Nine Innings, Nine Positions, Ninety Years, Bar Nine

Before we begin our latest chapter, I must make two biographical notes. Please be aware that I am not merely indulging a wave of nostalgia, you will see that these items are indeed germane to the amount of money I spent at this, the ninth tavern on our countdown:

- In 1999, at the age of 14, I asked a girl named Taylor F. to go out with me. She said no. She would transfer schools at the end of that academic year.

- In 2002/03, as a high school senior, I became embroiled in a web of intrigue and passion known only as 'The Tournament.'

On the off chance that this is unclear, I'll explain a little further. Senior year, our lunch table consisted of 10 witty, charming, good looking and highly competitive young men. We were also very messy. Cleaning the lunch table when it was time to leave the cafeteria was something of a "Tragedy of the Commons" type situation. Not wanting to be slovenly or inconsiderate, we decided to hold a daily rock, paper, scissors tournament, with the loser of the day cleaning the entire table. Naturally, over time patterns started to emerge and certain players were winning frequently and certain players were losing frequently. Perceptive lads that we were, we formulated a semi-democratic rankings system and called it the BCS.

The mechanics of the Tournament and our ranking system aren't terribly important, so I won't belabor the point here. What is important, though is the fact that for the first epoch of the Tournament, Brian Kaniecki never lost. In later eras, this initial period would be referred to as the age of 'King Brian the Golden.' Sadly, this reign of peace and prosperity could not be made permanent as the granite rock of King Brian the Golden was eventually strangled by the soggy treachery of Louie the Terrible.

Louie's tyrannical ascension to the throne marked the end of the meritocracy that was the Tournament. No longer was one's position in the BCS determined by the strength of their balled fist or the dexterity of their scissored fingers; formerly men, we were slid about the rankings like beasts on the hunting grounds of Louie the Terrible. It got to the point where he would even draw up new seating charts for the lunch table every so often to gerrymander ever simpler paths to power. At any one time, Louie the Terrible had made an enemy of each and every member of the Tournament. Very deftly, though, he played us off one another so that anyone standing against him would stand alone, and risk banishment to the bottom of the rankings. Was there no one who would stand against this yoke of lawlessness?

There was one. Me.

In a bit of realpolitik I'm still a bit proud of to this day, I realized that the only way to create a mass movement within the Tournament was to give everyone some skin in the game. My strategy was this: each day, I would tell my opponent exactly what I was going to throw. Naturally, they would attack with the appropriate countermeasure and I would lose. I went through this exercise every single day. Once it became evident what I was doing, Louie the Terrible began to squirm uncomfortably in his dark tower (e.g., the seat across the lunch table). The other members of the Tournament began to realize that if I lost every day, they would never have an opportunity to advance and gain power for themselves. At first Louie the Terrible attempted to torpedo this strategy by making the lunch table a little more revolting each day (I'm talking smears of mayonnaise embedded with chewed up bits of salami). Do you think that bothered me? Like any true mariner, I stuck to my guns. Finally, after weeks of effort, it worked. The Tournament came at once to unanimous action:

They voted me out of the lunch table.

Well, not really. They said I was welcome back as soon as I apologized for ruining the Tournament for three weeks. I was a pretty stubborn guy at that age, so I told them to take a hike, and took a hike myself. Not wanting to deal with probing questions like "Wait, what happened?" and "Why are you sitting here?" I decided to take a seat at a lunch table by myself. In honesty, it wasn't that bad. This was March of 2003, so I was right by the TV for all the 'Shock and Awe' stuff. Aside from that, my girlfriend would usually come sit with me for a bit. When she wasn't around, I usually got visits from a super-hot sophomore named Danielle (the girlfriend and I are no longer together).

