Cubs fans, apologize to Steve Bartman before it’s too late

by John Kass | September 17, 2015 12:04 am

If you’re somewhat cruel and evil, it’s easy to pull the wings off nervous and vulnerable Chicago Cubs fans.

They have a great young team and a top manager and are fighting to make the playoffs. But Cubs fans, being Cubs fans, are anxious they’ll blow it once again, as they have through all the hapless decades of sadness and Billy Goat curses and rotten Cubsian juju.

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But I have a solution for all their worry and woe. Actually, I have three solutions. And if the Cubs and Cubs fans just follow my directions explicitly, they just might finally get the dang goat off their backs.

So as a White Sox fan, I tell my anxious Cubs fan brothers and sisters this. Don’t worry. The Cubs will not blow it. The Cubs will not blow it. The Cubs will not blow it. Believe it!

Say it with me and say it proud: They will win this thing. They will get into the playoffs and they’ll win this thing!

“Will you please just shut the (bleep) up!” said my brother Peter, an anxious Cubs fan.

He knows the evil eye has been on the franchise for a century. So I’ve come up with three labors that must be carried out so fans may remove the bad juju, and the Cubs won’t blow it again. The first thing?

Publicly apologize to Steve Bartman. Yes, that’s right. And ostentatious groveling won’t hurt either. Bartman reached for that foul ball in Game 6 of the 2003 playoffs and everything went to hell. The Cubs choked on the field and the fans blamed poor Steve.

He loved the Cubs. He didn’t do anything other fans haven’t done. And still they screamed and hurled beer and cursed him. Many regret what they did. But regrets aren’t enough. There has never been an Official Steve Bartman Apology Day.

And that’s what the Cubs should do. Bring Bartman to Wrigley and honor him with a special ceremony of forgiveness.

Fans can shout in unison, “STEVE, PLEASE FORGIVE US!” and then, a profound moment of silence. Think of the meaningful quiet and then the joy erupting. Steve would forgive.

The Friendly Confines would be truly friendly, with brotherly love and kindness.

I’ve apologized to him already, quite publicly — in that documentary “Catching Hell,” in my column and personally to his lawyer — for my small part in his heartache.

But I’m no Cubs fan. So Cubs fans, in your hearts you know I’m right. Apologize to Steve. Apologize to Steve. Apologize to Steve.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough and you know it. So here’s another labor that must be completed:

Make Goat Soup. The closer the Cubs get to the playoffs, you’ll see stories about the famed Billy Goat curse. Billy Goat Tavern owner Sam Sianis knows where to get good goats.

And all the Cubs have to do is serve goat soup.

Yes, the Ricketts family should immediately begin selling tasty goat soup at Wrigley, just like the soup I made for a Tribune video at the famed Chateau Ritz banquet hall in Niles. Sadly, the Tribune lost the video. But I still have the ancient recipe.

Get a baby goat, simmer for hours for a clear goat broth and serve in Cubs goat cups. Add a chunk of goat meat, some vegetables and a ladle of rice. Squeeze a lemon. Salt and pepper. A hunk of good, crusty bread.

It’s the perfect thing for those cold nights when the chilly playoff winds begin to blow.

“People don’t know this, but the goat is the cleanest animal,” said Nick Megalis, the owner of Chateau Ritz back when we made the soup. “The chicken eats from the ground. They’re not the cleanest. The pigs eat from the ground also. The pigs put their face in the dirt when they eat. But the goat eats only the fresh clean leaves from the new growth of the bushes.”

Can you see hundreds of caldrons simmering in deliciousness at Wrigley? I sure can. Raise your goat broth to your lips, Cubs fans, drink that curse away.

But there’s one more thing the Cubs must do.

Have Crane Kenney get on his knees. In 2008, Kenney, the Cubs operations boss, called a Greek Orthodox priest, the Rev. James L. Greanias, and asked him to come to Wrigley and help remove the Greek goat curse.

The priest agreed to bless the field, since priests routinely bless businesses and homes, but said it was not a thing to mock. He brought holy water.

Months later, at the Cubs convention, Kenney mocked the episode, saying it was “one of the dumbest things” he’d ever done. And he said the priest asked for tickets.

“He called me. And what he said is not true, I didn’t ask for tickets, and it still frosts me to this day,” said Father Jim, whom I’ve known since before we were altar boys together.

“I still love the Cubs, but what bothers me is that Kenney said that asking for a blessing was a dumb thing to do,” he told me last week.

I’d have Kenney kneel on home plate in the seventh inning. But I’ll let him kneel in private, alone, on Cubs pillows or a Cubs snuggy, to search his soul. Later, the Cubs and Cubs fans will be free to apologize to Bartman and quaff their tasty goat soup in hearty good fellowship.

If these three things are done, properly and with respect, the Cubs won’t blow it. If Cubs fans refuse, well, you were warned.

Good luck, Cubs fans. Good luck, my friends. Good luck.

(John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His e-mail address is jskass@tribune.com[2], and his Twitter handle is @john_kass.)

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Endnotes:
  1. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hd1-john-kass-2014-c-e1414642837591.jpg
  2. jskass@tribune.com: mailto:jskass@tribune.com

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