10/30/2013 World Series Game 6--The Greatest Trick Jose Ever Pulled

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

1. Two years ago, Jose referred to our Game 6 starter, John Derran Lackey, as his second most hated Red Sox of all time after Wil Cordero.  This would have made him Jose’s most hated Red Sox that did not nearly murder his wife.  (Note: Roger Clemens is in a different category.  It’s hard to even think of him as a Red Sox any more.)  This was not an exaggeration.  Jose thought Lackey was a bad pitcher, a bad teammate and a bad guy.

Jose was wrong.

We now know for certain that Lackey is not a bad pitcher, that he was simply a victim of a bad injury.  Similarly, we now know he is not a bad teammate.  He had just fallen under the sway of Josh Beckett, who while a spectacular pitcher in his prime, is pretty clearly a jerk.  And having found that Lackey is a good pitcher and a good teammate, Jose will simply jump to the conclusion that Lackey must me a good person too, and that all of the nastiness surrounding his divorce was taken out of context.  Phew.

The Onion a few years ago, had a piece entitled “Superstitious John Lackey, has to build, destroy a luxury hotel before every start.”  It’s a joke, of course, but like the best jokes, it kind of reflects the truth.  Lackey may not destroy a hotel before his Game 6 start, but he destroyed, or at least appeared to destroy a team.  The kicker is that now he’s rebuilt it, or at least he’s been a cornerstone of reconstruction, and Game 6 is his chance to lay that last capstone on the beautiful, bearded edifice of the 2013 Red Sox

2.  Jose would like to publically thank wrestling legend The Iron Sheik for his offer to suplex tonight’s home plate umpire, Jim Joyce, and then to put Joyce in the camel clutch, break his back, and ultimately make Joyce the victim of crimes too graphic for discussion in a family blog.

That said, Jose would like to remind the Sheik that suplexing referees is a violation of Fenway’s strict code of conduct, and that the Sheik would be better served by express his displeasure with the umpire through well-established socially acceptable channels such as booing, hissing, or hitting him with a whiskey bottle.

3.  A few hours before Game 5, Jose recieved a message on his Facepage from a guy he’s known, though not terribly well, since middle school.  Here’s the note

“"Holy shit... You're Jose Melendez... That's awesome... Part of me wants to ask you for the 500+ hours back that I've spent reading your keys... But that's not right, since the keys are awesome... So... Thanks for the keys, Jose"”

There are a number of things that are interesting about this message.  First, if he spent 500+ hours reading KEYS, shouldn’t he know that it’s capitalized?  Second, as another friend asked, did this guy really take 500 hours to read KEYS and if so, was he a little… slow?

“This is a job for arithmetic!”  thought Jose.  So Jose did a little rough calculation (Note: Thanks to  SARR Society for American Reading Research) to figure this one out.  Jose once estimated that he wrote about 150,000 words per year.  Since he wrote KEYS actively for four years, that gives us 600,000 words.  To provide some context, that puts the whole of KEYS at slightly longer than War and Peace which checks in somewhere between 560K and 590K, but leaves it much shorter than Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which is about 1.2 million.

If one assumes that the average American reads about 300 word per minute, that gives a result of 2,000 minutes, or thirty-three hours and 20 minutes to get through KEYS in its entirety.  So yes, Jose’s friend is a slow reader--like a Molina on the basepaths slow.

But none of that changes the fact that it was fundamentally cool to get a message from someone who was amazed by Jose’s secret identity.  It’s happened a few times before, and it never gets old.  A friend of a friend, who discovered Jose’s identity once described it as finding out that your friend Peter Parker is actually Spider-Man.  Another time, long after Jose had retired, he was doing his taxes online one evening, and a friend of his roommate’s saw the KEYS sticker on Jose’s computer.

“Do you read that blog?”  the fellow asked.

“Jose IS that blog,” Jose responded.

Jose imagines that being actually famous is better, but there’s something to be said for surprising people.  Sure being, David Ortiz has got to be amazing, but imagine for a moment that David Ortiz was only his baseball persona, that behind the home runs and heroics was some mere mortal.

Here’s the scene:  You’re at a dinner party with the humdrum acquaintances of some friend.  After your fourth cup of wine. (Note: maybe it’s Passover?) You casually mention your love of baseball.

“Do you know what I’m rather fond of?”  you say.  “The baseball matches.  I find them smashing!”  (Note: You are an English aristocrat for some reason)

Suddenly, the fellow to your right says, “Why you know, I play baseball!”

“Really?” you reply.  “Perhaps I’ve heard of you.” You say with a mixture of politesse and disdain.  You are sure you have not heard of him.  If this spectacled geek is a baseball player, it is probably in the Frontier League or something, but you are nothing if not polite (note: again, English and all).

“Perhaps, indeed!” responds your new chum.  “I play under the nom de guerre of “David Ortiz.”

Your jaw drops.  You feel faint.  He must be lying.  He has to be.  David Ortiz doesn’t wear glasses?  This guy wears glasses!

“Quite…” you respond, trying to keep your cool.

“Indeed,” responds Ortiz. “I am quite the bad motherfucker.”

See that would be cool right?  This is Jose’s life.

So on the occasion of this hopefully final game of the 2013 baseball season and end of Jose’s comeback.  Jose would like to take off the proverbial glasses for a moment and tell you who he truly is.

Ready.

Jose is…

Cartman’s father.  No wait, wrong reveal.

Jose is David Ortiz.

It’s a Keyser Soze moment, right?  You see all of the pieces adding up now don’t you?.  The little fragments of 600,000 words of obfuscation and misdirection coming together like a jigsaw puzzle.

How do you think he got the inside scoop on the dugout huddle?  How come Jose only showed up in 2004?  (Note: Jose/David was shy his first year in town)  Why did Jose hate Dan Shaughnessy so much?  Why did Jose always taken it easy on Manny?

The greatest trick Jose Melendez ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

And like that, poof.

He's gone.

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