Negotiating

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

1. The Red Sox are going to the post-season.

There. Jose said it. It’s okay to say it. Yes, yes, they haven’t technically clinched anything, and yes the division title is maybe vaguely in doubt still, but the Red Sox are up about a million games on the wild card second place Tigers, and there ain’t no way, they’re falling that far.

This means that as much as Jose would like to rant and worry about the upcoming Yankees series, he just can’t muster the energy. He has other concerns— namely, how to get playoff tickets.

It used to be that Jose could get tickets through sheer force of will, rising early on a Saturday morning and dialing the phone until his fingers were sore and chaffed. In 1999, Jose was at every single home playoff game. But that era ended with the birth of the virtual waiting room and the rise of the pink hats, and now Jose is stuck scheming like everyone else.

But Jose has a plan. It’s a time honored strategy, ancient and refined. What is it? Well here it goes: blackmail. That’s right blackmail! Or wait, blackmail is illegal right? So let’s call it… uh… negotiation. Jose is going to “get to yes” on the ticketing question.

But with whom is Jose going to negotiate? Why, with someone on whom he has information of course—his ticket supplier. Jose has had a cut of a friend’s season tickets for the past two years, but the friend, let’s call him Mr. M for now (note: Mr. M does not stand for mentally retarded male) understandably plans to keep the playoff seats that come with the season passes for himself.

That’s where the negotiation comes in. Mr. M is recently married, and Jose wonders if his wife knows that Mr. M is one of only two people to ever purchase a KEYS thong, ostensibly for his “research assistant.” If you are reading this Mr. M, be prepared to hand over playoff tickets unless you want your wife getting a KEYS thong in the mail, with a note saying.

Dear Mrs. M,

Congratulations on your nuptials. Jose
understands that Mr. M really likes to see all of his women in KEYS delicates,
so Jose thought he would give you one as a wedding gift.

Your
pal,

Jose

So what will it be? Give Jose the tickets or have your wife get that awkward letter? The choice, as rap duo Black Sheep would say, is yours.

(Preemptive note against Jose getting his ass kicked/marital discord in the M household: Okay, so Mr. M is someone Jose regards as a friend, but Jose doesn’t really know him that well, and has never met his wife. This creates a problem, as Jose has no idea if she’s the sort of person who would take this seriously. Jose thought about asking Mr. M for permission to do this bit, but what if he said no? Then Jose would be completely stuck without a first KEY and would have to write some lame Kevin Cash thing, and no one wants that. So Jose decided that he would go ahead and write the bit, but add this disclaimer. So Mrs. M, if you’re reading this, this is all a big joke and your husband has nothing to hide… that is unless he fails to hand over playoff tickets, in which case Jose is pretty sure he saw him buying black market KEYS thong knock offs in Chinatown to give to Swiss hookers.)

2. After hearing about a friend of a friend eating a $700 for two people meal in London, which included bacon and eggs ice cream, Jose has started thinking about excess. What is reasonable to spend on one’s personal pleasure and what is unreasonable? In a world where a billion people live on less than one dollar per day, is it truly reasonable and responsible to drop $700 on ice cream with pork in it?

Jose is of two minds on the issue. The first mind says “No, are you crazy. That’s wrong, wrong, wrong.” After all, who in God’s name needs to spend $700 to get a spectacular meal? Is it that different than the spectacular meal one would get for, say $300? But then Jose is of a second mind. We all have our weaknesses, our hidden passions that drive us to the supple madness of excess. Jose, for instance, spent, $5 on a Jose Melendez baseball card. That’s crazy. Perhaps for some people, the $700 dinner gives equivalent pleasure to what Jose gets from a flight to Europe. And who is Jose to judge?

After mulling over the ethics of it all, Jose reached a few conclusions. First, excess in moderation is okay. There is nothing wrong with going nuts once in a while, but if you eat $700 dinners often, you are a total jerk. Second, waste is intolerable. If you pay $700 for a meal, you’d better not leave any crust on the plate or fat on the bone. Hell, you should eat the bone and then lick the plate just to be sure. Jose concluded this because he has his own excesses. He spends hundreds of dollars every year on baseball tickets, and just this year alone he’s spent $160 on tickets for games he never even went to. Does that make him a bad person? (Note: Yes.)

So the point is that the occasional splurge is okay if it is worthwhile (note: $20 million per year for Manny) but not if it is wasteful ($14 million per year for DJ Dru, $5.75 per hour for Cesar Crespo.)

3. Jose feels obliged to weigh in on the Patriots sign stealing scandal. Yes, it has nothing to do with baseball, but neither to world poverty and blackmail, and it didn’t stop Jose from writing about them.

While it is pretty clear that the NFL has a rule against electronic surveillance of an opponent’s defensive signals and that the Patriots broke that rule, Jose contends that there should be no punishment. That rule is clearly superseded by the federal law permitting warrantless wiretapping. See, there’s a reason they called it the Patriot Act rather than the Jets Act.

