty, sung by a beer-buzzed, cartoony cartoon of a man with giant glasses named Harry Carrey, was a big reason why the Cubs had captured my heart in the first grade. Comedian, actor, and Chicago native Bernie Mac took the mic in Harry’s absence. Bernie was wearing a dope, bright-blue Cubs jacket that was insanely stylish in my shroomed-out mind. I sang along.

“Oh, this is un-fucking-believable… get a clue, man,” Carter said. He really did not want the Cubs to win. He was a true Brewers fan that way.

I didn’t care. In fact, I loved his dismay. So did Coach Bob. I felt him swaying along in the dugout of my shirt, in tune with the song and the beating of my heart. I truly had faith that the Cubs were going to make it to the World Series. 

The Cubs had a beautiful inning of scratching out a run late in an elimination game. Catcher Paul Bako singled and later scored on a Mark G RBI single. (Btw, there’s a great YouTube bit of Harry Carrey trna say Mark Grudzialanek’s name and going oh-for-twelve.)

The Marlins half of the eighth inning was next, and if I’m being honest, we’re getting close to the worst part of the story. 

Florida Pinch-hitter-man, some guy named Mike Mordecai flew out to left fielder. At this point in the game, the Cubs were up 3-0. 

“They’re five outs away from the World Series,” I said. The dream was going to come true.

According to Baseball Reference, the Cubs had a 95% chance of winning at this moment in the game. In 2003, 95 years after the Cubs last won the World Series, 58 years since they last won the pennant, these were new, glorious Cubs, it seemed, and it was time to bet your heart and mind on optimism with follow-through. Sounds like a great mindset, right? Wrong!

First off, Juan Pierre did hit a double where he kinda knocked the shit out of the ball, and that was the Marlins’ first extra-base hit.  

Next, and this is a doozy, we can’t talk about the outcome of this game without mentioning a fan, which really sucks. Like, the odds of one specific fan in a crowd of about 40,000 people somehow becoming a spectacle were extremely low. Steve Bartman was a fan who did what most other fans around him were doing in that moment of time. When you go to a ballgame, the odds of a ball finding its way directly to you, the fan, are pretty low. So, on the odd chance that it does happen, it’s a thrill, a reflex, so people tend to reach out to try to catch the ball. Call it instinct, call it a souvenir. Whatever. The point is, almost every other fan around Steve Bartman was also reaching for that ominous foul ball.

Still, the Cubs left fielder Moises Alou had tracked that ball just about perfectly. He got a great read on it right off the bat, had a chance to make the catch—and this I could see clearly, with 20/20, extrasensory shroom vision.

Dressed like a proud fan, in a blue hat with a red “C,” babyfaced and bespectacled, Bartman reached for a foul ball. But he was the one who touched the ball as Alou tried to catch it. He didn’t catch it, just deflected it. No one caught it. 

Alou was furious. He cussed into the crowd that he’d been robbed. Robbed by one of his own team’s fans. What the fuck kind of a world is this?! Oh, the drama. It got blown out of proportion. It got ugly. The players and fans began to lose their composure. Guy or gal on mushrooms refers to this as bad cosmic vibes. 

If you don’t know, or you’d just like to relive it, that same hitter who nearly popped out to left field, Luis Castillo, drew a walk on a full count. The next man at the plate, Pudge Rodriguez, cracked an RBI single to get the Marlins on the board. 

“Uh–ohhhhh!” Carter called out. “Could be the beginning of the end.” 

Hurt to say, but he was right. On TV, between Prior’s pitches to a Marlins offense getting back its mojo, they kept showing closeups of Bartman. You could tell he was anxious, and there was some animosity in the air. It was all so dumb, the human pettiness, the way they treated him. 

Alex Gonzalez had a role in the tragedy too, but no one remembers him as much. With runners on first and second, Cabrera hit a grounder to Gonzalez. It could have been an inning-ending double play. Instead, the typically sure handed Gonzalez botched it. Error on the shortstop. Bases loaded, one out. 

