THE phone call

Exhausted and feeling under the weather, I crashed out on my couch yesterday afternoon as soon as I got home from work. At 6:05pm, Jack Buck's screaming voice woke me up... "Gibson swings, it's a fly ball to deep right field, it's gonna be a home run! I don't believe what I just saw1"

(Yes, I am just enough of a baseball fanatic to have the radio call from Kirk Gibson's immortal home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series as a ringtone on my cell.)

My glasses were nowhere to be found, and after knocking the phone off the table in my attempt to answer it, I finally grabbed hold of it and squinted to read the name on the caller ID...

ERIK.

Could it finally be??? His name has not appeared on my caller ID for a year. I flipped open the phone, said something very groggy and incoherent... and sure enough, that trademark Fonzy-Meets-Adam-Sandler greeting reached my ears... "Hey."

My brother is home!!!