It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. It is almost universally regarded as humiliating when a man in pursuit of a woman is defeated in his quest for her favor, and perhaps her bed, by a richer man who swoops in at the last moment in his fancy, jewel-encrusted car. The reason this is seen as a humiliation is obvious; the woman’s choice has revealed that the rich man is, at least in her eyes, superior to the poor man. This is not a surprise. It reaffirms what we all already know, what the poor man himself knows, that everything being equal a rich man is more desirable than a poor man.
Of course, all things are rarely equal. The rich man may be nicer, smarter, funnier or more charming than the poor man, but as casual observers, we can’t tell, so we make the most obvious assumption—she likes the rich man more because he is rich. In other words, the interaction tells us nothing that we didn’t already know. We jump to our conclusions and we are on our merry way.
What raises far more questions, however, is when the woman in the story is being courted by a rich man and yet leaves him when the poor man rolls up in his AMC Gremlin. An observer watching this transpire still knows that the rich man is wealthier than the poor man, however in this case, he also knows something else, that in some critical characteristic the poor man is the rich man’s superior. Either there is something very good about the poor man, very bad about the rich man, or both.
So what then, is the massive deficiency of baseball’s richest man, the New York Yankees? Why did Cliff Lee choose the certainly not poor, but far less wealthy Philadelphia Phillies over them? Sure, we could imagine that the Phillies have some tremendous advantage, but let’s be serious; we’re talking about Philadelphia. Unless Cliff Lee is a fan of cheesesteak, revolutionary history or being a dick, it’s hard to figure out what the draw would be.
So again, what is the massive deficiency of the Yankees?
If we were to go back to the example of the woman and the man, we might assume that the rich man is cruel, stupid, obnoxious, foul-smelling or sexually inadequate, and while we can safely assume all of these about the New York Yankees, it still fails to explain Lee’s choice because, let’s be honest, the Phillies aren’t great shakes in any of these categories either (note: except for Chase Utley, who, as any fan of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” knows, is dreamy). Thus, the only thing Jose can come up with is that the Yankees have some deficiency so vile, so perverse that it makes even the Phillies seem like a preferable partner for Lee.
Here’s what Jose’s come up with—the Yankees are in the mafia. Think about it. It makes so much sense. They act with impunity, they reside in the Bronx, they wear athletic garb to work, they cheat on their wives, they associate with a “Boss” who while clearly evil is treated as though he were a good man after his death, it all adds up.
Of course, the sexual inadequacy thing seems pretty plausible too.
2. When the Clifford Lee signing was announced yesterday and they started showing highlights on TV, was Jose the only one who as surprised to learn that he was neither a big red dog nor a Chinese man?
3. Now that the Yankees have failed horrifically in the marketplace, Jose keeps wondering if they will get a government bailout. Oh, that’s right they already got one, its called Yankee Stadium.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
Showing posts with label Yankees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yankees. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14
Thursday, November 15
The Euphoria is Wearing Off
Buy the 2007 KEYS BOOK—THEY WIN IN THIS ONE!
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. The euphoria is finally wearing off.
Jose’s blood pressure is down, the adrenalin in his blood has thinned to watery broth and the pleasant fog that has cloaked and soothed him for lo these many months is finally lifting.
Yes, the ecstasy of winning the 2004 World Series has at long last dissipated.
Thank God we won another one. Now Jose can be assured of another three years of low-level elation.
But in all seriousness, Jose is no longer constantly giddy, and the benign sense that all is well with the world is gradually giving way to the melancholy that comes every year at this time as surely as the leaves glide to the ground.
It really is better this way. Ecstasy, it turns out gets boring eventually. (Note: No, it doesn’t.) Pain. Now that’s the ticket. Pain and ennui, ennui and pain, those are the rich loam in which decent writing germinates and blooms.
Strangely enough it was last night, as Jose strolled the streets of Denver, that the melancholy descended. One would imagine that the sight of so much Rockies NL Champion merchandise would start the endorphins flowing, but it was not to be. No he could not even muster the energy to make a bankruptcy joke to a guy he met named Jack Clark. There are lots of good things going on, but none of them could counter the little slip of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket.
