It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jonathan Papelbon picked up a six out save last night.
Think about that. Jonathan Papelbon picked up a six out save last night. Dick Radatz got six out saves, but Jonathan Papelbon? Not so much. If it didn’t stretch the limits of his endurance, it was only a 28-pitch outing, it at least pushed the limits of tradition. In fact, the precedents for such a brazen rejection of traditional boundaries are limited. Jose has done a little research and come up with the following comparables:
• 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt seeks, and wins an unprecedented third term as President.
• 1996 Jasmin St. Claire, rather than stopping at having sex with a virginal 250 men in a day, goes all the way to 300.
• 2001 Takeru Kobayashi does not stop after breaking the world hot dog eating record of 25 in 12 minutes, but continues to eat until he has doubled the 12-minute record.
What all of these feats have in common is that they required competitors to push themselves a little harder than normal, to take some risks in order to master the task at hand. Jose has no doubt then when Ms. St. Claire pursued the sex record, many of you were screaming “Get her out of there Tito, let Daniel Bard finish this one off” but sometimes that’s not how it works. Sometimes a champion just has to… extend… him or herself to do what needs to be done, and last night Jonathan Papelbon did just that.
The exception, of course, is the 2003 ALCS, when Grady Little asked Pedro to do more than was possible, infuriating sox fans and online sports bettors alike. That was like asking FDR to run for a fifth term post mortem, insisting that Jasmin St. Clair go for 500 or insisting that Kobayashi should replicate his feat with foot long dogs.
There’s good crazy (note: the kind that leads to slashing prices) and bad crazy (the kind that leads to slashing wrists) and it’s not always clear until after the fact what kind of crazy one is looking at.
2. Jose is much angrier in America then he is in Africa. Jose won’t say that he is happier at home, per se, just less angry. In Uganda, if there is electricity in the wires, water in the pipes and no parasites in the intestines, it’s going to be a good day. But almost as soon as Jose got off the plane in Boston a few weeks ago, his ability to take solace in the flow of electrons dissipated. Here, you see, we have baseball. And baseball, it turns out, makes Jose an angry man.
Leigh Montville, as Jose recalls, once wrote that every day he looked at the front page of the paper to makes sure we weren’t at war and then went to the sports. Jose has a similar philosophy. Every day, Jose looks at the front page, discovers that we are at war, twice, gets angry, and then goes to the sports section, where if the Red Sox have lost, he gets really angry. If they’ve won, his mood is moderated, maybe he’s even happy, but if they’re lost… look out. Angry, angry, angry.
Sometimes Jose will even get angry about being angry, but that’s a negative feedback loop, bad things leading to bad things, which lead to more bad things. It’s kind of like a Nick Green at bat.
This is where Jose should preach about how in living in a poor country made him see things differently and not only appreciate the little things, but reject foolish passions like sports and celebrity. But here’s the thing: It didn’t. If anything it made him appreciate the need for escapism, the need to, from time to time, substitute the emotions of others for one’s own. Do you think that the villagers in Uganda are any less in need of escapism then we are? In Uganda, people pay what little money they have to sit on hard wooden benches in a sticky, airless room and watch a soccer match. Do you think even Red Sox fans would do that for a ballgame? Well, yes, they do it at Fenway 81 times a year, but do you think they’d do it to watch the game on TV? Well, not the pink hats anyway.
The point is that people, all people, want escapism. We want to live vicariously at least some of the time. All of the accoutrement of the modern sports fan, the fantasy sports the online betting, they are but catalysts, enzymes of the mind designed to accelerated and intensify the vicarious thrill. But to live vicariously is to live dangerously, to cede control of a tiny portion of one’s personal sovereignty to something over which one has no control. Jose may not have much control over the electricity in Uganda, but at least Jose can juice up while the power is on; Jose can prepare for darker days ahead. But as a Red Sox fan, Jose has no choice but to live with the consequences of the actions of others. And this powerlessness, is infuriating; it is intoxicating.
It is what makes Jose love being a Red Sox fan, and it is what makes him angry. But it is a good kind of anger, a pleasantly impotent rage, a substitute for staring at the madness of this world, at Darfur, Burma or Afghanistan and going daft from the righteous anger raised by man’s inhumanity to man. It does not deaden Jose’s concern, but it does deaden his pain, and enables him to think rationally about the needs and the horrors of the world. Jose gets angry at the Red Sox so he can think clearly about the war, so that anger, an irrational emotion, spends its time directed towards an irrational game while the logical focuses on all the trouble in the world.
3. Congratulations to Jon Lester, who last night set the Red Sox record for strikeouts by a lefty in a single season. While setting any record for a baseball franchise that has existed for more than 100 years is impressive, this one is special. Setting a left handed pitching record on a team that has had, among its stars, a pitcher actually named “Lefty” is extraordinary. Really, they don’t call someone “Lefty” because he’s only okay with his left hand.
Think about it this way. Jacoby Ellsbury setting the Red Sox single season steal record was impressive, but it would have been so much more impressive if Tommy Harper had been nicknamed “Two Legs” Harper. (Note: As Jose recalls, Ellis Burks’ nickname should have been “Three Legs” Burks.) Or what if David Ortiz had taken the single season home run record from a man named “Gigantic Freaking Biceps” Foxx. Hell imagine if Julio Yugo had set an errors record by beating out Edgar “Girlie Arm” Renteria. Yes, Jose knows that the previous record did not belong to Lefty Grove, but the argument still holds. If you set a record at anything and beat out a guy who is named for the critical body part in the record setting act, you’ve done something pretty special.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Showing posts with label Lester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lester. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 2
Tuesday, April 14
Statement of Interest
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose spent a good chunk of a recent afternoon writing a proposal to go to Japan under a program that identifies promising, young U.S. leaders. As part of the application process, Jose had to write a 500-word essay explaining his interest and what he would like to learn in Japan.
It was hard enough for Jose to stick to a miserly 500 words, it was harder still for him to use the dreaded first person singular, but the hardest thing of all was to hide what he really wanted to write. Jose wrote a more or less (note: less) competent essay about his interest in learning the underpinnings of the Japanese economic miracle and seeing Japan take a leading role in international economic development, but that’s not what was in his heart. What he really wanted to write was
Japan is a most extraordinary nation. From its stunning transformation from a feudal backwater at the mercy of Perry’ s black ships to conqueror of the Tsars in just 50 years, from being conquered by Tom Cruise to convincing American children that Pokemon makes sense, Japan has been a nation capable of constant innovation and reinvention, without losing the ancient and serene traditions that underlie its civilization. But despite its brilliance, despite its marvels of technology, lies a dark and disturbing truth—Japan cannot produce a “national treasure” pitcher who can throw strikes.
How can the nation that invented the Walkman also produce… the Walk Man. How is it possible that Daisuke Matsuzaka can be so good, yet so infuriating? And before we push Japan to take a lead in international development, shouldn’t we consider this problem? Would we really want Japan to advise and assist the Dominican Republic on economic development if it turned walk rate of some budding Pedro Martinez into that of Dice K?
2. Okay, so this season is staring to turn into sort of a downer. There are a lot of things about the slow start that concern Jose, but none more so than the risk of 2009 turning into another 1996. As you may recall, in 1996, the Kevin Kennedy led Red Sox came into the season completely unprepared and started the season with Roger Clemens bowing to Texas’ Lynn’s own Ken Hill (note: never take Clemens over Ken Hill in a big game) before getting off to a 2-75 start.
But there are graver issues at play here. As you recall, the 1996 season turned around when the Red Sox traded Jamie Moyer to Seattle for Darren Bragg and Jeff Frye. Moyer, of course, went on to pitch effectively for another 90 years, whereas Darren Bragg emerged as a gritty white guy and perhaps the greatest man to ever come out of Waterbury, Connecticut save for noted war hero, Hogan from Hogan’s Heroes. Jeff Frye was nicknamed for a corn chip.
Jose has no interest in seeing Jon Lester traded for a midget and a gritty player, so Jose would really like to see the Red Sox turn it around, say, now.
3. A sideshow of this week’s trip to Oakland is that it represents the first time in his career that former Red Sox legend-to-be Nomar Garciaparra has played against the Red Sox. The natural temptation at a time like this would be to look at what has become of Nomar’s career, shake one’s head sadly, and wonder what might have been. Since Garciaparra left, the Red Sox have used five different regular starting shortstops, most of whom have performed poorly, and none of whom have managed to stick.
On the upside, the Red Sox did win two world championships and avoided paying big money to a player who declined rapidly. On the other hand, Nomar famously kept a red line around his locker that reporters could not cross, and given the cost of getting on the red line these days, the Red Sox really could have benefit from that revenue stream.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose spent a good chunk of a recent afternoon writing a proposal to go to Japan under a program that identifies promising, young U.S. leaders. As part of the application process, Jose had to write a 500-word essay explaining his interest and what he would like to learn in Japan.
It was hard enough for Jose to stick to a miserly 500 words, it was harder still for him to use the dreaded first person singular, but the hardest thing of all was to hide what he really wanted to write. Jose wrote a more or less (note: less) competent essay about his interest in learning the underpinnings of the Japanese economic miracle and seeing Japan take a leading role in international economic development, but that’s not what was in his heart. What he really wanted to write was
Japan is a most extraordinary nation. From its stunning transformation from a feudal backwater at the mercy of Perry’ s black ships to conqueror of the Tsars in just 50 years, from being conquered by Tom Cruise to convincing American children that Pokemon makes sense, Japan has been a nation capable of constant innovation and reinvention, without losing the ancient and serene traditions that underlie its civilization. But despite its brilliance, despite its marvels of technology, lies a dark and disturbing truth—Japan cannot produce a “national treasure” pitcher who can throw strikes.