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

Multitasking

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

1. Believe it or not, there is a problem with baseball.

It’s kind of boring.

It is. Let’s stop fooling ourselves and admit it.

Jose loves baseball as much as anyone— no more than anyone, but the critics are right, the game is boring. Jose has always known this, and sometimes he has even admitted it. Indeed, from time to time, Jose has been known to argue that baseball is the greatest of sports precisely because it is boring. In football or basketball if you are distracted for a moment or two you can lose the entire flow of the game. Also, they angry up the blood. In soccer, looking away for a moment at any time can result in missing the sum total of the day’s scoring. But baseball, with its leisurely pace and long season lends itself to a lacksidasical approach to watching in all but the most important of games, and Jose is nothing if not lacksidasical.

The historical notion is that this relaxed tempo has made baseball the most old-fashioned of sports, a leisurely pastoral game designed for the slow pace of the late 19th century. Jose could not disagree more. While baseball may have been born in a more plodding age, it is the absolute best game for the information age. You know why? Multitasking.

Baseball fandom was made for multitaskers. Because baseball, unlike other sports, does not require one’s undivided attention, it is the perfect sport for the era of blackberries, connectivity and all of that other techno-Al Gore- mumbo jumbo. Who can do one thing at a time anymore? Who dares to drive a car without listening to the radio and/or shooting out the window? Who would imagine washing dishes without talking on the phone? Who would ever walk to work without trading on the Hang Seng wirelessesly? Suckers and back numbers, that’s who. And baseball is perfect for this on-the-go lifestyle.

It used to be that Jose would read a magazine or the paper while watching the game. But those days are long gone. Jose has now taken to watching DVD’s on his laptop while watching the game with the sound off (note: this has the added benefit of ensuring that he does not hear the gyroball song ever again.) As a result, Jose is able to entertain himself twice as efficiently. Hell, you could blow through an entire season of Weeds in the time it takes to watch one Red Sox-Yankees game. (Note: Though of course, Yankees games are one of those categories that require undivided attention.) Sometimes, Jose will even go for the trifecta and watch a DVD with the game on while reading a magazine.

Jose’s only regret is that computer-based video systems did not exist in the early 1990s. He’s pretty sure he could have watched entire episodes of Lost in between Jeff Gray pitches.

2. There is enough bad news in sports today, what with dog killing quarterbacks, crooked refs, juicing sluggers and pro wrestling deaths by the fistful. Jose would like to focus on the positive. He really would. But just when you think you’ve found a great story, something uplifting to focus on, that pedestal crumbles to dust.

Jose was going to use this space to write about Brandon Webb’s remarkable pursuit of Orel Herschiser’s consecutive scoreless innings record. Webb has pitched 42 straight without yielding a run, stilly two complete games short of Herschiser’s number. But then he checked his email last night. Scandal city.

Waiting in Jose’s Inbox was an email from none other than Brandon N. Webb advertising Jose incredible low, low prices on prescription drugs. The drugs available included the typical assortment of male prescriptions in addition to Ambien and Xanax. The best part was that one gets four free Viagra with every order!

If Webb is running an internet pharmacy, that is not only a gross violation of U.S. law, but circumstantial evidence that he might be involved with some of the more pernicious substances floating through the Major League ranks.

Now you’re probably asking yourself “Why would a Major Leaguer making big money risk it all by running a pharmacy business on the side?” Well, first it’s not unprecedented. MLS star Joe-Max Moore ran an internet pharmacy with his father. Second, it is not as though Webb did not take precautious to disguise his identity. In the email, Webb cleverly changed his middle initial from “T” to “N,” which would through most professional journalists off track, but not someone with Jose’s keen investigative senses.

So there you go. Brandon Webb, you are a crook and possibly a cheat. Jose is onto you and he will rarely, if ever buy prescription drugs from you. If Jose absolutely must get his prescriptions from a major leaguer, he will get them from Jason Giambi like everyone else.

3. While the Doug Mirabelli injury on Friday was disappointing, it did give a chance for upstart Kevin “Kid” Kash to make his Red Sox debut. According to wikipedia and a few other sources, Kash learned to catch the knuckleball under the tutelage of former tag team champion and Rock ‘n’ Roll Express legend Ricky Morton.

So what does Kid Kash bring to this team? Well, aside from having the 4th worst OPS plus among hitters with 300+ plate appearances since 1967 (note: thanks to SoSher CaptainLaddie for that stat), he offers decent skills at throwing out runners and a whole slew of humorous Kash-themed wrestling maneuvers such as the Money Roll, Bankruptcy , K.O.D. – Kash On Delivery, the Money Drop and the Bank Roll.

Keeping with the carefully crafted Kash persona, Jose suggests that every time he throws out a runner we refer to it as “foreclosing on a subprime mortgage,” every time he gets a hit, which will be rarely, we can call it “paying dividends,” and each strikeout will be known as selling short.

Also, when he uses the men’s room, we’ll call it liquidating his assets.

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