Whatcha Drinking, Boys?

We don’t serve Yankees fans here, the bartender joked, as he opened my tallboy of Rainier. I’d had the gall to wear my Yankees sweatshirt to watch Game 7 of the World Series which didn’t feature a team from New York. Of medium height, he had a concave chest and drooping belly, eyeglasses resting jauntily half-way down his nose, and a friendly mustache; think Gepetto from the animated Disney Pinocchio mixed with Uncle Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

We were in the 10th inning, and only a baker’s dozen remained, most clientele having left after the 9th. A lone Chicagoan sat down the bar in a St. Patrick’s Day-green Cubs shirt—he’d had to retire his old shirt after twenty years; this one was oh, eight or nine years old, he said proudly.

As I settled in, an older gentleman to my right tied a scarf around his neck and swigged the last of his White Russian. The grounds crew was beginning to roll the tarp away. Calling it a night? Nah, I live just down the road, a warm fire and an unopened bottle of wine. Going to finish this game in style.

Earlier, we’d been at a table, but the bustling waitress—fucking assholes leaving their dirty fucking napkins, she muttered as she cleaned the table behind us—had brusquely informed us that “the section is closing, you have to leave now” so we’d crossed the great divide of 4 feet to the bar. (The “fucking assholes,” were two kind elderly couples, one from Cleveland, the other for the Cubbies—we’re diehards, the Cleveland woman informed me as they left after the 9th, showing me her Cleveland RNC convention iPhone case. Who are you rooting for? The Yankees, I said with a grin).

The Cubs had the bases loaded in the top of the 10th, one run already in, and the bartender asked if I’d like another. I’m going to wait and see what happens here. I think that’s most of us, he chuckled, leading a glance to my right, while backing away to sip from his tumbler of Knob Creek, his butt on the back counter, a rag tossed over his shoulder. I followed his gaze to two middle-aged ski bums, faces carved by the elements, hair bleached by the sun, who had just ordered shots of whiskey and another round of 20-oz Pilsners. Hump day, one of them said with a smile.

When the Cubs secured the final out, a grounder to third, there was a lone, but loud whoop! The fellow in the Cubs shirt raising his arms to the sky, his female companion pulling him back to earth, with an embarrassed smile. But none of us minded his excitement—for that Wednesday night, a week before the election, we’d laid aside our politics and prejudices, our fears and anxieties, brought together as one for a moment in time, by baseball and beer. The Cubs fan knocked back a victory shot on the house as we paid our bills, before going out into the chilly November night, the countless stars showing off the curvature of the clear Wyoming sky.