Catching Hell: You don’t have to be a Cubs fan to remember what happened in 2003. Up three games to two against the Marlins, just five outs away from winning that key fourth game and going to the World Series for the first time since 1945—so close to breaking the “Curse of the Billy Goat”—the Cubs blew it all after a series of on-field disasters that seemed to be triggered by that fly ball on the foul line that Moisés Alou just couldn’t catch. That fly ball that seemed like it was cruising for the stands, but was still in play as Alou made a lovely leap against the stands with his glove outstretched. Yes, that fly ball—the one Steve Bartman thought was about to make his day.

And I suppose it did make his day, but in a much more sinister way than anyone would have predicted. Catching Hell, the documentary that recently aired on ESPN as part of their 30 for 30 series, traces the echoes of that unforgettable play across the field, the stadium, the evening, the week, the month, the years. Written and directed by Alex Gibney, it’s impeccably well-made, giving just enough background on the history of the Cubs (along with a bonus briefing on the Red Sox, revolving around the Bill Buckner play that ended their 1986 World Series bid in a Game 6 disaster eerily prefiguring the Cubs’ 20 years later) to draw you in and build you up to the actual moment that ball flies off Luis Castillo’s bat. 

Gibney does more, though, than just give a nostalgic play-by-play of the events. Anyone could look that up on Google if they only cared about the facts of the game—what the score of the game was at the time, at what angle Bartman reached for the ball, what subsequently unfolded in the stands. Rather than dwell on these details, Gibney uses the documentary to ask the questions we don’t really want to ask: Did the Bartman play actually contribute in any measurable way to the Cub’s loss? (It wasn’t, after all, even the play that ended Game 6, let alone the play that ended the series.) Were the commentators and the media wrong to harp on the incident—to repeatedly play footage of it, including close-ups on Bartman’s face—both during the game and in the days afterwards? What is it in human nature that compels us to seek out scapegoats on which to project our angers, our frustrations, our rocks, our beer cans? And, finally, who was Steve Bartman?