ILLEGAL BATTER

Chris Corker will earn no more letters. The three-sport star of Chancellor
High School in Fredericksburg, Va., recently baked his way off the playing
fields. And onto the crime blotter.

This week, Corker must show up in Spotsylvania County General District
Court to face one felony count of distribution of a controlled substance in
a school. His controlled substance, say prosecutors, was marijuana. His
method of distribution was brownies.

"This was a classic case of stupid," says William F. Neely, commonwealth's
attorney for Spotsylvania County.

If stupidity were indeed the charge against Corker, Neely would probably
get a quickie conviction. The prosecutor alleges that on Feb. 28, Corker, a
senior, brought a pan of pot-laced brownies to school to satisfy a homework
assignment in his math class involving the practical use of measurements.

"The class was doing something with numbers and how the numbers oriented
with food," Neely says. "So this kid baked brownies and sprinkled them with
marijuana. He was just giving them away to other students. Maybe it's
because I'm an English major, but I really don't see exactly what this has
to do with math."

Corker quarterbacked the Chancellor Chargers football team to a playoff
berth and starred on the baseball and basketball squads; on the very day he
brought the brownies to class, in fact, he was named to an All-Battlefield
District hoops team by the Free Lance-Star, the Fredericksburg daily. (In
November, he was named by the paper to an all-district football squad.)
Athletic privilege apparently ain't what it used to be on campus: After
Corker allegedly told some classmates about the special nature of his baked
goods, one of his fellow students immediately dropped a dime on the
school's top jock to Chancellor administrators.

Before the magic brownies even had time to work their magic, a county
sheriff had gotten into Corker's locker. There, she found leftovers from
the math project that allegedly reeked of weed. No students complained
about whatever effects the brownies may have had on them, but Corker was
hauled down to county jail by day's end.

The brownies, meanwhile, had another destination. "We sent the leftovers, a
plastic bucket of brownies, to the state lab in Richmond to have them
analyzed," says Neely. "There was a lab test, and the brownies tested
positive for marijuana."

Neely says that his office has never handled a case such as this before.
But Corker, even if the allegations are true, is hardly a pioneer in the
field of getting baked on baked goods. Potheads trace the use of marijuana
in the kitchen back to the mid-'50s, when the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook was
published. Toklas' primary claim to fame came from being a gal pal of
Gertrude Stein. The draft of the cookbook Toklas sent to her publisher,
Harper's, included a recipe for "hashisch fudge" that called for the use of
"canibis sativa" that had been "picked and dried as soon as it has gone to
seed and while the plant is still green."

American editors caught the joke, even with the misspellings, and expunged
the recipe. But the British version left it in. Soon enough, literate
hipsters on both sides of the ocean were lacing their sweets with THC,
hoping to experience the "extensions of one's personality on several
simultaneous planes" that, Toklas' book promised, "are to be complacently
expected" by those who eat the special confection.

The recipe, over time, made its way down the artistic food chain. Pretty
much every '70s sitcom threw pot brownies into a script at some point. An
episode of Laverne and Shirley had the title characters carrying on with a
pair of rock stars (played by Eric Idle and Peter Noone) while high on
magic brownies. Abe Vigoda, back when everybody knew he was alive, played
Detective Phil Fish on Barney Miller. The only episode in which Vigoda's
character was depicted as anything but unhappy and grumpy featured his
eating hash brownies made by Detective Wojo's girlfriend. (Pro-pot
advocates claim that the Barney Miller brownie episode, though a fan
favorite, has been pulled from syndication because it portrays their drug
of choice in too flattering a manner.) On the more recent That '70s Show,
in which pot references play as much a part as the laugh track, uptight dad
Red and his wife, Kitty, loosen up on a plate of weed brownies.

Pot as a dessert also appeared in the feature films Never Been Kissed and
Dick, the Watergate-era spoof starring Kirsten Dunst, which has disarmament
talks with Moscow ensuing only after Henry Kissinger gets high on baked goods.

Whether on the big or little screen, there is one constant to the Hollywood
portrayals of laced desserts: Only good things come from eating them.

Perhaps that's why the student body at Chancellor isn't particularly
incensed by the alleged pot-brownie caper. "From what I hear, all the kids
think this is no big deal," says Joyce Roman, secretary of Chancellor's
Parent, Teacher, and Student Association and the mother of a 10th-grader there.

Even Neely concedes that Corker probably got the idea for his brownies from
some pop-culture source. "I think this was life imitating art," says Neely.

Unlike Hollywood or high school kids, the law does sometimes treat the
distribution of pot brownies as a very big deal.

Fredericksburg attorney Mark Gardner is representing Corker, who was
allowed to return to class after serving a suspension. Gardner says that no
matter what happens in court, his client has already paid a stiff penalty
for his wayward Betty Crocker imitation.

"He's a good athlete and a good kid who had never been in trouble before
this," says Gardner. "But he wasn't allowed to play baseball. He can't
attend any school activities. He can't go to prom. He can't drive to
school. He can't walk with his class at graduation."

Gardner says that Corker, who could not be reached for comment, has been
offered a college football scholarship. The attorney declines to name which
college tendered the offer. "What happens in this case will determine if he
goes to college," Gardner says. "That really is the situation here."

Neely says that Corker faces a jail sentence of up to five years if
convicted of passing out pot. Had Corker sold the brownies, the prosecutor
adds, the potential sentence would be 30 years. But Neely hints that he
might not play hardball with the kid once the case gets to court. The
charge against Corker, he says, could even be reduced to a misdemeanor, as
the state code allows as long as there's no evidence that anybody became
addicted to the controlled substance being distributed.

"And surely nobody got addicted here," he says. "Not from one little brownie."