5 vs. 1

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

1. Should Julio Yugo continue as the Red Sox starting shortstop? That’s the question on everyone’s lips like so much dried spittle these days isn’t it?

The easy answer is “No of course not. What are you a moron? He can’t hit and now he can’t field either.” But that answer is only easy in the sense that Madonna is easy—everyone has used it. But that does not necessarily mean that this exhibitionist whore of an answer is correct.

Jose would like to offer an alternative answer, more chaste and refined, and therefore, more alluring while ultimately far less satisfying: We should keep Julio Yugo as the shortstop.

Now, Jose knows this isn’t the answer you want to hear, but stay with him for a moment. Jose is not proposing that the Red Sox leave things exactly as they are. That would be crazy.

What Jose is proposing is that they adopt a strategy more appropriate for our disposable, throw away, “Screw you Al Gore” society. Back when Jose was maybe 13 years old, he got the brilliant idea that rather than buying one nice car for say $15,000 (note: quite a bit in 1989 dollars), one could buy five Yugos for approximately $3,000 each and get more total years of use. Instead of driving a Toyota Camry for 12 years, you could get three years a piece out of each of the five Yugos and come out ahead.

This is what we should do with Julio Yugo. Rather than hoping to get a full 12-year career out of Jed Lowrie, we should just take five Julio Yugos. Perfect right?

There is, however, a minor hole in this plan. Julio Yugo has the price tag of a nice car and the performance of a Titoist spin on the Fiat.

2. Following another excellent game in which he hit a triple and a two-run homer, Rococo Crisp, once the odd man out in the Boston outfield, told the Boston Herald “I’m just going with the flow.”

Jose always expected that Crisp would one day start peppering his press conferences with product placements, but he always imagined it would be for breakfast cereals, you know, because his name sounds like Crispix…

Jose never thought that he would jump into pharmaceutical advertising and start promoting prostate products like Flomax. Obviously, Flomax advertises constantly during games, but Jose just never saw them doing direct product placements in post game press conferences. But we should probably just get used to it this is probably the start of a trend.

3. In other Julio Yugo news, the embattled shortstop underwent a CT scan during Saturday’s game. According to the Boston Globe, the scan came back negative, which is no big surprise as “CT,” Jose is pretty sure, stand for “catching” and “throwing.”

Jose is pretty sure that Lugo’s SLG scan will come back negative too.

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