From SoSH:Re: 10-17-04 The Sox make history

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.

1. Everything about last night’s game was just wrong. Jose knows you don’t need him to tell you that, but he needs to say it. It was wrong like the Simpsons being preempted for the People’s Choice Awards, wrong like Ben Afflek continuing to get lead roles in movies and wrong like the WWF making John Bradshaw Layfield champion. Everything about this game left one feeling disturbed, unsettled and dirty. And it wasn’t just that the Red Sox couldn’t get anyone out (Note: Though this was most of the problem.) It was everything.

Jose really didn’t want to write today. It just seemed like such an unpleasant task to revisit the game. (Note: In fact SoSHer lushess255 who is one of JOSE’S PEOPLE, and took him to the game last night, suggested that Jose escape this task by using as KEYS "1. Pitching 2. Defense 3. Hitting." Actually not a bad idea as a "change up." Jose was thinking about doing it, but then the rant bug overcame him.)

The problems started with the national anthem. It was performed by the Cowsills, or something like that, who are apparently a Newport based family of musicians on whom the Partridge family was based. So after they sang the anthem, they sang their biggest hit which was the song "Hair" that his been a bit of a theme for this year’s wacky, hirsute Red Sox. Jose always thought that was from the musical "Hair," and maybe it is, but whatever. It would have been one thing if they’d played "Hair" while showing the montage of crazy Red Sox antics that usually accompanies it on the jumbotron, but they did not. Instead, the Cowsills stood there looking worn, burnt out and completely alone.

Aren’t there at least 600,000 musical acts in New England that would have been a better fit? Jose thinks he can name at least 200,000. And Jose’s not just talking about the big one’s, Aerosmith, The Pixies and so on. Jose would have been happier seeing Big D and the Kids Table, Dogzilla or the Allstonians up there. For that matter the Belmont High School Marching band would have been a better choice.

It got worse. The Cowsills were wearing Red Sox jerseys numbering 1 through 5. Normally, Jose could have lived with this. But not this time. Not when the trio of Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky threw out the first pitch. Bringing them out was a good choice, but all Jose could thing about was how Bobby Doerr must be noticing that his number, his RETIRED number, was on the back of a Cowsill. This did not bode well. Why not give Yaz’s number 8 to Lenny Clarke? Or Ted Williams’s number 9 to Jordan Knight? Or Joe Cronin’s number 4 to Maura Tierney? (Note: Okay, Jose could live with that and you could to.) Or give Carlton Fiske’s number 27 to Duke of Dorchester Pete Doherty? This was bad, bad, bad. And it got worse.

Jose will not dwell on the actual things that went on in the game, for if he started to list them, this KEY would be about 25,000 words. Frankly, about the only thing that went right was the guy from the State Police who sang "God Bless America." Jose’s is usually anti-God Bless America at ball games, he finds it deeply cynical, but this guy was amazing and was the only Bostonian on the field to show and balls last night. Suffice it to say that unless the Red Sox turn it around today, the KEYS TO THE GAME 2004 book (Note: which will be available shortly after the season on Jose’s site) will have an ending slightly less cheerful than Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

2. During the rainout Jose learned from his friend Audrey, who is Chinese, that her father’s unpronounceable Chinese first name means "The Surrender of Italy." Jose finds this fascinating. Apparently, he was born in 1943 to a Chinese Nationalist Army General. Jose doesn’t know for sure, but he believes that "The Surrender of Italy" was named in anticipation of the eventual Italian surrender in World War II.

This has given Jose an idea. In the unlikely event that a child is born to him before the end of this series, he will be named "The Red Sox Make a Historic Come Back From Three Games Down to Win the ALCS." Of course, that only works if it’s a boy. If he has a daughter she will be named the much more feminine "Mariano Rivera Blows a Save in Game 7 of the ALCS and Picks Up the Loss While Simultaneously Throwing Out His Elbow So He Can Never Pitch Again." Mellifluous isn’t it?

Either of these names will be great unless the child ever falls down a well.

3. Jose spent the game last night sitting next to perhaps the two drunkest and most obnoxious people in all of Fenway Park. (Note: Jose isn’t saying that there weren’t people who were drunker, but he’s pretty sure anyone drunker was unconscious.) These two fellows were fairly cogent when they first sat down, and almost interesting, but as the beers kept coming and coming they descended into incoherence. Their commentary devolved to shrieking "Reeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddddddd SSSSSSSSSSoooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" in high pitched squeals and tormenting a couple of Yankee fans nearby with warnings of grotesque violence to come, screams of "Yankee Slut" and threats of assault on the female fan. Somehow this failed to inspire the Sox to a miraculous comeback.

It did, however, attract the attention of Fenway Park Security and the Boston Police Department, who, quite rightly, came to escort these gentlemen from the premises. Of course, one of them was having none of it and decided to go into passive resistance mode, falling to the ground and allowing his face to be dragged along it. Gandhi would have been proud. Frankly, it was the highlight of the evening. The funny thing though, was that as drunk and incoherent as these two guys were, they were still ten times as insightful as Tim McCarver.

I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.