Eventually, we reached some kind of accord that allowed all parties to save face (I did not cave!). The Tournament resumed and as the gods would have it, Louie the Terrible was cut out of the picture within a few days by Buzinski the Enlightener. (side note: a few days later, we were on our senior class retreat -- one of those deals where people stand up and say how they feel worthless inside or confess that they're gay, etc. and Tom Wemhoff turn comes around. He goes up to the podium and it's obvious that he's on the verge of choking back tears. In a soft voice he said "I'm just so glad the reign of Louie the Terrible is over.' Now, lest you think Tom was being an asshole, remember this - that 'joke' only made sense to about ten people, and among those people it was no joking matter).

Ok, with those two brief biographical notes out of the way, we can move on to bar number 9 in our countdown.

9.The Ventor Sports Cafe



In my youth I had the world's greatest fake ID. My fake ID name was Austin Healy
. I've always looked somewhat old, so it was an easier sell than most fake IDs, but Austin and I ran the gamut of dive bars, liquor stores and close calls across the country.

In the Fall of 2005, when I was 20, I spent a semester studying "abroad" in Washington, DC. For reasons I won't go into here, mainly because they're not very funny, my life wasn't going great at the time (read: I spent Thanksgiving Day on a mattress on the floor of my apartment eating Stouffer's French Bread pizza and watching this show). I had one improbable thing going for me, though: the 2005 Chicago White Sox.

If you didn't grow up in Chicago, it's difficult to get a grasp on just how futile baseball in the Second City has been for generations. From 1917 to 2005, the Cubs and Sox played a combined 176 seasons without winning a single goddamn World Series. The Sox hadn't been to the big show since 1959 and the Cubs, well, the last time Cubs were in the World Series, there were complaints the league was watered down because many of the best players were away fighting World War II. The Cubs, though, have a tradition as lovable losers, a great ballpark, and something of a national following. What do the Sox have? The Black Sox scandaland William Ligue (Sr. & Jr.):

Yes, that's right. Ligue and his son were the two brilliant masterminds behind operation "run onto the field and beat the shit out of Royals coach Tom Gamboa." Maybe not the best name for a plan, but effective. On Sept 19th, 2002, Ligue Jr. and his 15-year old son rushed onto the field and kicked the crap out of Gamboa (above) in response to poor play. Both were restrained, ejected, and arrested. A knife was also found on the field afterwards.

So, as you can imagine, during the Fall of '05, when it looked like the Pale Hose might actually make a run at it all, it was quite a big deal to a long suffering fan base, of which yours truly is a member. Beginning in mid-September, I watched just about every inning of every game the Sox played. I hadn't followed baseball that closely in a few years, but as you may have gathered, I didn't exactly have a lot going on at the time and you know, you've got to try and win one every once in a while.

In the Divisional playoffs, the White Sox swept defending champion Boston. They dispatched Anaheim in the ALCS in 5 games. Then, in three agonizingly close games, they pushed the National League Champion Houston Astros to the brink of elimination. One more game and my Sox were going to be world champions.

I wasn't going to celebrate this momentous occasion at my apartment in front of a dinny TV. I was going out. Scouring the internets, I consulted South Side Sox for the best place to watch a Sox game in DC, and I got only one response: the Ventor Sports Cafe.

Racing out of work at 6 p.m., I hopped on the Red Line all the way to the Woodley Park stop (which features the largest fucking escalator in the world, by the way), and from there made the short walk over the Rock Creek Parkway Bridge to Adams Morgan, the neighborhood in which one can still to this day find the Ventor Sports Cafe.

The South Side Sox crowd wasn't lying when they said this was the place to watch White Sox baseball in Washington, DC. When I walked in, there was only one seat left in the place. At the bar. Right next to a cop.

This was an unforeseen circumstance, to say the least, but as I told you, Austin Healy and I had been through tougher scrapes in the past. Besides, there was no way I was missing a single pitch of this baseball game, especially not because of a simple case of the jitters brought on by one of the boys in blue.

Saddling up to the bar, I played it cool. The bartender asked for my ID and I handed it over. He checked it out, looked at me, and handed it right back. No problem. I was in the clear.

