Building Up an Immunity

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

1. Do we have to play the DRays?

Now?

This is not the right time for the Red Sox to go into Tampa. Jose is rooting for a weekend of rainouts. Wait the DRays play in a dome don’t they, so that will involve some holes being cut in the roof, but whatever it takes.

The Red Sox are playing great right now. They just took three of four on the road from an excellent Cleveland team. Manny, Lugo and Crisp are hitting. Papi is back. Lester, Mr. Matsu and St. Josh a Beckett all pitched beautifully. Why in God’s name would we play Tampa right now? Everything is great, we don’t need Tampa right now.

Playing Tampax Bay this weekend is like slurping antibiotics when you’re healthy. Tampax Bay and tuberculosis don’t share initials without good reason. In both cases, they more you attack them the stronger they get. If you take antibiotics when you don’t need them, when you actually do get tuberculosis, you’re screwed. Similarly, if you play Tampa when you don’t need to, you might find that you struggle when you play them later in the season after a four or five game losing streak.

Actually, never mind that’s crap. Tampax Bay is nothing like tuberculosis because they never get stronger no matter what.

Rather Tampax Bay, as the name suggests, is much more like a tampon. If you have one when you don’t need it, no harm done, but if you do need it to stop the bleeding after a few bad days, it’ll absolutely do the trick.

Okay, so Jose is pretty sure he used that line all the way back in 2004, but you know what. He doesn’t care. Why should he stop? It still works doesn’t it? Still gets the cheap laugh, right? The bottom line is that if the people of Tampax Bay want Jose to stop making tampon jokes, they should change the name of their city/region, or at least their “baseball team” to something that doesn’t make it so easy. For instance, if they changed the name of the team to the St. Petersburg Trojans, then Jose wouldn’t make tampon jokes anymore would he? No, then he’d say things like “playing the Trojans is a lot like using a Trojan, they both stop bad things from happening.”

2. After a great deal of thought, Jose has decided that he is completely in favor of the Red Sox acquiring Mark Teixeira, even if the costs are high.

There are a lot of reasons not to go after him. He’s been injured this year, Scott Boras is his agent and the Rangers are asking for a ton. But there are two big reasons to go after him. First, he’s a 30 home run, 130 RBI sort of guy with a pretty slick glove, which is nice. But far more importantly, his name can be phonetically broken down into Te-She-Ra, which is Spanish for “Your She-Ra.”

For all of his skills, Kevin Youkilis has never lent himself to anything much better than Jewish jokes, and Mike Lowell has peaked with missing testicle humor. Picking up Te She-Ra, by contrast, would open up an entire line of She-Ra/He-Man universe related references that have thus far been almost completely untapped by this humble feature.

A good fit for the 5 hole?

Consider the opportunities:

• During a prolonged slump, Te She-Ra, could be called “Princess of Power.”
• Jose always thought “By the Power of Grayskull was a reference to Terry Eurona’s head anyway.
• She-Ra’s arch enemy Hordak is an acronym for K A-Rod H. (Note: Jose’s got no idea what to do with that H.)
• Synergy as Te She-Ra and Man-E-Faces Ramirez go back to back it order
• She-Ra has a healing touch. David Ortiz could totally use that.

3. In encouraging news Curt Euro pitched five scoreless innings for the Paw Sox as they battled Maxwell Klinger’s beloved Toledo Mudhens. The successful rehab start came even as Euro generated more controversy with a scathing attack on steroid users in a conversation with Bob Costas. Euro suggested that user Rafael Palmeiro should be stripped of his 3,000th hit and that Jose Canseco should be required to return his MVP award.

But the timing could not have been worse for Euro. The news came on the same day the Boston Globe did a feature on his life as an online gamer, including a photo of a curiously buff Euro in the game Everquest. Canseco used the opportunity to attack the Sox pitcher’s credibility.

“Curt Schilling (sic) is a liar and hypocrite,” said Canseco. “I admit that I used steroids. But when is he going to admit that his Everquest character is digitally enhanced. I have never used a computer to increase my skills or improve my physique. Can he say the same?”

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