The paper was marked 11/14/2005. Exactly two years ago to the day yesterday, how odd. How odd it is that two years after the occasion, Jose would find this little reminder of the last time he had certainty in his life. Without going into what the paper represented (note: no, it was sadly not a lottery ticket), it was the seeming guarantee of a clear path in Jose’s life, it was the phone ringing with his calling at the other end, it was the lead blocker opening that seam for him to sprint though. But soon after that date, too soon, Jose saw his future, then so neatly laid out, disintegrate as surely and as painfully as Andy Yount’s at a graveyard so long ago. Yount’s future was shattered by glass and Jose’s by red tape, different, yet so, so the same.
And then came the uncertainty. Who was Jose? Who was he going to be? It is frightening, this uncertainty. Just ask Alex Rodriguez. He was brave. He chose uncertainty. He dove headfirst into the churn, but then made a horrifying discovery. He didn’t much care for it. It turns out that he did not understand that uncertainty is, well, uncertain. While Rodriguez left the trail clear and true to go off into the brush, he somehow failed to grasp that there might be snakes there. Rodriquez chose the uncertain path confident that it would lead to a certain outcome, but as soon as it turned that first dark corner, he got scared and ran back to the safe embrace of Steinbrenner Inc and their $275 to $300 million arms.
What a shame. What Alex doesn’t understand is that certainty secure and comfortable though it is, is boring. And even worse, it is limiting. Jose lost the certainty of his calling, but after the initial anxiety, he has embraced it. He can do anything; he can be anything. And he will be.
Alex Rodriguez, by contrast, will know exactly who and what he is the moment he signs this deal. He will be a Yankee; he will be a Hall-of-Famer; he will even be the greatest player of all time. But that’s not all. He will also be unloved, forever made to somehow look small by inferior teammates with superior shadows.
It is a good choice, perhaps, for the weak, for the cautious, for poor, lonely Alex, but not for Jose. Jose is made of sterner stuff. Jose welcomes the uncertainty. He embraces the stress, and the anxiety and the… Opportunity?
So let the melancholy come, let it sound smooth and dark like Scottish rock. Let is crash to the earth in sheets. Jose is ready; Jose is intoxicated by the melancholy. And unlike Alex Rodriguez, he is not afraid
2. Congratulations to Kevin Youkilis for winning a gold glove for his errorless season at first.
Now, a lot of you may not know why they give out gold gloves to the best defenders. You probably think that it is symbolism, that because gold is valuable they give it to the best fielders as a way of honoring them. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. If that were the case they would give them platinum gloves, as platinum is more valuable than gold.
No, what the gold glove is actually about is equity. The original concept of the gold glove was that it would create more parity by burdening the best fielders with snazzy, but painfully heavy and inflexible gloves made literally out of gold. By forcing Willie Mays to play with a gold glove, you could level the playing field between him and say, Pete Incaviglia. Of course, over time, this gave way to the current, metaphorical gold glove, which doesn’t really do the job, because, as everyone knows, metaphors are not very heavy.
This is why Jose is so excited about the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Sure Paul is an ultra-libertarian who is convinced that everything would be great if only government did nothing, which is, of course, crazy, but Jose does think he is brining an important issues to the table by calling for a return to the gold standard.
By calling for every gold glove to be made out of actual gold, Paul will return sanity to the gold glove process and fight the absurd defensive inflation that has lead to Derek Jeter winning the award.
Be honest, doesn’t that make a lot more sense than just having so-called “gold gloves” that float freely against foreign currency backed up by nothing?
3. The other big news in Red Sox nation is that Curt Euro has resigned a one year deal with the Red Sox that will pay him $8 million plus as much as five million in incentives tied to performance and his ability to report to camp in shape. In fact, he can get $2 million just for showing up to camp at weight.
If this works, Jose imagines we will see a proliferation of diet plans wherein you give a contractor $2 million and they give it back only if you meet weight targets. In honor of Curt, they’re going to call it the Mouth Speech Diet.
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. The euphoria is finally wearing off.
Jose’s blood pressure is down, the adrenalin in his blood has thinned to watery broth and the pleasant fog that has cloaked and soothed him for lo these many months is finally lifting.
Yes, the ecstasy of winning the 2004 World Series has at long last dissipated.
Thank God we won another one. Now Jose can be assured of another three years of low-level elation.
