A Little Of Each

A Little Of Each

               With my money in hand I practically skipped on my way to the bars.  Most of them were closed at that hour but I found a good one – the Irish bar – still open.

               I sat down among the best downtown had to offer that night and they were okay.  The bartender was jolly.  The patrons consisted of male construction workers and three beautiful women, all smiling and full of life.

               I ordered a Jameson and it cost me seven dollars.  I ordered it neat and drank it down.  Someone ordered a round.  The men began to tell jokes and everyone started to laugh together.  The women began to dance.  A couple of the men danced with them while the rest looked on.

               The bartender asked me if I wanted another.

               “Yes,” I said.

               He reached up and pulled down the Jameson Caskmates IPA and also the Stout.

               “I highly recommend these,” he said.

               “Which one’s better?” I asked.

               “I like them the same,” he replied.

               “Whichever,” I told him and shrugged my shoulders.

               “On the rocks?”

               “Yeah.”

               I looked up at the television to my right and U2 was playing one of their hits.  I looked over to the other television and saw Pablo Sandoval.  There were captions.

               Sandoval plays third base and sometimes first base for the San Francisco Giants (every once in awhile he plays catcher and if you’re lucky you’ll see him pitch).  He came up when the Giants were bad and hit the snot out of the ball.  Something went wrong when he went to play for Boston and the Giants took him back.

               The captions displayed the translation of Sandoval’s jovial and now, mature attitude.  He was thanking the Giants not only for giving him another chance after blowing it in Boston, but for everything they had done for him before he had left.  He was saying how he now knew, looking back, that everyone had been worried about him back then.  That even though he was single-handedly carrying the offense for quite a while, the criticisms he endured were motivated by love, something he wasn’t able to accept back then.  My mind wandered back to when Aubrey Huff released his book and told the whole world that all anyone ever wanted was for Sandoval to “get on the treadmill.”  Sandoval was the kind of hitter who could hit a ball that bounced before it reached the hitting zone.  That’s why everyone loved him so much.  But the best thing Pablo said was after the interviewer asked him about how big the game was and he said in response that the game was only big if you loved it enough, that loving the game was the most important thing a player could do.  I smiled when I read that particular caption.

               The second drink came and I didn’t know if it was the IPA or the Stout, but it was on the rocks.  This one cost about nine dollars.

               I had barely tipped the bartender for the first drink but he obviously hadn’t cared.  The second drink was a big one.

               “Which one is this?” I asked him, about half-way through the whiskey.  “IPA or Stout?”

               “What do you think of it?”

               “It’s fuller, richer than the original,” I said.

               “I poured a little of each in there,” he told me and winked.

               “It’s amazing,” I said.  “You can pour a good one.”

               “It was out of necessity,” he shrugged.  “We sell so much of these brothers, I’m all out.”

               I gave him a bigger tip this time and got back to thinking about the black cat.  Eventually I drank down the rest of my Caskmates and left.

               A homeless guy was pacing back and forth.  I bent down and tied my shoe in front of him.  He was talking to himself.  I asked him if he was alright.  He stopped talking to himself and said he was.

               I walked home, smoking my last two cigarettes.

               Everything was alright.