Sore Losers

Without warning she reached over, grabbed a chunk of brown locks and swung. Wild right hooks. More often than not her fist meeting face. I helped Phil the bartender pry them apart but before we could wrestle down the feisty one there was retaliation. This time it was a fist full of blond curls. We heard the sound of haymakers landing home. These girls weren't pulling any punches. A chick fight had just broken out at the bar and I was right in the middle of it.

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You may be wondering 'why all the fuss?' Well friends, I was in basketball country and the home team had just lost. Not a great time to make any kind of off-handed sarcastic sort of statements about the game ... and I'm sure that's all it took. DING! Ladies, come out swinging. In real sports towns the bitter taste of defeat is so palpable it disgusts you; makes you physically ill. Fueled by excessive alcohol consumption, fans' saltiness quickly marinates into a blind rage. I for one have seen actions like this before after tough loses but it's not usually the girls I'm worried about. Female fist-a-cuffs always seem to take everyone totally by surprise.

Of course if Kentucky had won the game, advancing to the finals instead of Uconn, this monologue would have been very different but I can't write that story can I? Brick. Basket no good. Uconn wins and Cats lose. Commence all hell breaking lose.

Only hours early everyone was riding an amazing high. It was UK's first final four appearance in 13 years. Total blasphemy at a school so steeped in basketball tradition. During my five year stay in Lexington The Cats couldn't do it once. Now, four years removed from graduation, I'd returned to live the college sports fantasy I'd dreamt about since I first stepped foot in the Bluegrass state.

The city had never felt so alive. A current of excitement and anticipation ran from person to person like a string of Christmas lights. World Famous Two Key's Tavern had been one-in-one out since sunrise. People were holding down booths, tables and bar stools in shifts. Traffic everywhere was even more of a cluster fuck than usual. Hand painted murals supporting the blue-collar senior Power Forward Josh Harrlison and his now infamous 'jorts' littered the yards' of coeds. If you wore a pair of jeans to my favorite Cajun joint, Bourbon N' Toulouse, they'd give you a free meal if you cut them into shorts on the spot.

Of course there was no doubt in my mind where I'd be posted for the game. I parked in front of Charlie Browns at 11:30 A.M. and pumped a fist full of quarters into the meter. There was a lot of day drinking to do. I wasn't going to be moving it for a long time. I found a spot at the bar that always feels the most like home and ordered my usual. CB's is hands down my all-time favorite tavern. I talk about it at length in this post. It really is the dive bar to end all dive bars and I'm not just saying that because I worked there for two years. It has changed very little and like most things you love that stay the same, my fondness for it continues to grow.

The slight but necessary changes are the TVs. Back when I was waiting tables there it wasn't much of a sports bar. Mostly a forgotten watering hole with good late night grub and a negotiable last call. With three new flat screens it was officially a great place to watch the game. By 4 P.M. it was starting to fill-up. Buzzed, I was about six Rolling Rocks deep and comfortable with my two beer an hour pace. Unfortunately the steady stream of former co-workers who began to come in had me backed up on shots. I was four deep in 15 minutes. It was going to get messy. After the whiskey began to make things fuzzy my primary focus became maintaining my spot at the bar for the rest of the night.

We thought the eight o'clock tip off would never come. Waiting through a lackluster game between Butler and VCU we continued our breakneck pace. I ordered the hot pepper cheese to help soak up some of the booze. The media darling Bulldogs of Butler would finally secure their spot in the title game but none of us cared, all ready for the main event. It was a roller-coaster of emotion from start to finish. Both teams would shoot poorly and UK was atrocious from the free throw line (4-12), which cost them the game. They make two more free throws, they win by one. Regardless, they were in it until the very end. With about two seconds left there was an ill advised three-point attempt from Junior Guard DeAndre Liggins that STILL could have made the difference.

As it clanged off the iron the oxygen in the room evaporated. Some cursed under there breath. Others screamed in disbelief. Some just put their heads down and cried. Before the clock read zero the fight broke out. Total bedlam. Not good in a small bar packed shoulder to shoulder. Once we tore the ladies apart for good the boy friends started getting tough. Things almost got very bad. Heavy, ugly vibes washed over everyone. Somehow we managed to get one entourage out the front and the other out the back and a sense of order was restored.

Everyone was already trashed but now we were drinking in despair. There's nothing worse than a sad or mean drunk and now Lexington was full of both. We cashed out and smoked blunts to oblivion. I slept it off on my friends couch and ended my mini-vacation early. Thanks Uconn. I was back on the road home and reading text message hate from Ohio 'friends' by ten the next morning. Still, I was glad I had experienced Lexington for a Final Four but now I'm convinced that if I'd just watched the game in Columbus, as I had all the other tournament games, the outcome may have turned in The Cats favor. So sorry Big Blue Nation, it's all on me. Next time I'll leave my ass at home.


-J.R.