But in all seriousness, Jose is no longer constantly giddy, and the benign sense that all is well with the world is gradually giving way to the melancholy that comes every year at this time as surely as the leaves glide to the ground.
It really is better this way. Ecstasy, it turns out gets boring eventually. (Note: No, it doesn’t.) Pain. Now that’s the ticket. Pain and ennui, ennui and pain, those are the rich loam in which decent writing germinates and blooms.
Strangely enough it was last night, as Jose strolled the streets of Denver, that the melancholy descended. One would imagine that the sight of so much Rockies NL Champion merchandise would start the endorphins flowing, but it was not to be. No he could not even muster the energy to make a bankruptcy joke to a guy he met named Jack Clark. There are lots of good things going on, but none of them could counter the little slip of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket.
The paper was marked 11/14/2005. Exactly two years ago to the day yesterday, how odd. How odd it is that two years after the occasion, Jose would find this little reminder of the last time he had certainty in his life. Without going into what the paper represented (note: no, it was sadly not a lottery ticket), it was the seeming guarantee of a clear path in Jose’s life, it was the phone ringing with his calling at the other end, it was the lead blocker opening that seam for him to sprint though. But soon after that date, too soon, Jose saw his future, then so neatly laid out, disintegrate as surely and as painfully as Andy Yount’s at a graveyard so long ago. Yount’s future was shattered by glass and Jose’s by red tape, different, yet so, so the same.
And then came the uncertainty. Who was Jose? Who was he going to be? It is frightening, this uncertainty. Just ask Alex Rodriguez. He was brave. He chose uncertainty. He dove headfirst into the churn, but then made a horrifying discovery. He didn’t much care for it. It turns out that he did not understand that uncertainty is, well, uncertain. While Rodriguez left the trail clear and true to go off into the brush, he somehow failed to grasp that there might be snakes there. Rodriquez chose the uncertain path confident that it would lead to a certain outcome, but as soon as it turned that first dark corner, he got scared and ran back to the safe embrace of Steinbrenner Inc and their $275 to $300 million arms.
What a shame. What Alex doesn’t understand is that certainty secure and comfortable though it is, is boring. And even worse, it is limiting. Jose lost the certainty of his calling, but after the initial anxiety, he has embraced it. He can do anything; he can be anything. And he will be.
Alex Rodriguez, by contrast, will know exactly who and what he is the moment he signs this deal. He will be a Yankee; he will be a Hall-of-Famer; he will even be the greatest player of all time. But that’s not all. He will also be unloved, forever made to somehow look small by inferior teammates with superior shadows.
It is a good choice, perhaps, for the weak, for the cautious, for poor, lonely Alex, but not for Jose. Jose is made of sterner stuff. Jose welcomes the uncertainty. He embraces the stress, and the anxiety and the… Opportunity?
So let the melancholy come, let it sound smooth and dark like Scottish rock. Let is crash to the earth in sheets. Jose is ready; Jose is intoxicated by the melancholy. And unlike Alex Rodriguez, he is not afraid
2. Congratulations to Kevin Youkilis for winning a gold glove for his errorless season at first.
Now, a lot of you may not know why they give out gold gloves to the best defenders. You probably think that it is symbolism, that because gold is valuable they give it to the best fielders as a way of honoring them. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. If that were the case they would give them platinum gloves, as platinum is more valuable than gold.
No, what the gold glove is actually about is equity. The original concept of the gold glove was that it would create more parity by burdening the best fielders with snazzy, but painfully heavy and inflexible gloves made literally out of gold. By forcing Willie Mays to play with a gold glove, you could level the playing field between him and say, Pete Incaviglia. Of course, over time, this gave way to the current, metaphorical gold glove, which doesn’t really do the job, because, as everyone knows, metaphors are not very heavy.
This is why Jose is so excited about the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Sure Paul is an ultra-libertarian who is convinced that everything would be great if only government did nothing, which is, of course, crazy, but Jose does think he is brining an important issues to the table by calling for a return to the gold standard.
By calling for every gold glove to be made out of actual gold, Paul will return sanity to the gold glove process and fight the absurd defensive inflation that has lead to Derek Jeter winning the award.
Be honest, doesn’t that make a lot more sense than just having so-called “gold gloves” that float freely against foreign currency backed up by nothing?
