Kate Zambreno

A small boy presses his palms against the glass case, peering at the sports memorabilia. "Look, Mom, it's Sammy Sosa's bat!" he squeals. The little leaguer wears an oversized T-shirt picturing a baseball that reads "My Life--Any Questions?" He stares at the black and silver slugger that the Chicago Cub swung to hit his 500th home run not so long ago. Curiosity gets the best of him. "Hmmm...how'd they put it back together?" he asks, pressing his nose in for a closer look. They X-rayed it, his mother replies. "So...there's no cork in it?"

Jokes about that bouncy and illegal substance found in the homerun hero's bat abound at the Field Museum, where the "Baseball as America" exhibit runs through July. Even the Field Museum gets in on the fun. "We've got two of Sammy Sosa's bats. Don't worry, they're cork-free," announces a museum representative to a giggling line of tourists, families and school groups filing in. Although general admission is free today, baseball-capped droves still pay to catch the exhibit highlighting America's favorite pastime featuring more than 500 artifacts on loan from the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

A section entitled "Rules of Baseball" highlights various scandals in the history of baseball, from the Black Sox to Pete Rose and, maybe eventually at Cooperstown, Sammy's corked bat that's already a tired punchline. The tarnished icon's uncorked bat now perches as centerpiece in the Chicago case, placed next to a photo-mural of Sammy poised to hit another one over the wall at Wrigley. Above it a caption from the Sporting News in 1886 intones that "There is no city in America that is prouder of its ball team than is Chicago." People stroll by the case, stop, their gaze pulled downwards to rest on the symbol of now-tainted history, like passing by the open casket of a fallen hero.

A father rests his chin on his son's head, wrapping his arms around his boy as he reads out loud. They look in tandem at the ball that earned Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, his 500th career home run, the cap Kerry Wood wore when he tied the major-league record for strikeouts in a game in 1998, a jersey from the Negro leagues, pictures from the 1940s women's league. They look at the bat. "That's cool," says dad to son. "I wonder if it got X-rayed."

The kids are especially ruthless. "That's Sammy Sosa's bat? Does it have cork in it?" squeals a boy wearing a Packers jersey riding on top of his father's shoulders, his high-pitched baby voice eliciting chuckles from the crowd.

(2003-06-18)

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