In baseball lore, the legend of Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman seems destined to be one of the game’s more enduring and, it would appear, one the saddest.

It has paradox. A rabid fan of his beloved Cubs, Bartman nevertheless sets in motion a chain reaction that helps steal a World Series appearance from his team in one intemperate moment of impulse.

It has the element of the unanswered question: Would Cubs’ fielder Moises Alou even have caught the foul ball off the bat of Florida’s Luis Castillo in the sixth game of the 2003 NLCS? Even Alou fails to answer definitively saying on one occasion he would not have made the grab but then contradicting himself by contending later that he would have caught the ball.

And the tale seems to have headed down a poignant, gloomy end.

The Cubs have yet to return to the World Series since 1945. And Bartman himself – the target of fellow Cubs fans’ ire in the days after the incident -- has dodged any and all publicity.

What brings all this up again is that Bartman was just offered a fair amount of cash to appear at a sports collectors show in Rosement, Ill. He would have received $25,000 just to sign a photo of himself reaching for the ball.

He turned it down. In fact, I’m pretty sure Bartman would pay that much and more if what happened in that photo never occurred.