5 Outs will re-air tonight at 10:30 PM CDT due to overwhelming demand.
Last night, on the exact 10th anniversary of the 2003 Chicago Cubs season-ending defeat to the Florida Marlins in Game 7 of the NLCS, Comcast SportsNet will air a documentary about that memorable season highlighted by the Steve Bartman game. It’s entitled 5 Outs and has a running time of 90 minutes.
“Catching Hell” by ESPN films was excellent. It focused on Bartman, and his whole backstory. It was an excellent film but CSN’s offering certainly matched it.
5 Outs prominently features the Bartman game, but focuses more on the Cubs team than on Steve Bartman.
With 88 wins that year, the Cubs edged out the Houston Astros by one game to win the NL Central, which was the team’s first division title in 14 years (1989). They then faced an Atlanta Braves team that had the best record in all of the NL (101-61) in the NLDS…the Cubs were a long shot at best to beat them, but they did. The Braves are traditionally even bigger chokers than the Cubs, if that’s possible.
Beating the Braves was the franchise’s first postseason series victory since 1908. That set the stage for the National League Championship Series vs. Florida, a series that will forever be remembered for the Bartman game, and this is the meat and potatoes of “5 Outs.”
One of the biggest revelations of 5 Outs, Moises Alou on booking his flight home after Game 6 of the NLCS:
“I didn’t really like our chances after what happened (in Game 6)…I had a gut feeling or a weird feeling…they kept coming back…even in that game and the game before….series was 3-1 and tied up 3-3. I have the same feeling…I had a feeling they would win. I told Aramis (Ramirez) we should book a flight in case we left tomorrow (after Game 7) and we did and we left the next morning. I don’t want to sound like a negative player or person, but we did it just in case we had to leave…and it happened…we had that gut feeling.”
The Comcast SportsNet Original Production, 5 Outs, is narrated by William Petersen.
5 Outs premiered Tuesday, October 15 at 9:00 PM CDT on Comcast SportsNet. CSN will also re-air it tonight at 10:30 and again on Wednesday, October 23 at 7:00 PM and on Wednesday, October 30 at 7:00. 5 outs was trending nationally on Twitter last night.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An analyst for 95.7 The Fan and 1620 The Zone, he also writes for Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and Facebook,subscribe to his RSS feed here