It dwarfed one former Giant.Two former Dodgers couldn't dodge it.

It squashed a mutiny attempt by three former Pirates.

It is the Curse, and it showed up on cue Wednesday night.

Crueler than ever, it played a nauseating game of ping-pong with the emotions of Cubs fans. But what would you expect from the Curse that has had so many years to perfect its demented craft?

Well, ping-pong the Curse is alive.

It reared its nasty head in the first inning when Kerry Wood came out flatter than day-old soda and gave up a 3-run HR to Miguel Cabrera.

Before the homer, Wrigley fans looked like liked bursting kernels inside a popcorn machine. And they were loud.

After, the stands looked and sounded like a funeral procession inside a library. And the first inning wasn't even over.

Wood and teammate Moises Alou tried to usher the Curse out of Wrigley with a pair of 2-run blasts in the second and third innings respectively, helping give the Cubs a 5-3 lead after falling down 3-0.

The Curse was unsatisfied but undaunted, so the ping-pong matched continued.

In the fifth, the Marlins — whose team picture ought to be in the dictionary next to the word "resilient" — came back with six unanswered runs to take a 9-5 lead heading into the eighth inning.

A Troy O'Leary pinch-hit homer in the eighth made the score 9-6.

By this point, the average Cubs fan had to be thinking about checking into one of those white rooms with the nice padded walls. And that's just the average Cubs fan.

Imagine what Steve Bartman was thinking.

Another victim of the Curse, or perhaps just his own stupidity, Bartman was the fan that interfered with Alou's attempt to snag a foul ball in Game 6.

In a statement released Wednesday, Bartman addressed his blunder.

"There are few words to describe how awful I feel and what I have experienced within these last 24 hours," Bartman said.

He thought he felt bad then.

Well, Game 7 ended in a make-you-want-to-cry 9-6 defeat.

Before the game, there were few words to describe how awful he felt.

Now, I don't think there is one word in Webster that could describe it. I could see "Bartman" turning into a word with a meaning all its own like "Munson" did in the movie Kingpin.

Seriously, for his own sake, Bartman should buy a one-way ticket to Fiji. What he did, no matter how it really affected the game or how badly he feels, will never be forgotten. Alex Gonzalez could have saved him with a relatively routine play later in the inning, but he didn't.

So it will go down in history as another chapter in the Cubs miserable existence.

This chapter might be the most well crafted ever, from the Curse's point-of-view.

It seems impossible to create a more ghastly script for next year.

Maybe the Cubs will head into the ninth inning of Game 7 of the League Championship Series with an 8-run lead, only to give up 9 unanswered.

But that's just speculation. The curse has the entire off-season to come up with something to make Cubs fans (any that remain) wear out the edges of their seats, bite their nails to their cuticles and attempt to fly off the Sears Tower.

For now, the Curse can rest knowing that it successfully shot down the Cubs, one more time.

Josh Purse is a junior in communications. He can be reached at sports@dailyillini.com.