Steve Bartman was just another Cubs’ fan when he woke up on Wednesday morning.

Bartman, 26,… Steve Bartman was just another Cubs’ fan when he woke up on Wednesday morning.

Bartman, 26, is a huge Cubs fan, but his life changed in a split second. Many people were preparing for the return of the Cubs to the World Series for the first time since 1945. Locker room attendants were probably preparing the locker room for the festivities that follow a playoff series victory.

The champagne would have to be put away after a disastrous inning. In the top of the eighth inning during game six of the National League Championship Series, Florida Marlins’ second baseman Luis Castillo came to the plate.

Chicago had its young ace Mark Prior on the mound and a 3-0 lead going into the inning.

This game was a lock. Right?

Castillo fouled a ball down the left field line, and Cubs’ left fielder Moises Alou gave chase and attempted to make a leaping catch at the wall in foul territory. It looked like Alou may have had a play, but the ball deflected off Bartman and fell foul into the seats.

Florida would go on to score eight unanswered runs and send the series into a pivotal game seven.

Chicago Cubs’ fans should be ashamed of the way they treated Bartman after the incident. Most notably, Bartman was not the only fan who attempted to catch the foul ball. There were several fans pursuing the ball. He just had the misfortune of being the spectator who the ball hit.

This incident was not the deciding factor in the game. Prior could have proceeded to get Castillo out, but he walked him.

Also, Alex Gonzalez had an opportunity to end the inning when he misplayed a ball that had double play written all over it. Instead, the ball popped out of his glove, and the game was tied at three.

You want to talk about a play that decided a game, or, for that matter, a series, look at the American League Championship Series in 1996, when 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier reached over the right field wall and took a deep fly ball off the bat of New York Yankees’ shortstop Derek Jeter away from Baltimore Orioles’ right fielder Tony Tarasco, which sent the game into extra innings.

Cubs’ fans have nothing to complain about, because their beloved team proceeded to play sloppy baseball after the missed opportunity.

Who is to say that Alou would have caught the ball anyway? Bartman just did what any normal spectator would have done in his position. It’s not like he pulled a Jeffrey Maier and reached into the field of play.

During the summer, I go to several baseball games and have had seats as close as a couple of rows from the field. I know that when a ball goes up in the air and is drifting back towards me the first thing that goes through my mind is, “get ready, that ball is coming towards me.”

I am hardly thinking about whether or not a fielder is attempting to make a play. Since I am a student of the game, I would hope that I would have checked first to see if a fielder has a play on the ball; that is, if my Orioles are out in the field trying to make a play.

But in all seriousness, I think that if you put nine out of 10 people in the same position, they would have made the same mistake. His mistake was not allowing Alou to make the play and being ready to catch the ball in case the ball dropped in.

Dusty Baker and the Cubs handled the situation with class by not bad-mouthing him and simply saying Bartman must have been a Marlins’ fan. But the Cubs’ fans acted almost as badly as Cleveland Browns fans did in a game in December 2001, when they threw beer bottles at officials after a botched call.

Bartman probably feels as low as he as ever felt in his life, and it is shameful that he had to be escorted out of the stadium by security after fans threatened him and threw beer containers and other objects at him.

The poor guy even skipped work on Wednesday. Leave him alone, because it could have just as easily been one of us.

Kevin Nash is the assistant sports editor for The Pitt News.