COHEN'S CONCOCTIONS #4

ABOVE THE LAW OF GRAVITY. INTRODUCING BETWEENNESS

The Law of Gravity was lawfully convicted of a crime so bad, I'm not allowed to reveal it here. May the reader's frustrated curiosity forgive me. The court made him pay an unspecified fine, and his other punishment was to be suspended for a crucial play in the deciding seventh game of the world series that coincidentally was to be played the very following night, between the Cubs and the Tigers. I'm not kidding, these things do and can happen. Anyway, to continue: It was the last half of the ninth inning, with the Cubs ahead, five to four. There were two outs with the potential tying run on first and the potential winning run at the plate. Speaking of tension!

Yes, the world series was in the balance. Excitement was at a frenzied height. That moment, two new records were set for television-watching, one nationally and one internationally. A breathtaking suspension, unreleased in its mounting intensity, worked its way through heart attacks. Audience suspension reflected the Law of Gravity's suspension, by court edict, that was about to be enacted, on the field itself. The Tiger batter lifted a towering fly ball toward the distant bleacher barrier, just far enough to be indeterminate whether it would be a game ending homer or a game ending catch by the outfielder, who waited with an anxiously upheld glove eagerly wide open in professionally concentrated anticipation.

Under suspension, the Law of Gravity was legally helpless to enact itself, so the well-batted ball kept its suspended height at that undetermined length of play. It seemed like a mathematical puzzler from on high. How would it be measured? By an expert professional measurer whose airborne skills were put into play by an instantly rented helicopter put into service only for this occasion, but whatever the expense it was by all measures worth it.

Was it a game winning homerun or a game winning put-out? Or to put it another way, was it a game losing homerun or a game losing out? That depended on whose point of view it was. It's not an absolute world, it's a relative world. Beyond dispute, you can depend on this, by all absolute means.

The outcome? I leave the faithful reader in a bewilderment of suspense, which I share with him, so we're in the same boat, or in this case helicopter. My apologies that this twisted enigma remains unresolved through authorial indecision, or sadism, or abrupt bloodless withdrawal, or sheer disinterestedness, having made my point, though it's a blunt point, now a diffused point, spread out into just bland blankness, ended with cowardly or bored indifference, a let-down; or an abandonment of the writer-reader contract, which I never signed anyway, so it too is hereby under suspension, like an eternally lofted fly ball poised between win and loss, between two teams, between the bleacher section and the playing field, in that world-compelling area of Betweenness, much commented and debated upon.

Marvin Cohen is the author of several books including Baseball The Beautiful (1974) and a former creative writing teacher at the New School. Marvin plays first base for Softball For The Love Of It.