Bartman Ball Brouhaha

As a Red Sox fan, and once a superstitious slave to curse-reversing ice cream and my collection of 1918 pennies, I can't help but have a soft spot for Chicago Cubs fans this week as they once again invoke the infamous "Bartman Ball" from the 2003 National League Championship Series in an attempt to "generate positive energy for the Cubs."

The chefs at the Harry Caray restaurants in downtown Chicago and in Rosemont had planned to offer up the remains of the Bartman ball (you might remember the explosion ceremony last year) as part of a sauce that would feature the ball pre-soaked in a vat of Budweiser and combined with other flavorful ingredients to make a "curse ending sauce".

Bartman Ball

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it now appears that the health department is on the restaurant's case. Chicago municipal code 4-8-010 states that no food can be served if it "consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, decomposed substance, or if it is otherwise unfit for human consumption". Appropriately, a baseball that was blown up over a year ago violates the code. Instead of using the ball in the sauce, the chefs are simply going to capture the steam that rises off the ball and put the steam into the sauce.

Creative.

I can't quite understand the logic that having thousands of Cubs fans EAT the ball (or pardon me, the essence of the ball) that supposedly ruined a season will result in anything positive...But hey-- in 2004 a Los Angeles based "spiritual psychopharmacologist" created a "curse-reverser" for the Red Sox that included placing live clams in a black cauldron then drawing a bath with Dragon's Blood Foaming Bath and Samuel Adams beer...so who's to say it won't work? My only advice is to take Budweiser out of the equation. Isn't Bud brewed in St. Louis?

Good luck this season Cubbies. If the Red Sox can break the curse, so can you (maybe).