It's baseball playoff time, and once again my beloved Cubs are not there. In some respects this spares me the pain of post-season failure while giving me additional time to get over regular season failure. And this year there was a lot of failure. The best analogy I can give is that being a Cubs fan is like jumping out of a first floor window over and over and over…you get the idea.
ESPN recently aired a documentary titled "Catching Hell.” I really enjoyed it, even though it brought back a great deal of personal Cubs pain (and it might do the same for you Red Sox fans, although at least you've had redemption). The documentary spent a lot of time telling what exactly happened during game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. This game was at Wrigley Field featuring the Cubs, who were one win away from the World Series, and the Florida Marlins. You may know this as the Bartman Game, named after the young fan who became the most recent scapegoat for the Cubs’ failures.
I was at that game. As a crowd, we went from the elation of a 3–0 lead with five outs, to utter despair as the Marlins put up eight runs, to something evil where we focused our blame for this latest Cub’s failure on a single person in the crowd of 40,000. I was one of those 40,000 caught up in that moment, yelling our blame, as one, at one. I still feel bad about it.
For those who don't know what happened, Steve Bartman was a lifelong Cubs fan sitting with two friends in the first row by the Cubs’ bullpen. A Marlins player hit a foul ball his way. The ball drifted over the stands but the wind began to blow it back towards the field. At the same time, Moises Alou, the Cubs’ left fielder, moved to make a leaping catch into the stands. He had it until Steve Bartman (and other fans) reached for the ball. Steve was the unlucky one whose hand deflected the ball from Alou's glove. The Cubs came unglued. The Marlins put up eight runs. Everyone knew the Cub’s World Series dream was over, despite the Cubs having another game and another chance the next day (they lost).
Newspapers had Bartman's picture on the front page the next day. One newspaper published his home address. Security had to safely get him home from Wrigley, and police had to guard his house. Even the two friends he came with to the game abandoned him during the game, not answering his phone calls to help him get home.
Was it his fault? No. He (and those also around him reaching) most likely cost an out. But the Cubs’ shortstop, several plays later, cost two outs when he dropped an easy double-play ball. The Cubs’ pitchers gave up hits by not pitching as well as they could and should. Mostly, the Cubs mentally imploded, and the young, talented Marlins were there to take advantage.
Why tell you all this? Because as leaders and managers we too often look to incidents and scapegoats when something goes wrong. We point fingers and give blame. This leads to a culture of those on our team trying simply to avoid blame rather than doing something risky and maybe achieving greatness. Instead of blaming, we should analyze and look for a root cause. If Moises Alou hadn't thrown an on-field temper tantrum, if Mark Prior had focused on the next pitch instead of pointing and yelling for fan interference, if Alex Gonzalez (a gold glover) had turned an easy double play, nobody would know who Steve Bartman is. Bottom line, if the Cubs had a leader who shrugged off this mistake and refocused his team on the game, the outcome could've been very different.
Think about your teams and your projects. What are you doing to avoid giving blame, overcome mistakes and encourage greatness?