Originally published 20 years ago in the Chicago Tribune.
January 23, 1989 | By Albert L. Grieve
Have you ever played corkball? You’ve never heard of it? It figures. For to merely mention the game is to court ridicule.
I first learned this truth during World War II. A small-town southern Illinois lad, I had become an on-the-spot infantry private in distant Camp Rucker, Ala.
Shortly after arrival, with a few hours of free time, I innocently suggested to companions, “Hey, let’s get up a game of corkball.”
In knee-jerk reaction, everyone within earshot began to guffaw, much as we did at Yankee-Rebel jokes, all the fashion then since we “sophisticated” Northerners had invaded rural Dixie. But this was no joke. They were laughing at my beloved corkball—laughing at me.
One cohort countered, “Sure, Lefty, we’ll take a piece of cork and play ball with it.”
Another chortled, “You sure you don’t mean ‘Let’s go fishing’? Gotta have a cork bobber, right?”
I was dumbfounded. In my provincial naivete, I had assumed that everyone played corkball.
I later learned that my boyhood avocation was limited to an area ranging northward from St. Louis to only as far as Springfield.
But the game indeed existed. A St. Louis sporting goods firm manufactured both bat and ball. The ball, a seamed mini-baseball, golf-ball size, was struck at—even hit at times—with a bat that resembled a broomstick.
I could give you the rules right now, but who really cares?
I wonder if corkball is even played these days. Yet in the 1940s around St. Louis, regular league games were played outdoors nightly, requiring lighted cages no longer than a common horseshoe pitch. And for the sheer fun of it, we played less formal games in an open field.
I may even mention my revered sport to my cronies one day. On second thought, I dare not. At 62, I no longer tamper with a fragile ego. Besides, maybe it’s all just an absurd dream, an old man’s fantasy.
Yet at times I’m once again a lad in far Downstate Illinois. And with that fervor owned only by the young, cherished pals of yesteryear are crying out so hauntingly, “Hey Lefty, let’s play some corkball.”
Cork & Fuzz 