What Goes Down...

1. When Jose was a tyke, he had a friend named Dan. Dan was creative and ingenious. While other kids played checkers, Dan played stock market. Dan once made a bid to get Jose to sell him his comics in an effort to corner the comic book market. While some played house, Dan played hotel. Jose distinctly remembers Dan buying a bunch of pastel mints placing them on his parents’ pillows and then assuming the right to charge them room fees. And while others played war, Dan played university. Dan’s father was a professor of philosophy, thus it struck Dan that universities were a gold mine.

Of course, Dan and Jose, as kids, lacked the academic credentials required to teach anything except MBA classes, so it occurred to Dan that we needed to pioneer new disciplines. The most memorable of these trailblazing fields of inquiry was barfology—the science of barf.

Barfology was not a terribly practical science, and there was relatively little to explore in comparison with, say, physics. Still, Dan was able to extract one great insight from his study, the cogito, if you will in the field of barfology.

What goes down must come up.

It applies to tainted food and it applies to the Boston Red Sox. For the first week, the Red Sox have gone down, and down and down, and now, they are coming up. Like a ghastly chum of half digested spaghetti, corn and bile, they are coming back harshly and violently, scalding the Yankees with the acid reflux of their heaving resurgence.

The Red Sox have been down, today, at last, they come back up.

2. Jose is fired up. He’s hulking up. Sing along to the tune of Hulk Hogan’s theme “I Am a Real American” by Rick Deringer

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, sad at the death of Lou Gor-man

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, Dru is in right, most every night!

When it comes crashing down, and it hurts inside,
It’s a ten game ho-ome stand, Yankees cannot hide,
You recall Eric Wedge, ‘member Curtis Pride,
You can’t keep swinging at, pitches way inside.

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, never liked Jose Offer-man

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, chanted all night, for Jo-ey Gathright

Well I’m on board with Carl Craw-ford,
And his wage is money Henry can a-fford,
Lackey’s contract may be bad as Lugo’s was,

but I don’t care right now, cause I’m kind of buzzed.

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, I think that Wakefield is the man,

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, Papi’s all right, has the green light!

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, I watched Belinda (comma) Stan

I am a Boston Red Sox fan, I think I might, watch Sunday night!!!!

3. It is with great sadness that Jose learned today that Red Sox legend Manny Ramirez has announced his retirement from baseball following word that he had, for the second time in his career, failed a drug test.

It breaks Jose’s heart to see the slow, sad end of one of the best hitters he ever saw. On one level it hurts him to see a player whom he enjoyed watching as much as any not named Martinez or Wakefield fall into such shame and disrepute. But even more, it crushes Jose to know that Manny Ramirez, even with the aid of performance enhancing drugs never once had a 50 home run season.

That had always been Jose’s defense for Manny. With his eye, with his swing, how could he be a juicer if he never hit 50 home runs? Brady Anderson hit 50 on the juice and Manny couldn’t? How is that possible?

Jose likes to imagine that the reason for this failure is that Manny never really took drugs, or at the very least didn’t take them competently. Perhaps when Manny took a female fertility drug, he really was doing it for fertility reasons? Maybe he wanted to have another kid, and just thought that a female was a male who worked for a fee—in his case $20 million?

Or maybe he thought that baseball had banned the use of rugs, rather than drugs and therefore opted for all wood floors and thought he was fine?

While these are all disturbingly possible explanations in the world of Manny, Jose must also accept the probability that Manny being Manny means Manny doing drugs.

It’s a sad way to end a career. Let’s hope that, at the very least, he manages to conceive.

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

Not Crazy Carl

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

1. There are a lot of things Jose is excited about with the arrival of Carl Crawford: his speed, his defense, and his emerging power. But Jose is even more excited that this harkens back to a glorious age in Red Sox history. Did you know that Carl Crawford is the first Carl on the Red Sox since Carl Yasztremski?

Okay, technically that’s not true, but he is the first Carl who believes in dinosaurs and isn’t universally referred to as Tuffy since Yaz.

This leads one to ask a rather obvious question: How does a belief in the past existence of dinosaurs impact Not Crazy Carl’s game? (Note: Jose is seriously considering “Not Crazy Carl” for the official KEYS nickname for the left fielder.)

Jose has identified two obvious effects. First, it implies that Crawford believes in evolution. This is good. Evolution means that Crawford does not imagine that he was just created 6,000 years ago as the player he is and that nothing can ever change. He can become a better player and gain critical advantages, such as the ability to breath air or the growth of a prehensile tail, that will make him a more effective player.

Second, a belief in dinosaurs suggests an understanding of the concept of extinction, a knowledge of the fact that nothing—least of all baseball prowess—is forever. Ergo, win now.

2. Still Crawford’s game doesn’t remind Jose much of Captain Carl, based on the one time Jose saw number 8 play in the second to last game of 1983. In fact, Crawford’s game, particularly his defense in left, doesn’t remind Jose of damn near anyone in Red Sox history. For generations now, left has been a place to hide defensive liabilities rather than showcase defensive strengths. So Jose had to look outside of the Red Sox organization for comparisons. But Jose isn’t sure there’s a major league baseball player who has a game quite like Crawford’s.

Rather, the best comparison Jose could come up with is to a super hero. You know the one. The really fast guy. He’s so fast he can run on water. It’s like… Ummm.. Something with an F? Fuh… Fluh… Fla….

Jesus Christ!

Yeah, that’s the guy. Crawford is so fast that he can probably walk on water just like Jesus Christ.

Of course, there are a lot of other similarities. Both are regarded as saviors, both are black, and the only way opponents of either man could hope to stop him from doing what he was born to do is by nailing his feet down. (Note: Yes, in the spirit of the season, Jose went there, but before you get all offended, watch, he’s going to redeem himself, which, from what he has heard, is what Jesus is all about.) Of course, nails didn’t really stop Jesus from doing his job—the whole salvation thing. We can only hope Crawford is as resilient.

Yes, the two men are similar in an awful lot of ways. And that’s how Jose likes it. If Crawford continues to follow Christ’s career projections, he should peek in just about five years—when he turns 33. Of course, given that Crawford is signed through 2017, Jose hopes we get more production from him at age 34 and 35 than we got out of Jesus.

3. Since Jose has analyzed Crawford’s first name and comparables to death (note: wow, is that another Jesus joke?) it seems only appropriate that Jose take a look at his last name too. There have only been two other Crawfords in Red Sox history, reliever Steve Crawford, who served competently, if blandly, in the 80s, and Tampaxton Crawford the pitcher in the early 2000s who has, perhaps, Jose’s favorite KEYS nickname of all time. Of course, Jose expects much more from Carl than from Tampaxton. Tampaxton, as you may recall, was a roider, had a bizarre injury from a glass and flamed out quickly. In other words, as his nickname suggests, he was a bloody mess.

Carl, one would hope, will be more together. Certainly the fact that the most disgusting consumer product one can link to his first name is Carl’s Jr. hamburgers is a positive sign. It would suggest that, at absolute worst, his play will be unappetizing and cause severe intestinal distress.

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