3. The other big news in Red Sox nation is that Curt Euro has resigned a one year deal with the Red Sox that will pay him $8 million plus as much as five million in incentives tied to performance and his ability to report to camp in shape. In fact, he can get $2 million just for showing up to camp at weight.
If this works, Jose imagines we will see a proliferation of diet plans wherein you give a contractor $2 million and they give it back only if you meet weight targets. In honor of Curt, they’re going to call it the Mouth Speech Diet.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
Thursday, September 27
Twins in the Pen
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Does Jonathan Papelbon have an identical twin? Jose knows he has a brother Josh who is in the minors, but they’re not twins. Do they look a lot alike maybe?
The reason Jose asks is that he’s got a really great idea—the Red Sox should focus on developing relief pitchers who are identical twins. Yes, Jose knows that even though twins share the same genetic code they are not the same people and that just because one brother is a standout closer does not mean that his twin will be, but that is irrelevant. You only need one twin who can pitch and one who can sit on the bench and be identical for Jose’s strategy to pan out.
Jose was at Tuesday’s game when Papelbon came in with two out in the eighth and got the final out on a first pitch pop up. The Sox added a few runs in the bottom of the eighth, so Papelbon was done for the night and Brian Corey came in to pitch. Corey was awful, he eventually got out of the inning, but not before yielding two runs and a ton of hard hit balls. Jose started hyperventilating at the thought that the A’s might some how make it a game and Papelbon would already be done for the evening. And that’s when it hit him. Like an apple falling before Newton or Archimedes hanging out in the tub, Jose had a moment of pure and profound vision and understanding—twins!
Imagine for a moment, if Jonathan Papelbon had a twin in the bullpen, let’s call him Demosthenes Papelbon. And let us imagine that Demosthenes was not a good pitcher. Let us even say that he was Toby Borland bad. Sure, Jonathan would be out of the game, but if the Red Sox needed him in the ninth, he could simply change uniforms and enter pretending to be his brother Demosthenes Papelbon. The DNA is the same, so how could anyone prove anything? This could even allow the Red Sox to play righty-lefty-righty in certain situations.
Jose has no idea why he never thought of this before. Twins have been used to great effect in other sports. Tiki and Ronde Barber have both been stars in the NFL, and referee Earl Hebner suspiciously replaced his twin brother Dave in a Hulk Hogan-Andre The Giant match up in 1988 thereby ensuring a win for Andre.
And with the steady increase of the numbers of twins born in recent years, why shouldn’t this be a strategy? And what about conjoined twins would they count as one or two players on the field? They could cover more ground couldn’t they. Okay, Jose is now addressing issues posed by a Greg Kinnear movie. He will stop this silliness.
2. Congratulations to the New York Yankees on clinching the American League Wild Card. You must have had a very nice time spraying champagne all over each other. Sure, you and your fans were critical of the Red Sox for celebrating the wild card like they’d, you know, won something in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but that’s fine. It’s not like hypocrisy is reserved for U.S. Senators or anything.
In fact, Jose would like to salute you by paraphrasing a quote uttered by President John F. Kennedy when meeting a group of Nobel Laureates. Kennedy said, though he is quoted a few different ways by different sources “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Thus, in the spirit of your wild card celebration, Jose offers this toast to the New York Yankees.
Last night was the most extraordinary collection of alcohol that had ever been gathered in the Yankee clubhouse with the possible exception of when Mickey Mantle drank alone.
3. Baseball metaphors are great. They work for sex (getting to second base) they work for politics (a terrific speech is sometimes called “hitting a home run”), so why can’t they work for urination?
Small bladders are the curse of the Melendez bloodline. Jose, for instance, has the bladder of a nine-month pregnant woman. If he could change anything about his body, it would be the size of his bladder. Ergo, when Jose and his brother Sam go to a game together, there are likely going to be a few bathroom breaks. Which is why Tuesday’s game was so extraordinary. Jose only went once during the game, which is solid for a game where he had two beers pregame but none during the contest. But Sam, Sam performed the astonishing feat of going an entire game without going to the bathroom. From first pitch to last out, he maintained his poise, declaring only after the game was complete “Sam has pitched a no-hitter.”