Then, things took a turn for the unexpected.

Being a poor college student, I asked the bartender what the specials were. He informed me that the Vetnor Sports Cafe had quite a novel special in store for its patrons that evening: should one open a credit card tab, at the end of the night they would play the bartender in a simple game of skill. If the patron won, their tab would be cut in half. The game of skill in question: Rock. Paper. Scissors.

Fuck! What a dilemma! Here's a point about drinking with a fake ID. Unless the same name appears on your Fake ID as appears on your credit card, Do not ever open a credit card tab at a bar.. There can be no more certain of a send-off: such an action is hubristic and foolhardy at best, and absolutely fucking moronic at worst. Tantamount to setting off a gaggle of bottle rockets in your kitchen sink (something I have also done).

At the same time, though, it is so rarely that fate gives us a chance to exorcise our demons in such dramatic fashion. The notion that I, having lived my life, was in this city, at this bar, on this night was too much for my powers of reason to shout down. I demurely replied "Oh, that sounds great" and handed over my debit card (which, if you haven't guessed by now, was not under the name Austin Healy).

Once again, my faith in the justness of the gods of the Tournament was misplaced. The bartender looked at the card and did a double take. "Hey, let me see your ID again." The cop had now taken notice.

"What's the deal with this, what's your name, buddy?"

Fate had thrown me a rock. Thrown a rock right in my stupid, dickhead face. I couldn't believe I'd gotten myself into this. Then, in a moment of clarity, I realized that there was only one thing that could beat rock: paper. Paper as in canvas. As in the blank canvas of my young and innocent face, which I used to face the police officer to my right and proffer my finest, most sincere "Dude, the White Sox are in the World Series" face.

He knew what I meant immediately. "It's ok son, I'm not even on duty." He laughed and turned back to his beer.

To describe me as on top of the world would be an understatement. I was positively euphoric. Aware that I was lucidly (well, less lucidly with each subsequent beer) soaking up one of those moments in which life is nothing short of grand. TO top it all off, the White Sox were winning 1-0 behind a superb effort from starter Freddy Garcia.

I was making friends left and right. The scattered members of the tiny White Sox diaspora tasting absolution (and Captain Morgan) on the tips of their tongues. Then, I felt a tap on my shoulder, "Oh my god! What are you doing here?!"

Wheeling around, who do I see behind me but Taylor F. Yes, that Taylor F. Taylor broke-my-heart-before-my-voice-had-changed F. We had to put the whole "joyous reunion" thing on hold because the game was getting quite intense. Then, this happened:





Then this happened:



A glorious, terribly sloppy post-victory makeout session ensued (or perhaps it was terrible and gloriously sloppy. In any case -- BOOM!). Nothing could go wrong! In my delirium I bought the entire bar shots of "South Side Comfort" (sic). The bartender asked if I wanted "Southern Comfort," and I said no, I wanted South Side Comfort. Well, he gave everyone Southern Comfort anyway. I wasn't worried, I was only paying half this tab anyway.

Closing time finally came. It was time to clear all that long, pent-up scar tissue out of my psyche. My strategy was meticulously formulated. Then, something happened. I lost. I lost five fucking times in a row. You couldn't write a computer simulation that could lose rock, paper, scissors five damn times in a row!

I don't even remember exactly what the total was. This bar definitely belongs on the list, I can tell you that. The sting of defeat fresh on my skin (he did that annoying thing where, if you throw scissors and he throws rock, he'd actually go thorugh the crushing motion and make a completely stupid sound), I composed myself and headed to the lavatory to freshen up before my walk home (Christ, I had work the next day).

I stood in front of the urinal and promptly threw up all over myself. I stumbled out of the bathroom, mumbled an apology and gave the bartender whatever remaining money I had in my pocket. From there, I began my contented stagger back across the Rock Creek Park Bridge. It was great.