For historical purposes, I watched this play out on mushrooms. And I’ll never forget this lesson: A group of humans in a bad mood for the same reason can be a dangerous thing.

“Whoopsy!” Carter jeered at the error. “The wheels are falling off!” 

The Cubs-hater was onto something. What happened was, the great Derek Lee smacked a two-run double to tie the game 3-3. Cubs manager Dusty Baker took the suddenly struggling Prior out of the game and brought in reliever Kyle Farnsworth. I’m here to tell you that, overall, Kyle Farnsworth had a solid baseball career, but on the night I tried magic mushrooms, he got roughed up pretty bad.

Like, he was on the mound when Coach Bob officially died. Farnsworth got an out on a sac fly to give the Marlins their first lead. But then he surrendered a bases-loaded double to some guy named Mike Mordecai. Three Marlins scored. They were up 7-3.

I got up in a state of silent malaise. I reached into my shirt pocket. Coach Bob was retired, without ceremony, back on the surface of Adam’s mini fridge.

Farnsworth was replaced by a reliever. Commercial break. I’m seeing corporate America blah-blah-blah and reaching impact on a plane crash of emotions.

Some pitcher on the Cubs gave up another run somehow. The Marlins somehow made a third out after all those hits and led the Cubs 8-3. Their chances of winning were 98%. 

“Well, they could still score five runs in two innings to tie the game,” I said in a hollow tone. That didn’t happen. The Cubs lost the game 8-3. I was crushed. Carter was pleased, but even he showed a little decency in his final dis. 

“That shit could have only happened to the Cubs,” Carter said in summation. The son of a bitch was right. 

Even worse than the defeat on the field was the appalling sideshow of Bartman, the way he was scapegoated, demonized and threatened. As the nightmare 8th inning unfolded darker and darker, some fools in the crowd threw trash at Bartman. Pissy fans focused their fury on him. The poor guy had to be escorted out of the stadium by security for his own safety. 

Suddenly it was almost 11 on a school night. My brain and spirit were shot. The shrooms were going to keep my mind racing until two or three in the morning. I had Geology class at nine. 

Carter walked to the nearest bar. Todd walked home. No one drove on shrooms. We were pretty dumb, but not that dumb. At some point before crawling into bed with a notebook, I babbled, “Cubs could still win game seven.” 

That didn’t happen, either. The next night the Marlins beat the Cubs 9-6. The Fish went on to play the Yankees in the World Series. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a minute of the ’03 Series.

Bartman was to be hounded by the media and angry fans in the days and weeks to come. He had to go into exile, move to a different state. He was a winner of the shit luck lottery. Humans showed him no mercy. 

As for the notebook I went to bed with, I scratched out the basic lil’ trauma of what went down, and that I was on a trip that had taken a bad turn, but I didn’t get much further. I threw on a flannel and a hoodie and glumly shuffled outside to look at the stars. Or whatever stars I could find in the city to ease the pain. 

In the chilled autumn air, breath trailed out of my mouth. My hands dug into my hoodie pouch. With street lights pulsing yellow waves into my view, I did spot a faint star up there. From thousands of light years away, I could see it–so the two of us were connected, as if by wires. I got an image of wires and cords tracing back to all the stars, getting tangled and convoluted throughout the cosmos. 

I turned to the tree, the same one I gawked at while talking to my brothers about the Cubs in late September. I’d have a simpler time getting answers from this tree on the same planet as me. 

I ran my hand across its course and porous trunk. The tree had a message for me. It didn’t speak, but I felt it. The tree with its leaves half gone, getting less sunlight every day let me know this: I’m in pain too. 

Sorry to hear that, tree. I thought. 

But it’s not always this way, the tree reminded me, hinting at the changing seasons and eventual spring. 

"Yeah, I got'cha, tree," I said aloud. Because I'm weird and I felt like it. "Thanks." 

I went inside half-smiling. That was all the pick-me-up I was going to get, and it was all that I needed.