Page "Steve Bartman incident" Paragraph 28

Several Cubs players publicly absolved Bartman of blame.

Mark Prior said, " We had chances to get out of that situation.

I hung an 0 – 2 curveball to Rodriguez that he hit for a single.

Alex Gonzalez, who's a sure thing almost at shortstop, the ball came up on him ... and things just snowballed.

Everybody in the clubhouse and management knows that play is not the reason we lost the game.

" Former Cubs pitcher Rick Sutcliffe said that the crowd's reactions to Bartman " crushed ".

" Right after I saw what happened with the fan, I woke up the next morning and told my wife that if the Cubs asked me to throw out the first pitch in the World Series, I was going to take that fan out to the mound with me ," he said.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig also came to Bartman's defense, telling an interviewer, " hile I understand that people felt so strongly and that their hearts were just breaking, to blame this young man, who is the most devoted Cub fan ... it's just unfair.

When I read his statement, it broke my heart ....

If you want to blame the Curse of the Bambino and the goat in Chicago or a series of other things, that's fine.

But blaming Steve Bartman is just not right.