How can the nation that invented the Walkman also produce… the Walk Man. How is it possible that Daisuke Matsuzaka can be so good, yet so infuriating? And before we push Japan to take a lead in international development, shouldn’t we consider this problem? Would we really want Japan to advise and assist the Dominican Republic on economic development if it turned walk rate of some budding Pedro Martinez into that of Dice K?
2. Okay, so this season is staring to turn into sort of a downer. There are a lot of things about the slow start that concern Jose, but none more so than the risk of 2009 turning into another 1996. As you may recall, in 1996, the Kevin Kennedy led Red Sox came into the season completely unprepared and started the season with Roger Clemens bowing to Texas’ Lynn’s own Ken Hill (note: never take Clemens over Ken Hill in a big game) before getting off to a 2-75 start.
But there are graver issues at play here. As you recall, the 1996 season turned around when the Red Sox traded Jamie Moyer to Seattle for Darren Bragg and Jeff Frye. Moyer, of course, went on to pitch effectively for another 90 years, whereas Darren Bragg emerged as a gritty white guy and perhaps the greatest man to ever come out of Waterbury, Connecticut save for noted war hero, Hogan from Hogan’s Heroes. Jeff Frye was nicknamed for a corn chip.
Jose has no interest in seeing Jon Lester traded for a midget and a gritty player, so Jose would really like to see the Red Sox turn it around, say, now.
3. A sideshow of this week’s trip to Oakland is that it represents the first time in his career that former Red Sox legend-to-be Nomar Garciaparra has played against the Red Sox. The natural temptation at a time like this would be to look at what has become of Nomar’s career, shake one’s head sadly, and wonder what might have been. Since Garciaparra left, the Red Sox have used five different regular starting shortstops, most of whom have performed poorly, and none of whom have managed to stick.
On the upside, the Red Sox did win two world championships and avoided paying big money to a player who declined rapidly. On the other hand, Nomar famously kept a red line around his locker that reporters could not cross, and given the cost of getting on the red line these days, the Red Sox really could have benefit from that revenue stream.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Sunday, October 19
ALCS Game 7--Don't Bury Me... I'm Not Dead
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALCS.
1. Don’t bury me… I’m not dead.
That was the tag line for the 1988 Wes Craven film The Serpent and the Rainbow, based painfully loosely on a book by ethnobotanist Wade Davis describing search for a scientific explanation for Haitian zombie myths. It might as well be the tagline for the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox are not dead; they are never dead, and yet year after year, teams come to throw piles of moist black earth upon them.
In 2004, the Yankees buried them pretty deep. They dug a hole, threw the Sox in and dropped six feet of loam on top of them. They should have patted it down though. They should have compressed the dirt with a bulldozer. They left too much wiggle room, and the Sox were able to kick loose the cover of the coffin, and reach gasping for the surface. (Note: By the way, is there any chance the cadaver used to practice the Curt Euro surgery was stolen? Because there was definitely some grave robbing in The Serpent and the Rainbow. You could make a cool movie about a zombie with a bionic ankle bent on revenge.)
In 2007, Cleveland was much sloppier. They tossed the Red Sox in a shallow grave and just hoped we would never be discovered. It was not a great plan.
This year the Rays did a far better job. They locked the coffin, they piled on six feet of dirt, they patted it down and they grew an oak tree on top of it. And you know what? It still didn’t matter. Like The Bride in Kill Bill 2, like Spiderman when he was drugged by Kraven the Hunter, the Red Sox punched their way out, making the impossible possible, and with two out in the seventh on Thursday night, we saw that angry hand stretching out from the dirt of the grave.
Now that the Red Sox are out of the grave, they are feeling exactly how one would expect someone who has been buried alive to feel—incredibly pissed off and bent on revenge. This is why the Sox have gone on seven or eight game rampages after being left for dead the previous two occasions. When you fight your way out from the eternal dirt nap, you want to do some damage on the people who put you there.
And now Tampax Bay has to suffer the consequences and the Phillies after them. Don’t ever bury the Red Sox, unless you are absolutely sure they’re dead.
2. Dear Jon,
By the time you read these lines, we’ll be gone. Life goes on, right or wrong. Now it’s all been said and done.
It is hard for us to write this letter, harder than you can imagine. This is not how we wanted things to be when we started this crazy adventure, and it’s certainly not how we imagined it would go even recently. We used to feel really good about this thing we have, but then something went wrong.
You know what it was, so we probably don’t have to explain, but coming clean is good for the soul. Last week, we did something we never thought we’d do, that we never imagined we’d do—we hit you. We hit you hard. It was awful for you, we know. Also, we buried you when you weren’t dead. That was a real dick move by us.
It’s a dark part of us, a bit of nastiness in the recesses of our souls. We hit other pitchers too. We hit Beckett before we hit you. We hit Wakefield and Matsuzaka after.
But somehow, you are different.
When we saw you again on Sunday night, we just couldn’t hit you again. We wanted to. The frightening hunger was there. But we just couldn’t do it.
Maybe we’ve shown just a touch of humanity. But that seems unlikely. More likely is that we’ve shown fear. We’ve realized that if we hit you, there’s a very good chance that you and your friends are going to hit back, and hard.
So we’re leaving.
We’re the bad guys here, so you stay, we’ll go. You keep on playing, and we are going to take some time off. We are going to do some soul searching, play some golf.
Maybe we’ll see you next year.
Yours truly,
The Tampax Bay Rays
(Note: Jose does not mean to diminish the serious problem of domestic violence. He just felt like he needed to do something on the subject in order to get ready to face Brett Myers in the World Series.)
3. Game 7 or not, Jose could not let the occasion pass without devoting at least one KEY to TBS’s stunning broadcasting failure last night. At the beginning of Game 6, millions of Red Sox fans and dozens of Rays fans were infuriated to find that TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes and the Steve Harvey Show were on instead of the Sox-Rays contest. While it would have been incredibly funny if this were in fact a TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes bit, it sadly, was not. By the time TBS had repaired at least one of the two blown transformers responsible for the disaster, the Rays were up 1-0 in the bottom of the first. (Note: Jose sort of thinks that the run shouldn’t have counted. Couldn’t they have followed the old professional wrestling rule that if it’s not on TV it didn’t happen?)
Jose can believe that this happened, after all TBS is the Grady Little of television networks. What Jose can’t understand is why it happened now. They had no problem broadcasting each of 10,000 Braves games Jose didn’t care about.
What it reminded Jose of was KEC, the Kosovo Electric Company. In Kosovo, the power goes out pretty close to daily. As a result, when anything fails to function, a colloquialism is to shake one’s head and lament “No KEC.” Jose happily adopted this expression as his own, and has used the expression “No KEC” regularly to comment on things ranging from broken flashlights to Jason Varitek’s bat. (Note: Plenty of KEC last night for Tek.)
But now the expression “No KEC” seems quaint and outdated. When Jose thinks of something that is broken from now on, he is more likely to say “No TBS.”
What was responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina? No TBS. The Vietnam War? No TBS. The Assassination of Lincoln? No TBS.
Fortunately for the Sox, tonight, in Game 7, the Rays will have no TBS… and the Sox will have plenty of TNT.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALCS.
1. Don’t bury me… I’m not dead.
That was the tag line for the 1988 Wes Craven film The Serpent and the Rainbow, based painfully loosely on a book by ethnobotanist Wade Davis describing search for a scientific explanation for Haitian zombie myths. It might as well be the tagline for the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox are not dead; they are never dead, and yet year after year, teams come to throw piles of moist black earth upon them.
In 2004, the Yankees buried them pretty deep. They dug a hole, threw the Sox in and dropped six feet of loam on top of them. They should have patted it down though. They should have compressed the dirt with a bulldozer. They left too much wiggle room, and the Sox were able to kick loose the cover of the coffin, and reach gasping for the surface. (Note: By the way, is there any chance the cadaver used to practice the Curt Euro surgery was stolen? Because there was definitely some grave robbing in The Serpent and the Rainbow. You could make a cool movie about a zombie with a bionic ankle bent on revenge.)
In 2007, Cleveland was much sloppier. They tossed the Red Sox in a shallow grave and just hoped we would never be discovered. It was not a great plan.
This year the Rays did a far better job. They locked the coffin, they piled on six feet of dirt, they patted it down and they grew an oak tree on top of it. And you know what? It still didn’t matter. Like The Bride in Kill Bill 2, like Spiderman when he was drugged by Kraven the Hunter, the Red Sox punched their way out, making the impossible possible, and with two out in the seventh on Thursday night, we saw that angry hand stretching out from the dirt of the grave.
Now that the Red Sox are out of the grave, they are feeling exactly how one would expect someone who has been buried alive to feel—incredibly pissed off and bent on revenge. This is why the Sox have gone on seven or eight game rampages after being left for dead the previous two occasions. When you fight your way out from the eternal dirt nap, you want to do some damage on the people who put you there.
And now Tampax Bay has to suffer the consequences and the Phillies after them. Don’t ever bury the Red Sox, unless you are absolutely sure they’re dead.
2. Dear Jon,
By the time you read these lines, we’ll be gone. Life goes on, right or wrong. Now it’s all been said and done.
It is hard for us to write this letter, harder than you can imagine. This is not how we wanted things to be when we started this crazy adventure, and it’s certainly not how we imagined it would go even recently. We used to feel really good about this thing we have, but then something went wrong.
You know what it was, so we probably don’t have to explain, but coming clean is good for the soul. Last week, we did something we never thought we’d do, that we never imagined we’d do—we hit you. We hit you hard. It was awful for you, we know. Also, we buried you when you weren’t dead. That was a real dick move by us.
