Corky At The Bat

By Author: Aaron Spetner
Total Articles: 14
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Controversy is raging with baseballs latest scandal. Most people are analyzing facts. This author chose otherwise.
Well, I can assume by now that you have heard the news which rocked the very essence of Major League Baseball Tuesday night. That's right. Sammy Sosa the Dominican one-time almost-hero homerun hitter of the Chicago Cubs (acronym: Consistently Useless By September) hijacked an airliner and demanded that they serve larger bags of peanuts. Well, actually that is not what really happened. What really happened is the so-called slugger hit a broken-bat ground ball, and after a quick examination of the bat, the umpires (acronym: Ugly Male People In Ridiculous, Eerie Suits) discovered that the bat had been illegally corked and subsequently ejected Sosa from the game. Corking of baseball bats provides the hitters with the ability to hit the ball further than with ordinary solid wood bats. As you can imagine, this incident has caused great commotion in the world of sports. Most people are busy discussing whether this was Sosa's fault or was it an honest mistake. I, however, see no need for discussion. You see, ...
... I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan. The only thing I hate more than the Chicago Cubs is the fact that people think it is Illegal to remove the tag on their own pillows, quilts, and mattresses. In the United States, these items have consumer-information tags which have the following notice: Under penalty of law, this tag not to be removed. That is the first half of the sentence. The second half of the sentence is except by the consumer. Most people do not know about the second half of this sentence, mainly because they have the intellectual capacity of doormats (door mats, for your information, are not the smartest household items - I mean, we're talking about an object who's occupation is being stepped on). These people are convinced that there is a federal law that prohibits us from tampering with our own slumber equipment. These people are also probably Cub fans. Back to the topic on hand (Sosa, or as I call him, Corky Pig), I, being a Cardinals fan, have no doubt as to Sosa's methods of batting. Sosa has used a corked bat almost every time he has batted. I understand that they will be examining other bats that Sosa has used, but even if these bats contain no cork, I will be forced to assume that these were rare-occasion bats that he used accidentally instead of his regular game-day bats. Remember, we are talking about a guy who plays for the Cubs, a team that has not won a championship in almost one hundred years. And Chicago? This is a city that was once destroyed by Mrs. O'Leary's cow. A cow. The city was burned by a milk machine. Can you imagine that? As the legend goes, The Great Chicago's Fire was started when Mrs. O'Leary's heifer kicked over a lantern in the barn. I don't know what the lantern was doing there. Maybe the cow was using it to read the tag on its mattress. I, for one, feel that Sosa should be banned from playing baseball. Not banned from the sport entirely, just from playing. In fact, he should be forced to sell concessions at Wrigley Field. That is, unless they start serving wine there. He should not be allowed near corks. Nonetheless, we cannot force a new career path on him. That would violate his rights. So instead, I will suggest a possible new career path for Mr. Sosa, now that his career in baseball is over. The first possible profession that comes to my mind would be Foreign Relations for terrorist nations. Watching Sosa in his press conference following the game, I was amazed at how he could contradict himself so many times. The only press conference I ever saw that was worse than that was the one that Cubs Manager, Dusty Baker held immediately following Sosa's. Imagine Sammy Sosa representing a threatening nation such as France. He would probably say stuff like this: I um well we like America. We apologize for insulting them. They are jerks. America is an arrogant country which we cannot stand. If we apologized for insulting them, it was a mistake and not our fault. In fact, it wouldn't be much different than France's current practice. Although Sosa taking up Foreign Relations would be quite amusing, he may not be so eager to start representing people who smell like barn waste. If so, I would suggest law. It seems that already having mastered the art of cheating, it would be only logical for him to continue along that path. Of course, if all else fails, he can work on the airline peanut issue. About the Author Aaron currently works as a software/web developer and writes in his free time. He also runs a growing web-based discussion forum at http://www.chitchatforums.com. His personal work is on display at http://www.spetnik.com.