The Mexican at the End of the Bar By: H.G. Miller I had a bad feeling about the Mexican at the end of the bar. None of this really had anything to do with an inherited distrust of peoples of Latin descent (perhaps thrust upon me as a youth being raised on the quiet plains of Kansas where most of the darker-skinned inhabitants worked as farmhands and my grandfather made a habit of pointing out their dirty clothes, bad grammar and general disrespect for traffic laws); or even a more experiential sort of uneasiness developed after several years of living in a North Hollywood apartment complex – where I was in the minority as a Caucasian – and having the group of jovial Mexican immigrants who crowded by the rusted-out collection of mailboxes for a daily siesta with Corona and Pacifico beer constantly harass me with questions about why white people talked so slow and always rolled up their windows when driving through the neighborhood; or even the more immediate anxiety brought about by the knowledge of that morning's acquittal of a local policemen who was accused of racial profiling against citizens of Latin and/or Hispanic descent to the extremity of actually killing a few when making an otherwise routine traffic stop at the intersection of Robertson and Pico a year and a half earlier. No, what really made me nervous about him was the gun he held in his right hand and the not-so-subtle way he pulled the trigger three times, effectively ending an argument he'd been having with the bartender concerning a relief pitcher recently called-up by the Dodgers (or so I would later be told). Dismissing any stigmas the general population may have about Mexicans and math, the man quickly looked around the room and calculated that the number of people far outweighed the number of bullets on his person, and as such it would be pointless to attempt eliminating any witnesses to the crime. This came as a relief to many patrons at the bar, most of whom showed their appreciation by screaming, running or both. I for one am part of the faction of people who haven't much stomach for things like blood and death and therefore got rather faint when the bartender was shot and then dizzy and then paralyzed with fear. Rather than scream or run or both, I instead found myself wrapped up in the left arm of the Mexican and pulled abruptly out of the bar and into the street where he could catch some air and clear his head and come up with a workable plan for using his hostage to the greatest benefit. Now, the argument has been made by some friends of mine (earlier that week, actually) that my pessimistic world view clouds my ability to find hope in certain life situations and generally leads to me being defeated before I ever begin any endeavor, and that if I could only try to be more optimistic about the challenges presented to me, I would most certainly find that happiness and success are not far away. Philosophically, I believe that my friends have a valid point. However, at that particular moment when the gun was pointed at my head, I couldn't help but take into consideration that the assailant had indeed been drinking, had indeed shot one person already, and indeed did still have several bullets left in said gun, so optimism seemed a bit ridiculous and I'll admit, I started sending out some negative energy. My pleas for release went unheeded, though, and while the assailant didn't necessarily have deaf ears, he was certainly good at ignoring me. I would eventually decide that this wasn't a personal reflection on my significance to the Mexican, but more of a situational necessity, given the half-dozen police cruisers surrounding our position and barking out orders to each other, nearby civilians and the man with the gun to my head. As the night went on and Manuel and I crowded into the corner loft of a nearby warehouse, the police would constantly reassure me that they were doing everything they could to negotiate my safe release, and that I should remain calm and try not to do anything that might upset the delicate balance between a quiet hostage crisis and an insanity-driven murderous rampage. It seemed like sound advice to me, and so while I found no real merit in calling up an eighteen-year-old Dominican native with a 6.43 ERA in 25 innings of double-A ball to patch a hole that could be easily filled by any of several college-tested prospects waiting at the triple-A level, I saw no reason to disagree with Manuel's assertion that the kid had a fire in his eyes and the potential to spark the entire pitching staff. It may or may not interest you to know that Eduardo Sosa would give up ten runs in six innings of work at the major league level and be sent back to double-A to develop a curve ball, and that after two arm surgeries over the next three years, he would retire from professional baseball and return to the Dominican Republic where he sponsored a youth baseball team and became the proprietor of several hardware stores. Perhaps more interesting is the genetic happenstance of Eduardo's great-grandmother, whose second-eldest son emigrated to the United States and became the first in a lineage of law-enforcement personnel, one of whom had not spent the night drinking and was quite well-versed in the use of firearms much more sophisticated than the handgun Manuel had purchased from a friend earlier in the day for added security while making misdemeanor marijuana sales on the street. In fact, Norberto Rodriguez had received an email earlier in the week touting his distant cousin's ascension to the Major Leagues, and he watched with due diligence over the next month while the boy struggled with his control and the bat speed of millionaires until he was finally sent back into minor-league oblivion – never knowing how the short-lived stint would spark the conversation that ultimately led to the culminating moment in Norberto's career as a SWAT team rifleman. And so it was that the second cousin of a second-rate relief pitcher put a bullet through Manuel's left temple, abruptly ending any concerns he had about my negative energy, the incriminating bags of hash in the trunk of his car, or the Dodger's playoff chances. I, on the other hand, found myself watching another man get shot and still thought the whole process rather disgusting and mind numbing. I won't say that I befriended my captor, but Manuel had a certain charm in his ill-conceived logic. I suppose anybody could be as bad at evaluating baseball talent, along with possessing an ill temper equal to Manuel's, so it really did have so much less to do with his heritage than the papers kept printing. At any rate, no one else the Dodgers have used to patch up their middle relief problems has had much more success, so what's the whole point anyway?

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