It’s a dark part of us, a bit of nastiness in the recesses of our souls. We hit other pitchers too. We hit Beckett before we hit you. We hit Wakefield and Matsuzaka after.
But somehow, you are different.
When we saw you again on Sunday night, we just couldn’t hit you again. We wanted to. The frightening hunger was there. But we just couldn’t do it.
Maybe we’ve shown just a touch of humanity. But that seems unlikely. More likely is that we’ve shown fear. We’ve realized that if we hit you, there’s a very good chance that you and your friends are going to hit back, and hard.
So we’re leaving.
We’re the bad guys here, so you stay, we’ll go. You keep on playing, and we are going to take some time off. We are going to do some soul searching, play some golf.
Maybe we’ll see you next year.
Yours truly,
The Tampax Bay Rays
(Note: Jose does not mean to diminish the serious problem of domestic violence. He just felt like he needed to do something on the subject in order to get ready to face Brett Myers in the World Series.)
3. Game 7 or not, Jose could not let the occasion pass without devoting at least one KEY to TBS’s stunning broadcasting failure last night. At the beginning of Game 6, millions of Red Sox fans and dozens of Rays fans were infuriated to find that TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes and the Steve Harvey Show were on instead of the Sox-Rays contest. While it would have been incredibly funny if this were in fact a TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes bit, it sadly, was not. By the time TBS had repaired at least one of the two blown transformers responsible for the disaster, the Rays were up 1-0 in the bottom of the first. (Note: Jose sort of thinks that the run shouldn’t have counted. Couldn’t they have followed the old professional wrestling rule that if it’s not on TV it didn’t happen?)
Jose can believe that this happened, after all TBS is the Grady Little of television networks. What Jose can’t understand is why it happened now. They had no problem broadcasting each of 10,000 Braves games Jose didn’t care about.
What it reminded Jose of was KEC, the Kosovo Electric Company. In Kosovo, the power goes out pretty close to daily. As a result, when anything fails to function, a colloquialism is to shake one’s head and lament “No KEC.” Jose happily adopted this expression as his own, and has used the expression “No KEC” regularly to comment on things ranging from broken flashlights to Jason Varitek’s bat. (Note: Plenty of KEC last night for Tek.)
But now the expression “No KEC” seems quaint and outdated. When Jose thinks of something that is broken from now on, he is more likely to say “No TBS.”
What was responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina? No TBS. The Vietnam War? No TBS. The Assassination of Lincoln? No TBS.
Fortunately for the Sox, tonight, in Game 7, the Rays will have no TBS… and the Sox will have plenty of TNT.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALCS.
Thursday, August 14
Jose's Routine
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Last night, Jose had the privilege of watching, or even listening to a baseball game, for the first time since Jon Lester’s no hitter. Jose has had periods of absence from the game a couple of times in the past (note: actually Jose disappears every six years, he is like the opposite of a Senate candidate.), but he has never had a spell like this before.
Sure, Jose tried to keep up, but it was difficult, so he created a basic routine. It went like this.
6:00 AM Wake up.
6:05 AM Start coffee brewing
6:10 AM Log onto to dial up Internet service. via sketchy Chinese box.
6:15 AM Type “Red Sox” into Google window in Firefox.
6:20 AM Wait five minutes and pray that the score shows up in the Google Web search.
6:25 AM Swear because the score has not shown up in the Google Web search
6:30 AM Enter “Red Sox” in Google news.
6:35 AM Wait five minutes, get coffee.
6:40 AM Swear some more because there was no game the previous night it turns out, so Jose wasted 25 minutes searching for nothing.
6:50 AM Check Google news for Yankees score.
7:00 AM Dial up disconnects.
7:15 AM Get Yankees score
7:20 AM Celebrate over latest Yankees injury
7:30 AM Check Tampa Bay score.
7:35 AM Get no results because Jose googled “Devil Rays”
7:45 AM Get “Rays” results
7:50 AM Go into shock from feeling obliged to check Rays scores
11:45 AM Come out of shock
12 Noon Lunch
So as you can see Jose enjoyed, for the most part pretty full mornings that combined the excitement of waiting with the philosophical depth of contemplating the Tampax Bay Rays.
2. Jose got something nice in the mail the other day. It was an ad for the 24th Annual Three Apples Storytelling Festival in Bedford. At first Jose thought it was in New Bedford, but then he noticed it was not written in Portuguese nor did it smell of kale. (Note: Just kidding New Bedford. Jose loves you and was just there the other day. Also, Jose would have liked it better if the mail had smelled like kale soup.)
Among the performers appearing at this cultural event is Tim Van Egmond, who, as we all know, must be the guy who once pitched for the Red Sox. Jose has mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, good for him for learning a craft, unlike that bum Nate Minchey. On the other hand, perhaps if he had spent more time on his curveball and less name on his dance calling and hammered dulcimer playing, he would have had a better career ERA than 5.96. Of course, to beat on Minchey again, Minchey does not play the hammered dulcimer or even the limberjack, and his ERA was 6.75.
3. On a more somber note, just a reminder that today is the Jimmy Fund Telethon, and Jose urges you to kick in for this great cause.
In order to ease any concerns you might have, Jose reminds you that not one dime from the fundraiser goes to Jimy Williams. Yes, Jose knows that you knew that. Relax, it was a joke. Obviously, the money doesn’t go to Jimy Williams. It is reserved for the needy people, the true heroes among us, who spell their name Jimmy, like Jimmy Key, Jimmy Rodgers and on the rare occasions he is feeling frisky, Jimmy Rice. Also, cancer. It fights cancer too.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME
1. Last night, Jose had the privilege of watching, or even listening to a baseball game, for the first time since Jon Lester’s no hitter. Jose has had periods of absence from the game a couple of times in the past (note: actually Jose disappears every six years, he is like the opposite of a Senate candidate.), but he has never had a spell like this before.
Sure, Jose tried to keep up, but it was difficult, so he created a basic routine. It went like this.
6:00 AM Wake up.
6:05 AM Start coffee brewing
6:10 AM Log onto to dial up Internet service. via sketchy Chinese box.
6:15 AM Type “Red Sox” into Google window in Firefox.
6:20 AM Wait five minutes and pray that the score shows up in the Google Web search.
6:25 AM Swear because the score has not shown up in the Google Web search
6:30 AM Enter “Red Sox” in Google news.
6:35 AM Wait five minutes, get coffee.
6:40 AM Swear some more because there was no game the previous night it turns out, so Jose wasted 25 minutes searching for nothing.
6:50 AM Check Google news for Yankees score.
7:00 AM Dial up disconnects.
7:15 AM Get Yankees score
7:20 AM Celebrate over latest Yankees injury
7:30 AM Check Tampa Bay score.
7:35 AM Get no results because Jose googled “Devil Rays”
7:45 AM Get “Rays” results
7:50 AM Go into shock from feeling obliged to check Rays scores
11:45 AM Come out of shock
12 Noon Lunch
So as you can see Jose enjoyed, for the most part pretty full mornings that combined the excitement of waiting with the philosophical depth of contemplating the Tampax Bay Rays.
2. Jose got something nice in the mail the other day. It was an ad for the 24th Annual Three Apples Storytelling Festival in Bedford. At first Jose thought it was in New Bedford, but then he noticed it was not written in Portuguese nor did it smell of kale. (Note: Just kidding New Bedford. Jose loves you and was just there the other day. Also, Jose would have liked it better if the mail had smelled like kale soup.)
Among the performers appearing at this cultural event is Tim Van Egmond, who, as we all know, must be the guy who once pitched for the Red Sox. Jose has mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, good for him for learning a craft, unlike that bum Nate Minchey. On the other hand, perhaps if he had spent more time on his curveball and less name on his dance calling and hammered dulcimer playing, he would have had a better career ERA than 5.96. Of course, to beat on Minchey again, Minchey does not play the hammered dulcimer or even the limberjack, and his ERA was 6.75.
3. On a more somber note, just a reminder that today is the Jimmy Fund Telethon, and Jose urges you to kick in for this great cause.
In order to ease any concerns you might have, Jose reminds you that not one dime from the fundraiser goes to Jimy Williams. Yes, Jose knows that you knew that. Relax, it was a joke. Obviously, the money doesn’t go to Jimy Williams. It is reserved for the needy people, the true heroes among us, who spell their name Jimmy, like Jimmy Key, Jimmy Rodgers and on the rare occasions he is feeling frisky, Jimmy Rice. Also, cancer. It fights cancer too.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME
Tuesday, August 12
What Day Is It?
It’s time for Jose Van Winkle’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Yawn.
Yawn.
Sttttrrrreeeeecchhhhh.
Yawn.
What time is it where is Jose?
What day is it? May 23rd? No?
Twenty-fourth then? No? Really?
August 12th? Are you serious? August? How can that be? The last thing Jose remembers is that he was taunting some gnomes, some place in upstate New York, it might have been Dustin Pedroia, and the next things he knows he’s here and now.
Oh woe! Oh terrible woe! The things Jose must have missed. At least he’ll still have a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton for President. He won’t? Oh wow.
He’ll just have to try to put up with watching Kobe and the Lakers try to repeat as champs. No? Not that either huh?
Well, at least there are the Red Sox to fall back on. How’s Jon Lester doing since that no hitter? Still walking the park? He isn’t? Wonders of the future Jose guesses.
Jose can hardly wait to see Papi and Manny slug back to back again. What do you mean that’s not going to happen? Is Papi hurt again? We traded Manny?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Dear God the things Jose’s missed, the loss, the horrible loss. The future is a sad and evil place. Woe! Woe! Woe! (Note: Woe!)
