2003: Of Ponies, Bartman & Corked Bats.

Mike began his final tour around the River Forest Baseball Leagues with Pony Ball.  Pony is an intermediate stage before high school.  The nice thing about it was that it was an entirely different group of coaches who had little preconceived notions of what positions Mike should play.  That first year he moved around a lot but played a lot of third base.  The earlier picture that shows him swinging at a ball 2 feet over his head was from this year.  Below is the full sequence of that pitch.

The Cubs though possibly witnessed their worst heartbreak since the 1984 season when Leon Durham let a ground ball go through his gloves.  Many are aware that the Cubs were close to going to the World Series in 2003.  Many don't know that the Cubs were 5 outs away from reaching Nervana when a fluke pop up ball was deflected away in the stands by a fan named Steve Bartman.  The Cubbies became unglued and gave up 8 runs in the inning.  There was still another game to be played but it was all over but the shouting.  Cubs were never really in game 7 of the NLCS.

2003 was also the year of Sammy Sosa's corked bat and the years of possible steriod use became louder in baseball.  For the record Sosa has never been found to have used anything.  Neither has Lance Armstrong.