Blood and Lies

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

1.In the finest tradition of the late great “Big” John Studd, who offered $15,000 cash to anyone who could body slam him (note: and Andre the Giant could), Curt Euro has offered $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove that that his legendary sock is not dripping in the savory blood of victory.

Of course, Euro has a hedge. Rather than simply offering the money to anyone who can prove him wrong, he has demanded that anyone who dares to test the sock put up $1 million of his own money. As exceedingly few people have $1 million to spare, it neutralizes all but the richest among us from taking the challenge.

But someone should take it. Some brave soul should toss his chips on the felt, because we know the reason that Curt made his hedge, is that he doesn’t want anyone to call his bluff. He knows, Jose knows, you know, that it isn’t blood on that sock, that it can’t be blood on that sock. We know, because it has proven time and again. In the World Series with the Phillies, with the Diamondbacks, with the Red Sox, we have seen, we have acquired empirical evidence, that Curt Euro does not have so much as a drop of blood in his veins—all he’s got is ice water. So if fluids were seeping from his foot onto that sock, they would be clear, not that ghastly shade of red. Unless, maybe the ice water in Curt’s veins is mixed with red crystal light. That would explain everything.

2. The evidence was right there. As Jose perused Dan Shaughnessy’s column this morning, it jumped out of him, springing out of the written page like Doc Gooden out of rehab. And sure enough, there it was. Fabrication. Like Mike Barnacle before him, like Patricia Smith, and Jason Blair, he was writing fiction and calling it fact. Like so many Seth Mnookin article subjects, there was old Danny Shaughnessy making things up in the name of a better story.

That’s Dan Shaughnessy for you. This is the man who loves to lie.

Got one of those kids in your neighborhood who likes to tell stories about wolves coming over the hill when there are no wolves in site? That’s Shaughnessy when it comes to lying. Rick Pitino called it being disingenuous and advocated doing it all the time.

“I am a man of my word,” said Pitino, clearly lying. (Note: He did not say that.)

Pitino would love Shaughnessy. The old man from Groton is lying in the morning, he’s lying at night. He’s lying, lying, lying.

If the Globe would allow him to do what he wants to do Shaughnessy would make James Frey look like Abe Lincoln.

Remember a few weeks ago when Shaughnessy printed emails to Curt Euro’s Web site from shut in sycophants? At the end of the piece, long after you’d probably stopped reading, he admitted it was all made up.

Remember the “Curse of the Bambino?” Fiction.

The Globe wouldn’t let him lie earlier this week, so he went into a lesbian chat room and pretended to be a Wellesley co-ed exploring her sexuality.

Then that evening he wrote someone else’s name and social security number down and ordered a few credit cards.

The Globe finally let him lie again this morning, but what they didn’t know was that he’d spent last night lying to his wife about what had happened to the $20 in her wallet.

Full disclosure here: Everything above was made up. None of it happened. But it is perhaps only a slight exaggeration.

These are absolute facts: Dan Shaughnessy told no fewer than eight lies in his column this morning. He has gotten into the habit of writing long fictional columns that start with vaguely plausible claims and then get progressively more absurd, before ending with a disclaimer that it the story is wholly or partly fictional.

So if he can do it why can’t Jose? Why can’t Jose publish out and out lies and then have a cute little disclaimer like this at the end that confesses, and thereby absolves, his sins? Why can’t Jose imitate the form, and it some cases the exact words of a Dan Shaughnessy column and use the words against him? Not sure if something in this piece is original? It’s probably not. Heck, you can assume it’s almost entirely Shaughnessy’s words… except for the parts talking about how much of a liar he is. Just check out the piece in the Globe. You’ll see what’s the same and what’s different.

He is Dan Shaughnessy. He is the man who loves to lie.

3. Remember the last Friday night the Red Sox played the Yankees? Sure you do. The Yankees were all excited having completed a shocking two out comeback to upend the Cleveland Indians and came surging into Fenway ready to bust some heads and break some hearts.

Do you know what has happened since then? The Yankees have lost. They have lost, and lost and lost some more, dropping six straight games to fall to 8-12, last in the American League East, behind the Red Sox, behind Toronto, behind Baltimore, behind Tampa Bay, and probably even behind the Washington Senators who do not, technically speaking, exist.

“There’s going to be panic soon if the winning doesn’t start,” traitor Johnny Damon told the Associated Press.

Thankfully, Jose has some advice on what to do in the event of panic. Jose saw a documentary on it. Should the Yankees lose three more this weekend, or even two, they should, as a team, retreat into a giant sealed “panic room.” Inside the panic room, they will be safe from all of the dangers that have troubled them. There is no mound, which prevents bad pitching, no need to whiz perilous throws across the diamond and even the pernicious George Steinbrenner cannot get in.

Of course, the documentary revealed other, new dangers that lurk in the panic room, such as gas being pumped in the room in order to force evacuation. Given Jason Giambi’s legendary “HGH farts” this seems like a distinct risk. (Note: Also, they don’t call them the “Bronx Bombers” for nothing.) And other dangers persist. Can anyone stand being locked in a room with A-Rod? Stuck in a room, will Derek Jeter insist on playing seven minutes of heaven? How will Roger Clemens ever come back to save them if they are locked in what is, for all intents and purposes, a vault?

No, New York Yankees, you can panic all you want, but you cannot run from your fate. Try all you want, but like Oedipus before you, you cannot escape your destiny, though hard as it may be to believe, after this weekend, you will feel like old Oedipus caught off easy. All he had to deal with was patricide and mother f*cking and a bunch of furies hounding him. You, on the other hand, will have to deal with an 8.5 game deficit and an angry, demented George Steinbrenner.

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