Wait. They didn’t trade him for Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron did they?
This is brutal. Jose needs to try to chill out. Maybe there’s a new Bernie Mac movie out that he can watch?
What about a new Isaac Hayes album?
Oh the things Jose has missed! Oh the time that has gone by? Is nothing still the same? Is there no constant in Jose’s world?
There is you say? Praise the Lord! What is it? What has remained the same?
Julio Yugo is still not contributing in any way?
Good to know that some things never change.
2. As Jose returns after nearly three months without seeing a baseball game, there is one question the burns in his mind: Why isn’t this team better?
Jose does not mean why aren’t specific players better, or why isn’t the team as a whole putting up better numbers. What he wants to know is why, after a cursory look at team statistics, the Red Sox don’t have a better record. If you had told Jose at the beginning of the year that the team ERA would be 3.79, that St. Josh a Beckett would have the worst ERA of the regular starters at 4.08, that Youks would have 20 home runs and DJ Dru 19, Jose would be sure the Red Sox would be in first place, or would at least have a comfortable lead in the wild card.
And yet here we are in August and the Sox are four games behind Tampax Bay and just a shade ahead of the Twins for the wild card.
How is this possible?
Jose has done a lot of thinking on the subject and he has come up with a theory: The Red Sox ERA team ERA is actually, 379.000, but the Red Sox, following the lead of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, have decided to cut off some zeros. For the few of you who may not have been following the economic crisis in the troubled African nation, inflation there has, for some time been in excess of one million percent. The result has been a nation of impoverished billionaires. The highest bill printed, technically a “Special Agro-Cheque” rather than actual money, is for 100 billion Zimbabwe dollars. However, at the beginning of August, Dr. Gideon Gono, Chair of the Reserve Bank decided to slash 10 zeros from the currency, issuing new one dollar notes equal to the old 10 billion dollar notes.
Jose is pretty sure the Red Sox must have done something comparable, slashing three zeros from the team ERA to come up with the officially reported number. Jose hopes they have taken one more innovation from the big brains at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The RBZ remonetized old coins that have for years now been worthless. In other words, one dollar coins, sitting in Zimbabwe’s sock drawers that had fallen in value to less than one-ten billionth of a U.S. dollar are now back to being worth about .10 U.S. dollars. Jose hopes that the Red Sox have replicated this and remonetized Pedro Martinez’s 2000 ERA.
3. Jose does not keep up with the golf news, as he generally regards golf as a sport for rich jerks (note: unlike baseball?) But one tidbit from Sunday’s Globe did jump out at him. Apparently, a golfer named Heath Slocum missed the cut at the PGA Championship after double bogeyed in the 15th and quadruple bogeyed in the 16th. Apparently, this is bad.
What surprises Jose, however, is that he was still competitive in the 15th. Jose would have expected Heath Slocum to implode in the ninth.
I’m Jose Melendez and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Yawn.
Yawn.
Sttttrrrreeeeecchhhhh.
Yawn.
What time is it where is Jose?
What day is it? May 23rd? No?
Twenty-fourth then? No? Really?
August 12th? Are you serious? August? How can that be? The last thing Jose remembers is that he was taunting some gnomes, some place in upstate New York, it might have been Dustin Pedroia, and the next things he knows he’s here and now.
Oh woe! Oh terrible woe! The things Jose must have missed. At least he’ll still have a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton for President. He won’t? Oh wow.
He’ll just have to try to put up with watching Kobe and the Lakers try to repeat as champs. No? Not that either huh?
Well, at least there are the Red Sox to fall back on. How’s Jon Lester doing since that no hitter? Still walking the park? He isn’t? Wonders of the future Jose guesses.
Jose can hardly wait to see Papi and Manny slug back to back again. What do you mean that’s not going to happen? Is Papi hurt again? We traded Manny?
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Dear God the things Jose’s missed, the loss, the horrible loss. The future is a sad and evil place. Woe! Woe! Woe! (Note: Woe!)
Wait. They didn’t trade him for Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron did they?
This is brutal. Jose needs to try to chill out. Maybe there’s a new Bernie Mac movie out that he can watch?
What about a new Isaac Hayes album?
Oh the things Jose has missed! Oh the time that has gone by? Is nothing still the same? Is there no constant in Jose’s world?
There is you say? Praise the Lord! What is it? What has remained the same?
Julio Yugo is still not contributing in any way?
Good to know that some things never change.
2. As Jose returns after nearly three months without seeing a baseball game, there is one question the burns in his mind: Why isn’t this team better?
Jose does not mean why aren’t specific players better, or why isn’t the team as a whole putting up better numbers. What he wants to know is why, after a cursory look at team statistics, the Red Sox don’t have a better record. If you had told Jose at the beginning of the year that the team ERA would be 3.79, that St. Josh a Beckett would have the worst ERA of the regular starters at 4.08, that Youks would have 20 home runs and DJ Dru 19, Jose would be sure the Red Sox would be in first place, or would at least have a comfortable lead in the wild card.
And yet here we are in August and the Sox are four games behind Tampax Bay and just a shade ahead of the Twins for the wild card.
How is this possible?
Jose has done a lot of thinking on the subject and he has come up with a theory: The Red Sox ERA team ERA is actually, 379.000, but the Red Sox, following the lead of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, have decided to cut off some zeros. For the few of you who may not have been following the economic crisis in the troubled African nation, inflation there has, for some time been in excess of one million percent. The result has been a nation of impoverished billionaires. The highest bill printed, technically a “Special Agro-Cheque” rather than actual money, is for 100 billion Zimbabwe dollars. However, at the beginning of August, Dr. Gideon Gono, Chair of the Reserve Bank decided to slash 10 zeros from the currency, issuing new one dollar notes equal to the old 10 billion dollar notes.
Jose is pretty sure the Red Sox must have done something comparable, slashing three zeros from the team ERA to come up with the officially reported number. Jose hopes they have taken one more innovation from the big brains at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The RBZ remonetized old coins that have for years now been worthless. In other words, one dollar coins, sitting in Zimbabwe’s sock drawers that had fallen in value to less than one-ten billionth of a U.S. dollar are now back to being worth about .10 U.S. dollars. Jose hopes that the Red Sox have replicated this and remonetized Pedro Martinez’s 2000 ERA.
3. Jose does not keep up with the golf news, as he generally regards golf as a sport for rich jerks (note: unlike baseball?) But one tidbit from Sunday’s Globe did jump out at him. Apparently, a golfer named Heath Slocum missed the cut at the PGA Championship after double bogeyed in the 15th and quadruple bogeyed in the 16th. Apparently, this is bad.
What surprises Jose, however, is that he was still competitive in the 15th. Jose would have expected Heath Slocum to implode in the ninth.
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.
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.
Monday, December 3
Is Santana Claus Coming to Town?
BUY THE 2007 KEYS BOOK—BECAUSE WHO KNOWS IF SANTANA IS COMING DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. You probably think that Jose has been taking it easy since the Red Sox won the World Series. And why wouldn’t you? He only wrote one entry in the entirety of November.
Yes, it’s true that Jose is looking to ease up on his workload this off-season after absolutely spending himself in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t staying actively involved in the hot stove season. For instance, Jose has been following the Johann Santana saga with enormous interest.
Jose thinks the Sox are playing the game brilliantly so far in offering a competitive package that will either win the star lefty or force the Yankees to overpay. Jose particularly likes the fact that with Jacoby Ellsbury now part of the deal, the Twins will have to include “another significant piece” in order to get Jon Lester as well. While most speculation has been that the piece would be either reliever Joe Nathan or his bullpen mate Pat Neshek, Jose believes that the media is way off on this one. The most likely extra piece appears to be former White Sox farm hand Norm Martel, who could combine with Santana to reform the legendary tag team Strikeforce. This would of course be followed by an ugly split and Martel starting a career as a male model.
However, the kink in this proposal is that if the Red Sox are prepared to call up Sanata’s previous tag team partner Charlie Zink (formerly Zenk) from the minors, Martel would be an unnecessary addition, as the Red Sox could look forward to having a new “Can-Am Connection” in the rotation.
But what if the Yankees do offer the better deal and manage to snag Santana? The Red Sox best bet then might be to acquire Winchester resident Brutus Beefcake and reunite him with his old tag team partner Bobby “The Hammer” Valentine in order to reform the “Dream Team.”
So don’t think that Jose hasn’t been thinking about the hot stove—he has. He just clearly hasn’t been thinking very hard about it.
2. Santana Claus Is Coming To Town
Jon Lester is out,
Jacoby’s now in,
His groupies will pout,
And we’ll lose Masterson,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
His changeup is great,
His fastball is nice,
We want him to pitch with Beckett and Dice,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
He comes from Venezuela,
Where Chavez reigns supreme,
But Johan will give Yanks more pain,
Than Hugo in his dreams.
Hank said he’d give up,
Both Melky and Hughes,
An offer that still, will probably lose,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
Santana Claus is coming to town.
3. Santana notwithstanding, there are lots of wonderful things going on this off-season. Perhaps most importantly Red Sox starter and KEYS BFF Curt Euro has endorsed Sen. John McCain for president and plans to campaign with the Arizona Senator. This comes shortly after the news that wrestling legend “Nature Boy” Ric Flair has endorsed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
These bold moves have left other campaigns in a quandary. With elderly yet active professional athletes becoming political king makers in the Republican party, Jose’s sources have reported that competition has grown intense for the endorsement of Carolina Panthers Quarterback Vinny Testaverde and Boxing legend Evander Holyfield.
Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been aggressively seeking the endorsement of Roger Clemens, citing their numerous similarities:
· They both purport to love Massachusetts yet have done everything possible to make its residents look like jackasses.
