7/30/05 – Sons of Sam Horn Bash Edition

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

1. Cut the music—

Jose is a reasonable man. He has an above average IQ. He suffers from no mental illnesses. He has not endured any recent head trauma. So he knows that it is simply not possible that the Red Sox are actually considering trading Man-E-Faces Ramirez AND PROSPECTS for Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron in a three way deal. (Note: Normally, Jose supports three ways on principle, but this he cannot abide.) He knows this can’t possibly be happening because in order for the Red Sox to actually make this deal, they would have to have reached the conclusion that the consequences of having Manny out of the line up for one game are so grave, so deleterious that the only solution is to get is bat out of the line up for every game henceforth. And that’s just plain silly. In other news from the Two Minutes Hate, the Red Sox have decided to treat Trot Nixon’s strained oblique with leeches and announced that Oceania is at war with Eurasia and always has been.

As Jose left last night’s game (note: with a 7-1 record), he heard a yokel on his cell phone exclaim that Manny had been traded to the Mets. Jose’s heart sank, and his bile rose along with his blood pressure. If Jose’s friend Tom had not learned right then with his new fangled Internet phone that the deal had not been completed, it is quite possible that Jose would have had an aneurysm right then and there and spent the rest of his life wearing a batting helmet while writing KEYS… you know just to make sure he doesn’t get hit by any screaming line drives while he is working.

Look, Jose knows that Manny can be frustrating , but at the end of the day he produces, and as long as he is putting up numbers and not preventing anyone else from putting up numbers, the Red Sox are better, a lot better with him than without him. But Jose should be fair, maybe we should take a serious look at what we would be getting in return in this deal? Let’s see, Cameron is batting .264 with 10 home runs and 32 RBI. Huff is batting .270 with 13 home runs and 63 RBI, so combined that gives them a batting average under .270, 23 home runs and 95 RBI in comparison with Manny’s .273 with 28 homers and 92 RBI. So maybe Jose was completely wrong about this deal. As long as the Red Sox have some mad scientists who can splice Cameron and Huff into one player who equals the sum of his parts, this deal is absolutely fair… IF YOU DON’T THROW IN ANY PROSPECTS!!!!!!!!!! But if the Red Sox do not have such technology, or if they do and it violates all standards of bioethics and human decency, we have to accept that the difference in talent between Manny Ramirez and the tandem of Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron is so huge that as a practical matter we might as well be trading for Charlie Hough and Kirk Cameron. (Note: Though Jose is talking about Kirk Cameron when he was in Growing Pains at the top of his game, not the dried up has been of Kirk and Company or whatever the heck it was called.)

In the final analysis, this trade is so lopsided, so manifestly bad for this year’s Red Sox that Jose half expects to hear that the Mets have agreed to throw in Center Andrew Lang to sweeten their offer.

For the complete KEYS visit www.wallballsingle.com