Steve Bartman and Whistle Guy

I hope you caught the compelling documentary "Catching Hell" that debuted on ESPN last night. It depicted in excruciating detail the Steve Bartman saga, whose life was forever altered in one moment when he errantly and innocently tried to catch a foul ball that may or may not have prevented the Cubs from a trip from the World Series.

Cubs fan or not, baseball fan or not, it was a fascinating bit of sociology and look at human psychology. It exposed an ugly side of fans, the media, of mob mentality and the lunacy of sports "curses" taken to absurd degrees. It was a perfect storm of events that effectively destroyed an young man's life.

It was really, really worth watching, and if you couldn't, try to catch it on replay. It also got me thinking about "Whistle Guy", the guy that disrupted a big play in Louisville's favor during the UK game. He's largely been forgotten already after a brief 15 minutes of infamy, but if the circumstances were slightly different, his life could have been disrupted similarly. It's not totally analagous, obviously, because Whistle Guy intentionally tried to influence the game, while Bartman's actions were innocent. But still, all in all, I'd say that Whistle Guy is fairly lucky. Louisville won the game anyway, and I don't care what anyone says, Cards fans are less rabid than UK with that kind of stuff.

Can you imagine if a Louisville fan had disrupted a big play for UK with the game hanging in the balance? I think we would have witnessed a similarly ugly scene.