· They are both obsessed with earning every last dollar no matter who it hurts.
· They both have large numbers of robotic sons with weird names.
· They are both on Jose’s sh*t list.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. You probably think that Jose has been taking it easy since the Red Sox won the World Series. And why wouldn’t you? He only wrote one entry in the entirety of November.
Yes, it’s true that Jose is looking to ease up on his workload this off-season after absolutely spending himself in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t staying actively involved in the hot stove season. For instance, Jose has been following the Johann Santana saga with enormous interest.
Jose thinks the Sox are playing the game brilliantly so far in offering a competitive package that will either win the star lefty or force the Yankees to overpay. Jose particularly likes the fact that with Jacoby Ellsbury now part of the deal, the Twins will have to include “another significant piece” in order to get Jon Lester as well. While most speculation has been that the piece would be either reliever Joe Nathan or his bullpen mate Pat Neshek, Jose believes that the media is way off on this one. The most likely extra piece appears to be former White Sox farm hand Norm Martel, who could combine with Santana to reform the legendary tag team Strikeforce. This would of course be followed by an ugly split and Martel starting a career as a male model.
However, the kink in this proposal is that if the Red Sox are prepared to call up Sanata’s previous tag team partner Charlie Zink (formerly Zenk) from the minors, Martel would be an unnecessary addition, as the Red Sox could look forward to having a new “Can-Am Connection” in the rotation.
But what if the Yankees do offer the better deal and manage to snag Santana? The Red Sox best bet then might be to acquire Winchester resident Brutus Beefcake and reunite him with his old tag team partner Bobby “The Hammer” Valentine in order to reform the “Dream Team.”
So don’t think that Jose hasn’t been thinking about the hot stove—he has. He just clearly hasn’t been thinking very hard about it.
2. Santana Claus Is Coming To Town
Jon Lester is out,
Jacoby’s now in,
His groupies will pout,
And we’ll lose Masterson,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
His changeup is great,
His fastball is nice,
We want him to pitch with Beckett and Dice,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
He comes from Venezuela,
Where Chavez reigns supreme,
But Johan will give Yanks more pain,
Than Hugo in his dreams.
Hank said he’d give up,
Both Melky and Hughes,
An offer that still, will probably lose,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
Santana Claus is coming to town.
3. Santana notwithstanding, there are lots of wonderful things going on this off-season. Perhaps most importantly Red Sox starter and KEYS BFF Curt Euro has endorsed Sen. John McCain for president and plans to campaign with the Arizona Senator. This comes shortly after the news that wrestling legend “Nature Boy” Ric Flair has endorsed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
These bold moves have left other campaigns in a quandary. With elderly yet active professional athletes becoming political king makers in the Republican party, Jose’s sources have reported that competition has grown intense for the endorsement of Carolina Panthers Quarterback Vinny Testaverde and Boxing legend Evander Holyfield.
Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been aggressively seeking the endorsement of Roger Clemens, citing their numerous similarities:
· They both purport to love Massachusetts yet have done everything possible to make its residents look like jackasses.
· They are both obsessed with earning every last dollar no matter who it hurts.
· They both have large numbers of robotic sons with weird names.
· They are both on Jose’s sh*t list.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
Sunday, October 28
World Series Game 4: Thus Spake Nietzsche
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. “God is dead.”
Thus spake Nietzsche.
Of course, Jose doesn’t believe that God is dead, he’s something of a Pascal man, determining that the potential benefits of belief are a far better gamble than atheism.
But the Colorado Rockies must be wondering this morning if Nietzsche wasn’t right after all? Because if God is alive, why oh why would the Rockies be down three games to none?
Jose wants to be clear. He is not mocking God. He is not mocking religion. Heck, his parents just went to church two minutes ago. Sure, it’s a Unitarian church so it doesn’t count, but at least they’re going through the motions.
What Jose is mocking is the incredibly foolish and self-indulgent notion that God is the equation changer in baseball games. It is nonsense, and it holds one’s faith up to ridicule and doubt. If one proclaims as Rockies Chairman and CEO Charlie Monfort did that “I believe God sends signs, we're seeing those" or as Team President Keli McGregor told Time that God is "using [The Rockies] in a powerful way," does it not follow inevitably that should the Rockies lose this series one of two things is true: either a) the Rockies have done something displeasing to God or b) if God really does care about baseball games, He is not powerful enough to actually win them?
The way Jose sees it the Rockies have put God in a terribly awkward position, and if Jose were God (note: he is not) he would be really resentful.
This is why God is best left out of baseball. Jose decided long ago after praying for Celtic playoff wins, that athletic victories were too small, too unimportant in a world of suffering to waste valuable prayers on.
We do not need religion in baseball; the intermixing of the two demeans them both. What we need in baseball is what we have—superstition. For decades, forever really, the true faith of baseball has been the soft animism of superstition. When Curt Euro hops over the base lines is he not appealing to some mysterious force in the universe? When Wade Boggs shoved chicken after chicken down his curious gullet was it not a form of prayer?
When Jose crosses his fingers, or kneels on the floor or rocks back and forth or visualizes base hits, is it not an appeal to some troublesome spirit? (Note: Or possible signs of an anxiety disorder?)
That said, the funny thing is that Jose has become a baseball atheist. Out in the world he is a deist, but with his eyes on the ball field, he has come, albeit slowly, to reject the heathen gods of bat and ball. It does not matter if he crosses his fingers. It is irrelevant if Curt Euro steps on a baseline. What matters is having the best players, the best preparation and the strongest minds. Now ritual can play a role in that. Simple repetition can focus the mind and relax the body, but it is vestigial, nothing more than the token remains of a rite that once had meaning.
Perhaps this is the legacy of 2004, the lesson at last learned by Red Sox fans, that one wins or loses not on the strength of one’s superstition, but on the strength of one’s bats and arms, and on the competence of one’s management.
Superstition would demand that Jose now, yell out “UNO!!!!” as he did three years ago, to proclaim, as in the card game, that there is just one win remaining. But he no longer feels the need. What he says and what he does are irrelevant to the outcome. What matters are the men on the field and the minds in the dugout.
UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! Of course, Jose did say he tends toward Pascal’s Wager, so let’s not anger the baseball gods, just in case they are real.
2. As the seen shifted to Denver and National League rules, there has been an absolutely appalling amount of silly talk about how the Red Sox should rejigger their defense to keep David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, and Mike Lowell all in the lineup. While the solution last night was to sit Youkilis, that is not particularly creative. We have heard calls for Youk to play right field, for Mike Lowell to play shortstop, and for all Jose knows, for David Ortiz to catch. (Note: David Ortiz has bad knees. He should not catch.)
But no one has come up with the most obvious solution—let Mike Lowell pitch. Jose knows it sounds crazy at first, but this could totally work. The guy’s got a gun for an arm, and… well, that’s about all Jose’s got. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.
Okay, let’s try a variation on that. Mike Lowell should be on the lineup card as the pitcher and should bat in the nine hole, but Jon Lester should do the actual pitching. How would this work? Disguise.
How hard can it be for Jon Lester to pass for Mike Lowell? They are both cancer survivors, so if Lester just constantly chats up the ump about “When I had cancer,” and remembers not to say it was lymphoma, as Lowell had testicular cancer, that’s a start right there. Then all you need is some modified Groucho glasses that keep the eyebrows but shrinks the nose a little bit, and some makeup to make Lester look 50 years older and presto—Mike Lowell is your pitcher.
Now, Jose knows what some of you are thinking “Hey, that’s cheating!” But come on, it’s not that bad. It’s not like they’re doing something really reprehensible like video taping the game or hitting umpire Chuck Meriwether with a steel chair or anything.
3. As Jose searched desperately for material for this Game 4 KEYS, he naturally looked back to Game 4 of the 2004 World Series for inspiration, and what he found surprised him. Three years ago yesterday, Jose in his second KEY relied heavily on the Transformers, the cartoon about robots that transformed into vehicles, comparing Derek Lowe to Megatron and St. Louis starter Jason Marquis to Bumblebee.
Cut to today and Major League Baseball has finally caught up with Jose, flashing Transformers logos throughout the World Series in efforts to move DVDs of the ho-hum summer blockbuster. The result, naturally enough, is that Jose needs another shtick. As an aspiring hipster Jose cannot keep using Transformers references once they get in vogue any more than he can keep drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon once they start underwriting National Public Radio.
Ergo, Jose will now explain to you how the 2007 Colorado Rockies are exactly like Go-Bots, the Tonka equivalent of Transformers.
Like the Go-Bots, the Rockies entered the series with a lot of hype and to significant excitement, but ultimately they were simply defeated by a vastly superior product.
Also, Jose is almost positive that there was a Go-Bot that changed into a bird called Latroy Hawk-Ins and one that was a three-way changer from a robot to a diet book to a TV maid named Garret Atkins.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. “God is dead.”
Thus spake Nietzsche.
Of course, Jose doesn’t believe that God is dead, he’s something of a Pascal man, determining that the potential benefits of belief are a far better gamble than atheism.
But the Colorado Rockies must be wondering this morning if Nietzsche wasn’t right after all? Because if God is alive, why oh why would the Rockies be down three games to none?
Jose wants to be clear. He is not mocking God. He is not mocking religion. Heck, his parents just went to church two minutes ago. Sure, it’s a Unitarian church so it doesn’t count, but at least they’re going through the motions.
What Jose is mocking is the incredibly foolish and self-indulgent notion that God is the equation changer in baseball games. It is nonsense, and it holds one’s faith up to ridicule and doubt. If one proclaims as Rockies Chairman and CEO Charlie Monfort did that “I believe God sends signs, we're seeing those" or as Team President Keli McGregor told Time that God is "using [The Rockies] in a powerful way," does it not follow inevitably that should the Rockies lose this series one of two things is true: either a) the Rockies have done something displeasing to God or b) if God really does care about baseball games, He is not powerful enough to actually win them?
