Thursday, May 1

Defamation of a Character

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

1. Every day, it seems, a new Roger Clemens girlfriend is revealed. And each time, just as it appears that there could not possible be another, we hear of a new lady emerging as unexpected and slathered in make up as a clown from a VW Beetle.

This begs the question, who’s next? It can’t just be three, can it? There must be more. So in the hopes that Roger will sue him for defamation of character, leading to even further public humiliation for the Rocket Man, Jose, gives his list of women who have had affairs with Roger Clemens:

• Rue McClanahan: Remember her character on Golden Girls? She was a really slutty southern dame, which seems to put her right in Clemens’ wheelhouse. Also, if you balance her out with Mindy McCready, that gives him one appropriately-aged mistress.

• Margo Adams: Clemens and Wade Boggs were having simultaneous affairs with Adams. This resulted in an awkward instance wherein Adams got pregnant, and Clemens insisted it was a Boggs error, but Boggs countered that Clemens should not have “pitched inside.”

• Trot Nixon: No wait. He f*cks Roger Clemens, not the other way around.

• Suzyn Waldman: You heard the tape of her. What else could it have been?

• Mata Hari: Traitors run in packs.

• Kim Khardasian: With all of those Ks in her name, how could Roger resist.


2. In a bit of a surprise, Hideki Okajima blew a save last night, allowing an inherited runner to score in the eighth on a sacrifice fly following a double. He ended the inning with two strike outs.

Manager Terry Eurona’s decision to bring in Okajima after Manny of the Carmen had allowed a lead off single puzzled some fans. Jose agrees that departing from Okajima’s normal usage was an unwise move that led, at least indirectly, to the run.

There is no way Tito should have brought Okajima in until it was bases loaded no outs. How could Oki have been expected to perform with only one man on base?


3. While many major league teams might be encouraging players to back off from spring training shenanigans in light of the Clemens Affair, the Red Sox have refused to change anything.

“The one thing we don’t want to do is lose the intimacy of spring training,” said Red Sox Chief Operating Officer Mike Dee.

While Dee’s comments were reported by Nick Cafardo to be in response to a question about moving the spring training home to Sarasota, Sarasota is believed to be baseball slang for “sex with aspiring country musicians” just as “stick” means “bat” and “shooting beaver” means being a peeping tom.

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

Tuesday, April 29

Yeats on Clemens

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

1. Into the Twilight
By William Butler Yeats
Adapted by Dan Duquette

Out-Worn arm in a man out-worn,
Unclear of the rules of wrong and right;
Career descends into grey twilight,
Why couldn’t he just have purchased some porn?

The country singer was too young,
He was unfurling to twilight grey;
Forkball went flat and fastball decay,
Burning inside with each curveball he hung.

Stomach where fat was heaped upon fat:
A modern Narcissus, growing old
‘Til H and G and H let him hold
The pitch that let him miss the bat;

Toronto, New York, and Houston too,
His chemical arm stayed strong at his right;
But “love” is less kind in the grey twilight,
A cheater who lied with each pitch that he threw.

2. Jose has an extra ticket for tonight’s game and try as he might, he just can’t unload it. His best guess is that it is either because it is raining or because Jon Lester is pitching. If Jose were forced to guess, he would go with Jon Lester, mostly because he has never heard Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue publicly pray for Jon Lester to come to Atlanta.

On the other hand, there are a few American Indian tribes who do Jon Lester dances when their crops are withering, so who knows.

3. For among the first times in his life Jose can say, without question, that he loves God way more than he loves the Red Sox. (Note to God: It’s a joke, please don’t damn Jose to the Bronx.) And it’s not just sucking up. We are incredibly, incredibly fortunate that God made the world and not the Red Sox.

Because God made the world in six days and then took a day off, we get Sunday off. This is pretty great. Had the Red Sox been tasked with making the world, the Major League schedule makers would have forced them to do it for 20 consecutive days before getting a day off, so we’d all have to work nearly three straight week before having a day of rest. You know, unless Tito promised us one, or we got ejected or both.

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