The Unbearable Lightness of Cork
by Andy Behrens
Tuesday, 7:34 p.m., CDT. I'm sitting on the couch
watching television with my 1-year-old daughter.
Disney and a bottle, the beginning of the sleep ritual.
Ring.
"Who the … ?" I mutter.
Ella shifts slightly, removes the bottle from her mouth, and says, "Phome winging."
Ring.
I check the caller ID. It's my Cubs fan brother-in-law.
"Hello?"
"Are you watching this?" He's upset.
"I'm watching Return To Neverland."
"What's the worst thing that could possibly happen to the Cubs?"
"Sammy's dead?"
"No, worse. Think Sammy, then think Billy Hatcher."
"Nawww..."
"Yes. You have to watch. I could just cry."
Click.
I grab the remote, turn off Peter Pan and flip on the Cub game. Ella is incensed, betrayed. She's wailing.
I turn up the volume. Steve Stone and Chip Caray are stupefied. Umpires have gathered around the remains of Sammy Sosa's bat. He was fooled on a breaking pitch and shattered his bat on a grounder to second. And inside his bat, cork.
I'm ecstatic. White Sox fans everywhere must be feeling the same elation. This is the greatest night of my life.
My wedding was nice, sure, but in the end, it was just another drunken night in a suburban banquet hall. The birth of my child? Yeah, that was great. A solid
No. 2, an excellent day. But I lost a lot of sleep that night and it wasn't really a surprise.
This? This is a gift, implausible and shining.
Soon I'm e-mailing friends. My daughter is flopping on the couch cushions, bleating away. Her bottle-spray is on the rug, the walls, the end-table.
I'm giddy. There is cork in Sammy Sosa's bat. I don't care about his forthcoming explanation, the suppositions and defenses from the local media, the repercussions for baseball or its biggest star. I care about this: There is cork in Sammy Sosa's bat.
I'm trying to engage Ella with my happiness, but she's not having it. She wants normalcy and goes looking for it on her bookshelf, bottle limp in her hand. She trundles back into the living room with "Goodnight Moon" tucked under her arm, still sniffing and pouting.
We read, mostly from memory, as I watch ESPN. "Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere."
The night is too perfect. God in His heaven, stars in the sky, and cork in Sammy's bat. We finish the book and Ella yelps, "Again, again!" I'm watching a slow-motion replay of Sammy's bat breaking, thinking the same thing.
E-mail Andy Behrens at abehrens53 at hotmail dot com.