The way Jose sees it the Rockies have put God in a terribly awkward position, and if Jose were God (note: he is not) he would be really resentful.
This is why God is best left out of baseball. Jose decided long ago after praying for Celtic playoff wins, that athletic victories were too small, too unimportant in a world of suffering to waste valuable prayers on.
We do not need religion in baseball; the intermixing of the two demeans them both. What we need in baseball is what we have—superstition. For decades, forever really, the true faith of baseball has been the soft animism of superstition. When Curt Euro hops over the base lines is he not appealing to some mysterious force in the universe? When Wade Boggs shoved chicken after chicken down his curious gullet was it not a form of prayer?
When Jose crosses his fingers, or kneels on the floor or rocks back and forth or visualizes base hits, is it not an appeal to some troublesome spirit? (Note: Or possible signs of an anxiety disorder?)
That said, the funny thing is that Jose has become a baseball atheist. Out in the world he is a deist, but with his eyes on the ball field, he has come, albeit slowly, to reject the heathen gods of bat and ball. It does not matter if he crosses his fingers. It is irrelevant if Curt Euro steps on a baseline. What matters is having the best players, the best preparation and the strongest minds. Now ritual can play a role in that. Simple repetition can focus the mind and relax the body, but it is vestigial, nothing more than the token remains of a rite that once had meaning.
Perhaps this is the legacy of 2004, the lesson at last learned by Red Sox fans, that one wins or loses not on the strength of one’s superstition, but on the strength of one’s bats and arms, and on the competence of one’s management.
Superstition would demand that Jose now, yell out “UNO!!!!” as he did three years ago, to proclaim, as in the card game, that there is just one win remaining. But he no longer feels the need. What he says and what he does are irrelevant to the outcome. What matters are the men on the field and the minds in the dugout.
UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! Of course, Jose did say he tends toward Pascal’s Wager, so let’s not anger the baseball gods, just in case they are real.
2. As the seen shifted to Denver and National League rules, there has been an absolutely appalling amount of silly talk about how the Red Sox should rejigger their defense to keep David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, and Mike Lowell all in the lineup. While the solution last night was to sit Youkilis, that is not particularly creative. We have heard calls for Youk to play right field, for Mike Lowell to play shortstop, and for all Jose knows, for David Ortiz to catch. (Note: David Ortiz has bad knees. He should not catch.)
But no one has come up with the most obvious solution—let Mike Lowell pitch. Jose knows it sounds crazy at first, but this could totally work. The guy’s got a gun for an arm, and… well, that’s about all Jose’s got. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.
Okay, let’s try a variation on that. Mike Lowell should be on the lineup card as the pitcher and should bat in the nine hole, but Jon Lester should do the actual pitching. How would this work? Disguise.
How hard can it be for Jon Lester to pass for Mike Lowell? They are both cancer survivors, so if Lester just constantly chats up the ump about “When I had cancer,” and remembers not to say it was lymphoma, as Lowell had testicular cancer, that’s a start right there. Then all you need is some modified Groucho glasses that keep the eyebrows but shrinks the nose a little bit, and some makeup to make Lester look 50 years older and presto—Mike Lowell is your pitcher.
Now, Jose knows what some of you are thinking “Hey, that’s cheating!” But come on, it’s not that bad. It’s not like they’re doing something really reprehensible like video taping the game or hitting umpire Chuck Meriwether with a steel chair or anything.
3. As Jose searched desperately for material for this Game 4 KEYS, he naturally looked back to Game 4 of the 2004 World Series for inspiration, and what he found surprised him. Three years ago yesterday, Jose in his second KEY relied heavily on the Transformers, the cartoon about robots that transformed into vehicles, comparing Derek Lowe to Megatron and St. Louis starter Jason Marquis to Bumblebee.
Cut to today and Major League Baseball has finally caught up with Jose, flashing Transformers logos throughout the World Series in efforts to move DVDs of the ho-hum summer blockbuster. The result, naturally enough, is that Jose needs another shtick. As an aspiring hipster Jose cannot keep using Transformers references once they get in vogue any more than he can keep drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon once they start underwriting National Public Radio.
Ergo, Jose will now explain to you how the 2007 Colorado Rockies are exactly like Go-Bots, the Tonka equivalent of Transformers.
Like the Go-Bots, the Rockies entered the series with a lot of hype and to significant excitement, but ultimately they were simply defeated by a vastly superior product.
Also, Jose is almost positive that there was a Go-Bot that changed into a bird called Latroy Hawk-Ins and one that was a three-way changer from a robot to a diet book to a TV maid named Garret Atkins.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, July 24
Do We Need the Yankees?
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
Are we better off having the Yankees hanging around?
Are we happier? Do our cows give more milk? Are our sexual experiences more powerful? Can we bench press a little more? Bruce Weber thinks we can.
In a New York Times piece on Sunday, Weber, an author and Yankees fan, submits, for our consideration, the proposition that we are all better off having the Yankees around. Weber maintains, in the haughty tones one expects from followers of the team from the Bronx, that we are glad to have the Yankees around, that a season without them in contention is like Othello without Iago.
Jose suspects that his readership might not be much of a Shakespeare crowd (note: okay, you are a Shakespeare crowd, but Jose’s never seen Othello, nor even the film “O” so he’s got nothing here), so let’s look at it a different way. What would Star Wars be without Darth Vader? That’s really Weber’s argument isn’t it? Would the Star Wars epic be nearly as exciting, as interesting, as mysterious if Darth Vader died half way through Empire, or better yet, gave up evil and went to farm on Tatooine?
One’s first inclination is, of course, to say “Absolutely not; it would suck.” But then think about it a little more deeply. Sure, when we saw the first Star Wars trilogy having Darth Vader stick around until the end seemed like a good thing. But what about after the second trilogy was released? Did it still seem like a good idea? When we all learned that the man behind the mask was just a whiny punk, didn’t it sort of make you wish he’d just died earlier so Luke could have gone toe-to-toe with the Emperor or they could have made the last movie about Admiral Akbar or something? Okay, it didn’t, but still, you have to concede that Jose has a point.
Of course, having a villain is important to any dramatic arc, but when it is revealed that the villain, rather than being deeply malevolent or even complex, is just whiny and self-obsessed, much of the drama disappears. Sure, Jose hates these Yankees, but as much hate as he feels, he feels even more disgust. The Yankees of the 70s with Thurman Munson and friends, those were teams you could hate and fear, same too for the Yankees of the mid-90s. Who was more loathsome than Paul “I’ve never taken a called strike in my life” O’Neil? They were Darth Vader without the back story. Dark, sinister and terrifying. But today’s Yankees? They are like looking at Darth Vader knowing that, at core, they are whiny Anakin Skywalker, petty, greedy and more than a little pathetic.
Can’t you picture A-Rod slaughtering a bunch of sand people and then acting like it was a big deal? “I’m A-Rod, the greatest, most ruthless Jedi of all time, because I killed a bunch of sand people,” he might say. “Never mind that whenever we get to a big time throw down, Count Dooku or Obi Wan is going to kick my *ss.” It’s pathetic actually.
The big, bad Yankees have become more an object of disgust than fear, far less Iago and far, far more Paris Hilton.
2. Time to be serious. Jose had a little fun yesterday with Jon Lester’s comeback, making cancer jokes and what not, but you all know that in his heart Jose was genuinely happy to see the lefty back in the majors after his ordeal. And the fact that he pitched well, makes it all the better. We need him, and perhaps he needs us.
But what Jose wants to add was how genuinely nice it was to see Lester’s parents in the stands rooting him on. So often in sports, we are force fed images of the family of players or coaches in the stand in big games, as if we are foie gras ducks being driven to illness. And so often, Jose doesn’t want to see it. Jose doesn’t care about Donovan McNabb’s mother whether she’s pushing soup or not. He sure doesn’t need to see the blonde, big boobed wives of any college hoops coaches during tense moments in March. (Note: Well, he doesn’t need to see head shots of them anyway.) And he certainly doesn’t need the constant cutaways at every pause in the action. Hell, he doesn’t even want to see David Beckham’s wife, unless she is singing “If You Wanna be My Lover.”
But last night was different. Seeing Jon Lester’s folks there at the Jake, not looking self-involved or self-aggrandizing, not only rooting for their son, but reveling in his health, made Jose happy. Some people take a cruise to celebrate a victory over cancer, some buy a car, the Lesters took a trip to Cleveland. And Jose would wager that no one, ever, has been so elated to be on the banks of the Cuyahoga River.
3. Jose was relieved this morning when he opened KEYS and saw the little Israeli flag emerge on the list of visiting nations on the lower right hand side of his screen. Unwittingly, Jose had gotten drawn into Holy Land politics with the announcement by one fan that despite the fact that he lived well inside the green line in Jerusalem, his nation’s flag was not showing up on Jose’s display.
As a non-practicing, culture-only Jew, Jose was mortified to be inadvertently coming down on the “Israel does not have the right to exist” side of the debate. With the appearance of the little blue and white flag, Jose can confirm that he does believe in Israel’s right to exist, even though he does question the right of Israel Alcantara to exist.
Now that that’s straightened out, Jose does have some bad news for his fellow members of the tribe and… well… Jose isn’t sure how to say this, but…umm… Jose is pretty sure that we’re not the Chosen People.
