Ok, since we resorted to name calling, anyone who blames tHom’s narrative of Bartman costing the Cubs the 2003 series against Miami is either an idiot, lazy or has never watched baseball. Your revisionist history argument is a joke.
Let’s start with Dusty running Prior out for 130-plus pitches each of his final two starts of the regular season and 234 innings overall after throwing half of that the previous year.
The Cubs were leading Game 6, 3-0, and they were off the day before, so they have a fresh Borowski, who was in the zone. His ERA was 2.63 in the regular season and 1.17 in the playoffs. They only needed five outs.
Prior is clearly tiring, as he’s criminally over 120 pitches again, but rather than go to the bullpen, Dusty leaves Prior out there to give up a double, a walk and a single before the foul ball that Alou never would’ve caught anyway, since he was worst defensive left fielder in baseball.
Alex Gonzalez, who for whatever reason is never given the Buckner treatment, botches a double play ball, loading the bases, and rather than reading the room, Dusty leaves Prior in to serve up a three-run double then finally brings in Farnsworth, who ultimately serves up another bases-clearing double and an ensuing RBI single.
Dusty had numerous chances to stop the bleeding, but instead he watched his team give up eight runs while his dominant, fresh closer sat in the bullpen.
And there are countless other examples of his boneheaded-ness, but you picked that one so we’ll stick with that.
For the record, I was excited when the Cubs hired him after the Giants let him go despite making the WS in 2002. I talked to a scout friend and he told me “there’s a reason they didn’t bring him back”. I found that out a year later.
By the way, the next season, with pretty much the entire team back, the Cubs choked away a playoff berth the final week, and Steve Stone – a billion times smarter of a baseball man than Dusty – called them out on the air and ultimately was let go as a result.
They won 79 games in 2005 and 66 in 2006, finishing last partly thanks to making the amazingly-dumb move to take Dempster out of the rotation and make him the closer.
It’s hilarious that you finish with saying the Cubs stopped making the playoffs after Dusty was fired. In reality, Piniella took over in 2007 and won back-to-back division titles with the Cubs.
You might not want to comment on the Cubs since you clearly don’t know anything about their history.
).