Catching Hell

Autumn 2003, Chicago. The Cubs have not won for more than eighty years and are one game from the World Series. In the eighth inning a ball comes toward the stands. A fan in the front row, Steve Bartman, reaches for it by reflex. The fielder cannot make the catch. The team collapses in that inning and loses the series. The next day the man's name, address and photograph are everywhere. He has to leave the city. Alex Gibney directs. The documentary appeared in 2011. The subject is not the game but a crowd choosing a person. Other people in the stands reached at the same moment, and the documentary shows it in the footage; who was blamed was arbitrary. The narrative draws a comparison with a similar case: a player's error in Boston years earlier and what happened to that man. Gibney takes crowd behaviour and the role of the media directly as his subject; local radio and television recordings show how the thing was enlarged. Steve Bartman does not speak in the film. He has given no interview since that day, and that silence stands at the centre. It was made for a sports network's documentary series. Who it is for: viewers who follow sports documentary and narratives about mass behaviour. Who it is not for: the details are closed to anyone who does not know baseball, the subject is confined to one event, and its central figure never appears.