Jose knows, Jose knows, it says we are in the Torah and in Charlton Heston movies and what not, but, as you know Jose is an empiricist and he follows the evidence. And, well, the evidence does not point in our direction. It’s not that we’re not “a” chosen people. God probably choo-choo-chooses us for lots of stuff. He gave us the bagel; he gave us the Catskills and according to an urologist Jose knows, gave our elderly men the largest, organs, shall we say, in all humanity.
But while we may be “a” chosen people. We are not “The Chosen People.” We can’t be. How can we compete with the Dominicans? Look who they’ve got. Pedro, Papi, Manny, Vlad, Marichal, and the list goes on. What do we have Hank Greenberg and Albert Einstein? Sure Greenberg could mash, but Old Albert looks like a .220 hitter to Jose. And how fast can Ruth Bader Ginsburg throw? Not fast enough.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Are we better off having the Yankees hanging around?
Are we happier? Do our cows give more milk? Are our sexual experiences more powerful? Can we bench press a little more? Bruce Weber thinks we can.
In a New York Times piece on Sunday, Weber, an author and Yankees fan, submits, for our consideration, the proposition that we are all better off having the Yankees around. Weber maintains, in the haughty tones one expects from followers of the team from the Bronx, that we are glad to have the Yankees around, that a season without them in contention is like Othello without Iago.
Jose suspects that his readership might not be much of a Shakespeare crowd (note: okay, you are a Shakespeare crowd, but Jose’s never seen Othello, nor even the film “O” so he’s got nothing here), so let’s look at it a different way. What would Star Wars be without Darth Vader? That’s really Weber’s argument isn’t it? Would the Star Wars epic be nearly as exciting, as interesting, as mysterious if Darth Vader died half way through Empire, or better yet, gave up evil and went to farm on Tatooine?
One’s first inclination is, of course, to say “Absolutely not; it would suck.” But then think about it a little more deeply. Sure, when we saw the first Star Wars trilogy having Darth Vader stick around until the end seemed like a good thing. But what about after the second trilogy was released? Did it still seem like a good idea? When we all learned that the man behind the mask was just a whiny punk, didn’t it sort of make you wish he’d just died earlier so Luke could have gone toe-to-toe with the Emperor or they could have made the last movie about Admiral Akbar or something? Okay, it didn’t, but still, you have to concede that Jose has a point.
Of course, having a villain is important to any dramatic arc, but when it is revealed that the villain, rather than being deeply malevolent or even complex, is just whiny and self-obsessed, much of the drama disappears. Sure, Jose hates these Yankees, but as much hate as he feels, he feels even more disgust. The Yankees of the 70s with Thurman Munson and friends, those were teams you could hate and fear, same too for the Yankees of the mid-90s. Who was more loathsome than Paul “I’ve never taken a called strike in my life” O’Neil? They were Darth Vader without the back story. Dark, sinister and terrifying. But today’s Yankees? They are like looking at Darth Vader knowing that, at core, they are whiny Anakin Skywalker, petty, greedy and more than a little pathetic.
Can’t you picture A-Rod slaughtering a bunch of sand people and then acting like it was a big deal? “I’m A-Rod, the greatest, most ruthless Jedi of all time, because I killed a bunch of sand people,” he might say. “Never mind that whenever we get to a big time throw down, Count Dooku or Obi Wan is going to kick my *ss.” It’s pathetic actually.
The big, bad Yankees have become more an object of disgust than fear, far less Iago and far, far more Paris Hilton.
2. Time to be serious. Jose had a little fun yesterday with Jon Lester’s comeback, making cancer jokes and what not, but you all know that in his heart Jose was genuinely happy to see the lefty back in the majors after his ordeal. And the fact that he pitched well, makes it all the better. We need him, and perhaps he needs us.
But what Jose wants to add was how genuinely nice it was to see Lester’s parents in the stands rooting him on. So often in sports, we are force fed images of the family of players or coaches in the stand in big games, as if we are foie gras ducks being driven to illness. And so often, Jose doesn’t want to see it. Jose doesn’t care about Donovan McNabb’s mother whether she’s pushing soup or not. He sure doesn’t need to see the blonde, big boobed wives of any college hoops coaches during tense moments in March. (Note: Well, he doesn’t need to see head shots of them anyway.) And he certainly doesn’t need the constant cutaways at every pause in the action. Hell, he doesn’t even want to see David Beckham’s wife, unless she is singing “If You Wanna be My Lover.”
But last night was different. Seeing Jon Lester’s folks there at the Jake, not looking self-involved or self-aggrandizing, not only rooting for their son, but reveling in his health, made Jose happy. Some people take a cruise to celebrate a victory over cancer, some buy a car, the Lesters took a trip to Cleveland. And Jose would wager that no one, ever, has been so elated to be on the banks of the Cuyahoga River.
3. Jose was relieved this morning when he opened KEYS and saw the little Israeli flag emerge on the list of visiting nations on the lower right hand side of his screen. Unwittingly, Jose had gotten drawn into Holy Land politics with the announcement by one fan that despite the fact that he lived well inside the green line in Jerusalem, his nation’s flag was not showing up on Jose’s display.
As a non-practicing, culture-only Jew, Jose was mortified to be inadvertently coming down on the “Israel does not have the right to exist” side of the debate. With the appearance of the little blue and white flag, Jose can confirm that he does believe in Israel’s right to exist, even though he does question the right of Israel Alcantara to exist.
Now that that’s straightened out, Jose does have some bad news for his fellow members of the tribe and… well… Jose isn’t sure how to say this, but…umm… Jose is pretty sure that we’re not the Chosen People.
Jose knows, Jose knows, it says we are in the Torah and in Charlton Heston movies and what not, but, as you know Jose is an empiricist and he follows the evidence. And, well, the evidence does not point in our direction. It’s not that we’re not “a” chosen people. God probably choo-choo-chooses us for lots of stuff. He gave us the bagel; he gave us the Catskills and according to an urologist Jose knows, gave our elderly men the largest, organs, shall we say, in all humanity.
But while we may be “a” chosen people. We are not “The Chosen People.” We can’t be. How can we compete with the Dominicans? Look who they’ve got. Pedro, Papi, Manny, Vlad, Marichal, and the list goes on. What do we have Hank Greenberg and Albert Einstein? Sure Greenberg could mash, but Old Albert looks like a .220 hitter to Jose. And how fast can Ruth Bader Ginsburg throw? Not fast enough.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Monday, July 23
Whistle When You’re Low
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1.Crap.
Bleeping Dan Shaughnessy took the bleeping high road on Jon Lester.
If Manny had just returned after a bout with the big C, Shaughnessy would be questioning if he’d ever had cancer and making quips like “Did Manny have melanoma, or just melodrama? History would suggest the latter.” But since it was loveable Jon Lester, hard working white kid, Shaughnessy gives him the Le Monde on 9/12 treatment “Tonight all of us are Red Sox fans.”
So if Shaughnessy is going to play good guy in this storyline, what does the leave for Jose? Does he get stuck doing the cancer jokes, yet again?
Yes, apparently he does. Do five jokes about Mike Lowell losing a testicle to cancer, and suddenly you’re the cancer joke guy. G-reat.
Well, fine then. Here goes. Mike Lowell told Shaughnessy “Trust me, anyone going through this doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to be a baseball player rather than a cancer survivor.”
Where does Lowell get off speaking for everyone with cancer? Shonda Schilling can’t stop talking about the evils of the sun. The nerve! Didn’t she see what melanoma did for Derek Lowe? Did he ever have a World Series ring before he lost part of his nose to cancer? Nope. And while he was probably banging reporters, he certainly didn’t get to brag about it in the newspaper. Cancer was great for DLowe. (Note: In German, the call cancer Krebs, which is the name of the constellation Cancer, but literally translates as “crabs.” This begs the question of whether Germans treat cancer with special shampoo rather than deadly intravenous chemicals. While this name may not make cancer any less deadly in German speaking countries, it definitely makes it funnier. Also, angina, means strep throat in German, which is confusing as hell.)
And what about Cancer Boy, the heroic tyke from Brain Candy, the Kids in the Hall movie, who battled through cancer to be nominated at the World Video Awards for the best rap, hip hop or folk video. He courageously talked about his cancer all the time, and whistled about it too.
In fact, when Lester first starts at Fenway, the Sox should play Cancer Boy’s “Whistle When You’re Low” as his intro music.
Alternatively, Jose vaguely recalls his friend Dan writing a song called “Metastasis, We’ve Got to Stop It” during ninth grade biology. That could work too.
Okay. Deep breath. Is that enough? Is Jose enough of a heel for you now? Has he scored enough points off of a freaking cancer survivor to entertain you heartless people? JOSE IS NOT YOUR JOKE MONKEY!!!!!!
Well, he is kind of, so let him settle with this side note. Welcome back to the bigs Jon, and have a great game. Don’t get too used to Shaughnessy writing nice things about you, and remember, keep whistling.
When Jose goes to hell for KEY 1,
he needs to keep whistling.
2. The promotion of Jon Lester, also means the end of the line for Joel Piñero in the grey and red, and despite his ineffectiveness, Jose can’t help but feel like the end came too soon. When J.C. Romero was designated for assignment Jose felt at peace. He’d written about Christian rappers calling their Lord JC, and he’d suggested the lefty was an amalgam of Jesus Christ and Ed Romero—he’d covered all the bases. But not so with Piñero, with so Piñero much remains undone. Yes, Jose got to call him Jor-El and do some father of Superman jokes, but so much never happened. Jose never got to write about how he loves those piñero nuts they sometimes use in Chinese food. Then he would have spent the next day writing how it turns out they’re actually called piñola nuts, and we would have laughed and laughed.
Jose never even wrote about loving Piñero Coladas, and getting lost in the rain. And now it’s too late.
