1. F you Curt Euro.
That’s right, Jose said it, well he at least hinted at it. This is an upscale feature and Jose isn’t going to work blue. But seriously, F you.
Jose could forgive a lot. He is a forgiving man. He forgave all of the saves you blew in 2005. He forgave the fact that between being a major league pitcher and a Warquest geek you dangerously blur the line between jock and nerd, like you are some foolish Romeo trying to unite two feuding houses of Verona. Jose could forgive the diarrhea of the mouth and your poor play on Celebrity Poker Challenge. (Note: How dare you represent the Red Sox poorly in front of former Kids in the Hall straight man Dave Foley.) Hell, Jose could even forgive you for endorsing George W. Bush. Jose not only could forgive you, but he did forgive you.
But this? Nope. Sorry. A man can only take so much. That’s what Popeye taught Jose, when on break from schilling for the powerful spinach lobby.
Look what you’ve done. 6IP 3H, 1BB, 3K, 1ER. That’s your line from Friday’s nightcap. And do you know what Jose is doing as a result of this little display? He’s writing. That’s right, Jose is squandering precious August weekend hours, as if they are base runners with less than two out, WRITING, and it’s all your fault.
Jose doesn’t write on the weekends-- not since the 2005 playoffs, and probably not in the regular season either since April or May 2005. Jose used to write on the weekends. Surely you remember. Back in the halcyon days of 2004 Jose would write seven days a week if that’s how the games fell, eight days a week if there was a double header. But no more.
Jose got older, he got wiser, and, frankly, crankier. He started to realize he’s only got so much left in the tank. He’s got to conserve. You should understand this. How many pitches are left in that old arm of yours? 1,000? 10,000? 5? 10? You’ve reached a point in your career where this is only so much you can do, so you have to pick your spots and so has Jose.
Jose is writing today because the rules of the game thread demand it. The Sox win Jose starts a thread. Thems the rules. Of course, if the Sox don’t win, no problem, Jose gets to sleep and spend all of Saturday drinking beer and trudging through episodes of Alias’ dreary fifth season. But you had to go out and pitch beautifully. You had to get beyond that early home run to settle into a sweet summer groove. And for what? To pick up a half game on the Yankees? To convince Red Sox fans that the Euro has not gone the way of the Drachma?
The American labor movement battled for generations, people died in Haymarket Square and starved as they marched picket lines in places like Lowell and Lawrence, to give the American people, working people like Jose, the weekend, that precious two days of sloth and gluttony that God had imagined us squeezing entirely into Sunday. And with a fistful of fastballs you have taken that away from Jose, and by extension, the American worker.
Thanks for nothing. (Note: Thanks for everything. Awesome game. Jose loves you!)
2. This is interesting. Jose tries to learn something new every day, it’s just something he does. Sometimes he learns a new word in German, other times he learns a new fact about cranberry farming. Sometimes it’s important stuff, and sometimes it’s obscure, but what matters is that now, even into the dotage of his 30s, Jose is still learning. And yesterday he learned something fascinating.
Did you know that it’s possible to win both games of a double-header? It is. The Red Sox just did. Jose had no idea. As long as he can remember, it seemed like the Red Sox always split double-headers, so Jose guesses he just started to assume that a spilt was the only way it could be.
It made sense and fit in with everything Jose knew about double-headers. For instance, think about that two-headed monster on Sesame Street. The two heads were never in agreement, and were frequently pulling in opposite directions, though they would occasionally work together to spell out words. Alternatively, consider the flag of the fictional country of Grand Fenwick from the play “The Mouse that Roared.” On it was a two-headed eagle with one head saying “Aye,” the other “Nay.” That’s how Jose always imagined a double-header. And a double-headed coin? Well that’s just plain counterfeiting.
Is it any wonder that Jose though double-headers had to be splits?
But Jose is glad to finally know the truth. He suspects this is one of those things that will feel strange for a long time and then he will eventually come to accept it as it becomes more and more familiar, like the monster seats or the Yankees finishing in a distant second place.
A typical Red Sox double-header
3. Among the most amazing things about yesterday’s double-header victory was that they got both games in. The weather forecasters had projected that there was an 80-90% chance of rain throughout the day. And contrary to what one might think, they were not wrong. There was an 80-90% chance of rain. Yesterday, the reality on the South Side of Chicago just happened to be in that 10-20% chance of no rain. And yet we all assumed it would rain. Why wouldn’t we? That was the overwhelming likelihood? That’s the funny thing about percentages. When the imbalance grows, we mortals start to think of the merely unlikely as impossible. The weather forecasters made perfect forecasts, the outcome was simply the improbable one.
We as baseball fans all believe in playing the percentages, at least the wise among us do. But it is worth remembering that even the right decisions, the statistically wise decisions can have negative, or even disastrous outcomes. Grady was a fool to leave Pedro in, and his foolishness led to disaster, but had Pedro slid through the 8th unscathed, the outcome would have been far better, but the decision still would have been nonsensical.
It is not a mathematical law per se, and even if it was, Jose wouldn’t know, he’s sort of dumb about math, but as the gravity of the situation increases, the small risks become much greater. In most situations in life, Jose would be giddy to have a 97% chance of success. But what if he was having an angioplasty? Suddenly that 3% chance of failure would seem huge, and the 3% risk of sudden death would seem far more distressing than the 74% chance that DJ Dru will not get a hit in any situation.
Jose is not really sure what he is getting at here. He supposes he is just trying to remember that good decision-making is no guarantee of success in baseball as in life, that the best team does not necessarily win the contest any more than the best weather forecasts guarantee rain. Perhaps there is luck out there in the universe, perhaps the gnarled hand of fate tugs at the threads of our future and makes the improbable the inevitable, but Jose will leave the luck to the gamblers. He will stick with the National Weather Service, he will stick with Tito and keep playing those damnable percentages.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
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