Following a dubious crowd-funding campaign designed to coax Steve Bartman into attending the Cubs’ NL Wild Card game against the Pirates this week, the convenient scapegoat for a 2003 NLCS collapse has announced he’ll continue to, y’know, live in hiding.  From The Score.com :

With the Cubs set to face the Pittsburgh Pirates, Keque Escobedo started a GoFundMe campaign to “make up for” the troubles Cubs fans have caused Bartman and send him to the game.

“It’s nice of these people to think of Steve but he won’t be taking advantage of the offer,” Bartman’s longtime spokesman Frank Murtha told ESPN. “He’s perfectly capable of attending the game on his own, though he has no intention of being at the wild-card game.”

The good news is, (some) Cubs fans have apparently forgiven Steve Bartman. The bad news : if he turns up at a major sporting event, someone might mistake him for Jared From Subway. It’s also nice to know that despite being best known for destroying the hopes and dreams of Cubs fans, Bartman can afford a longtime spokesman. Might I suggest the money raised for his tickets & airfare to Pittsburgh instead be applied to barring Jim Bruer from Citi Field or SNY telecasts, perhaps with deadly foce?