The sadness flows through Jose’s veins like ethanol after SoSH bash weekend. He’ll never see Joel walk another batter, never see him give up a two strike hit, never see him make that frustrated little look he makes, when he realizes he can’t get anyone out.
Well, life, as they say, is loss, and for Joel Piñero life is loss after loss after loss.
So long, Joel, and may we meet again with you pitching for the other team.
3. Mike Lowell is a huge believer in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense when they have their opponents backed up against the goal line. How else could one explain Lowell’s comment that when he saw the 21-4 score in yesterday’s Yankees-DRays game he said “I though it was Jets-Buccaneers.”
The only way you can get four points in football is on two safeties, so he must love the Tampa D. Of course, it could also be that he thinks poorly of the Jets special teams. As someone who lived much of his life in Florida, he no doubt remembers the 1987 Sugar Bowl when Miami beat Florida 31-4, scoring only due to two botched snaps.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1.Crap.
Bleeping Dan Shaughnessy took the bleeping high road on Jon Lester.
If Manny had just returned after a bout with the big C, Shaughnessy would be questioning if he’d ever had cancer and making quips like “Did Manny have melanoma, or just melodrama? History would suggest the latter.” But since it was loveable Jon Lester, hard working white kid, Shaughnessy gives him the Le Monde on 9/12 treatment “Tonight all of us are Red Sox fans.”
So if Shaughnessy is going to play good guy in this storyline, what does the leave for Jose? Does he get stuck doing the cancer jokes, yet again?
Yes, apparently he does. Do five jokes about Mike Lowell losing a testicle to cancer, and suddenly you’re the cancer joke guy. G-reat.
Well, fine then. Here goes. Mike Lowell told Shaughnessy “Trust me, anyone going through this doesn’t want to talk about it. He wants to be a baseball player rather than a cancer survivor.”
Where does Lowell get off speaking for everyone with cancer? Shonda Schilling can’t stop talking about the evils of the sun. The nerve! Didn’t she see what melanoma did for Derek Lowe? Did he ever have a World Series ring before he lost part of his nose to cancer? Nope. And while he was probably banging reporters, he certainly didn’t get to brag about it in the newspaper. Cancer was great for DLowe. (Note: In German, the call cancer Krebs, which is the name of the constellation Cancer, but literally translates as “crabs.” This begs the question of whether Germans treat cancer with special shampoo rather than deadly intravenous chemicals. While this name may not make cancer any less deadly in German speaking countries, it definitely makes it funnier. Also, angina, means strep throat in German, which is confusing as hell.)
And what about Cancer Boy, the heroic tyke from Brain Candy, the Kids in the Hall movie, who battled through cancer to be nominated at the World Video Awards for the best rap, hip hop or folk video. He courageously talked about his cancer all the time, and whistled about it too.
In fact, when Lester first starts at Fenway, the Sox should play Cancer Boy’s “Whistle When You’re Low” as his intro music.
Alternatively, Jose vaguely recalls his friend Dan writing a song called “Metastasis, We’ve Got to Stop It” during ninth grade biology. That could work too.
Okay. Deep breath. Is that enough? Is Jose enough of a heel for you now? Has he scored enough points off of a freaking cancer survivor to entertain you heartless people? JOSE IS NOT YOUR JOKE MONKEY!!!!!!
Well, he is kind of, so let him settle with this side note. Welcome back to the bigs Jon, and have a great game. Don’t get too used to Shaughnessy writing nice things about you, and remember, keep whistling.
When Jose goes to hell for KEY 1,
he needs to keep whistling.
2. The promotion of Jon Lester, also means the end of the line for Joel Piñero in the grey and red, and despite his ineffectiveness, Jose can’t help but feel like the end came too soon. When J.C. Romero was designated for assignment Jose felt at peace. He’d written about Christian rappers calling their Lord JC, and he’d suggested the lefty was an amalgam of Jesus Christ and Ed Romero—he’d covered all the bases. But not so with Piñero, with so Piñero much remains undone. Yes, Jose got to call him Jor-El and do some father of Superman jokes, but so much never happened. Jose never got to write about how he loves those piñero nuts they sometimes use in Chinese food. Then he would have spent the next day writing how it turns out they’re actually called piñola nuts, and we would have laughed and laughed.
Jose never even wrote about loving Piñero Coladas, and getting lost in the rain. And now it’s too late.
The sadness flows through Jose’s veins like ethanol after SoSH bash weekend. He’ll never see Joel walk another batter, never see him give up a two strike hit, never see him make that frustrated little look he makes, when he realizes he can’t get anyone out.
Well, life, as they say, is loss, and for Joel Piñero life is loss after loss after loss.
So long, Joel, and may we meet again with you pitching for the other team.
3. Mike Lowell is a huge believer in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense when they have their opponents backed up against the goal line. How else could one explain Lowell’s comment that when he saw the 21-4 score in yesterday’s Yankees-DRays game he said “I though it was Jets-Buccaneers.”
The only way you can get four points in football is on two safeties, so he must love the Tampa D. Of course, it could also be that he thinks poorly of the Jets special teams. As someone who lived much of his life in Florida, he no doubt remembers the 1987 Sugar Bowl when Miami beat Florida 31-4, scoring only due to two botched snaps.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Thursday, April 19
Wait... It's a Day Game?
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Did you know that today’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game has a scheduled start time of 12:37 PM? Yeah, neither did Jose, which is why today’s KEYS will, much like David Eckstein, be short, and of inferior quality! But at least they will be a spark plug.
Let’s only hope that the Red Sox didn’t forget the early time too, or in the case of today’s starter Julienned Tavarez, that he did forget.
2. SINCE THE SHIFT HAS WORKED SO WELL AT TAKING BASE HITS AWAY FROM DAVID ORTIZ” JOSE THOUGHT THAT MAYBE HE SHOULD TRY USING IT AGAINST EXTREMELY TALENTED PLAYERS FOR OTHER TEAMS” LIKE TONIGHT”S BLUE JAYS STARTER ROY HALLADAY>
AS YOU CAN SEE” JOSE IS HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY RIGHT NOW> YEAH, IT’S A LITTLE WEIRD AND IT LEAVES MANY OF JOSE”S FINGERS OUT OF POSITION” (NOTE: AND IT MAKES ALL COMMAS QUOTATION MARKS AND PERIODS CARROTS) BUT HE HOPES IT WILL WORK> THAT SAID” HE CAN’T REACH THE “T” SO WELL WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND IS HAVING TO TRY TO OVERCOMPENSATE BY REACHING FOR IT WITH HIS RIGHT>
STILL” THE SHIFT IS WORTH TRYING UNTIL IT STOPS WORKING” RIGHT?
3. John Lester has been promoted to AAA Pawtucket after absolutely tearing up Greenville as he continues his return from cancer. While one should be wary about drawing too much from his domination of single A hitters, one can extrapolate something from the fact that Lester was throwing strikes. As you recall, last year, Lester struggled with walks at the major league level, despite having had pretty good control in the minors. This leads to a rather obvious question. Can cancer increase the number balls? Jose’s friend Jamie, speculated, rather shrewdly, that perhaps the silent toll the cancer was taking on Lester’s body was preventing him from recuperating fully between starts and therefore hurting his control.
It’s an interesting theory, but it is counterintuitive, thus Jose remains skeptical. After all, we know for a fact that caner can decrease the number of balls thanks to Mike Lowell. (Note: Cue angry emails.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Did you know that today’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game has a scheduled start time of 12:37 PM? Yeah, neither did Jose, which is why today’s KEYS will, much like David Eckstein, be short, and of inferior quality! But at least they will be a spark plug.
Let’s only hope that the Red Sox didn’t forget the early time too, or in the case of today’s starter Julienned Tavarez, that he did forget.
2. SINCE THE SHIFT HAS WORKED SO WELL AT TAKING BASE HITS AWAY FROM DAVID ORTIZ” JOSE THOUGHT THAT MAYBE HE SHOULD TRY USING IT AGAINST EXTREMELY TALENTED PLAYERS FOR OTHER TEAMS” LIKE TONIGHT”S BLUE JAYS STARTER ROY HALLADAY>
AS YOU CAN SEE” JOSE IS HOLDING DOWN THE SHIFT KEY RIGHT NOW> YEAH, IT’S A LITTLE WEIRD AND IT LEAVES MANY OF JOSE”S FINGERS OUT OF POSITION” (NOTE: AND IT MAKES ALL COMMAS QUOTATION MARKS AND PERIODS CARROTS) BUT HE HOPES IT WILL WORK> THAT SAID” HE CAN’T REACH THE “T” SO WELL WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND IS HAVING TO TRY TO OVERCOMPENSATE BY REACHING FOR IT WITH HIS RIGHT>
STILL” THE SHIFT IS WORTH TRYING UNTIL IT STOPS WORKING” RIGHT?
Blue Jays Manager John Gibbons plots
strategy for the Ortiz shift.
3. John Lester has been promoted to AAA Pawtucket after absolutely tearing up Greenville as he continues his return from cancer. While one should be wary about drawing too much from his domination of single A hitters, one can extrapolate something from the fact that Lester was throwing strikes. As you recall, last year, Lester struggled with walks at the major league level, despite having had pretty good control in the minors. This leads to a rather obvious question. Can cancer increase the number balls? Jose’s friend Jamie, speculated, rather shrewdly, that perhaps the silent toll the cancer was taking on Lester’s body was preventing him from recuperating fully between starts and therefore hurting his control.
It’s an interesting theory, but it is counterintuitive, thus Jose remains skeptical. After all, we know for a fact that caner can decrease the number of balls thanks to Mike Lowell. (Note: Cue angry emails.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
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