This prompted some debate about whether this was really a no-hitter. Certainly there were some similarities. He did not talk about it in the middle for fear of jinxing it, and it probably provoked some anxiety by the ninth, but was it really a no hitter? Jose says yes. Whatever else it was, it was a grand achievement and deserves to be in the Urination Hall-of-Fame in Flushing, Queens (Note: Thanks Simpsons). What it was not, however, was a perfect game. After debating whether a perfect game would be not even thinking about urinating through nine innings, we concluded that the analogy seemed inadequate and too psychological. Ultimately, the achievement must be about what the body does regardless of the stresses on the psyche. In baseball a perfect game is no less perfect if the pitcher was nervous about blowing it.
Thus, we settled on defining a perfect game as not going to the bathroom from the moment one leaves home or work, until the moment one steps back into the safety of one’s home bathroom. It is rare, it is difficult and I suspect that there has not been one in Fenway Park history.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Does Jonathan Papelbon have an identical twin? Jose knows he has a brother Josh who is in the minors, but they’re not twins. Do they look a lot alike maybe?
The reason Jose asks is that he’s got a really great idea—the Red Sox should focus on developing relief pitchers who are identical twins. Yes, Jose knows that even though twins share the same genetic code they are not the same people and that just because one brother is a standout closer does not mean that his twin will be, but that is irrelevant. You only need one twin who can pitch and one who can sit on the bench and be identical for Jose’s strategy to pan out.
Jose was at Tuesday’s game when Papelbon came in with two out in the eighth and got the final out on a first pitch pop up. The Sox added a few runs in the bottom of the eighth, so Papelbon was done for the night and Brian Corey came in to pitch. Corey was awful, he eventually got out of the inning, but not before yielding two runs and a ton of hard hit balls. Jose started hyperventilating at the thought that the A’s might some how make it a game and Papelbon would already be done for the evening. And that’s when it hit him. Like an apple falling before Newton or Archimedes hanging out in the tub, Jose had a moment of pure and profound vision and understanding—twins!
Imagine for a moment, if Jonathan Papelbon had a twin in the bullpen, let’s call him Demosthenes Papelbon. And let us imagine that Demosthenes was not a good pitcher. Let us even say that he was Toby Borland bad. Sure, Jonathan would be out of the game, but if the Red Sox needed him in the ninth, he could simply change uniforms and enter pretending to be his brother Demosthenes Papelbon. The DNA is the same, so how could anyone prove anything? This could even allow the Red Sox to play righty-lefty-righty in certain situations.
Jose has no idea why he never thought of this before. Twins have been used to great effect in other sports. Tiki and Ronde Barber have both been stars in the NFL, and referee Earl Hebner suspiciously replaced his twin brother Dave in a Hulk Hogan-Andre The Giant match up in 1988 thereby ensuring a win for Andre.
And with the steady increase of the numbers of twins born in recent years, why shouldn’t this be a strategy? And what about conjoined twins would they count as one or two players on the field? They could cover more ground couldn’t they. Okay, Jose is now addressing issues posed by a Greg Kinnear movie. He will stop this silliness.
2. Congratulations to the New York Yankees on clinching the American League Wild Card. You must have had a very nice time spraying champagne all over each other. Sure, you and your fans were critical of the Red Sox for celebrating the wild card like they’d, you know, won something in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but that’s fine. It’s not like hypocrisy is reserved for U.S. Senators or anything.
In fact, Jose would like to salute you by paraphrasing a quote uttered by President John F. Kennedy when meeting a group of Nobel Laureates. Kennedy said, though he is quoted a few different ways by different sources “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Thus, in the spirit of your wild card celebration, Jose offers this toast to the New York Yankees.
Last night was the most extraordinary collection of alcohol that had ever been gathered in the Yankee clubhouse with the possible exception of when Mickey Mantle drank alone.
3. Baseball metaphors are great. They work for sex (getting to second base) they work for politics (a terrific speech is sometimes called “hitting a home run”), so why can’t they work for urination?
Small bladders are the curse of the Melendez bloodline. Jose, for instance, has the bladder of a nine-month pregnant woman. If he could change anything about his body, it would be the size of his bladder. Ergo, when Jose and his brother Sam go to a game together, there are likely going to be a few bathroom breaks. Which is why Tuesday’s game was so extraordinary. Jose only went once during the game, which is solid for a game where he had two beers pregame but none during the contest. But Sam, Sam performed the astonishing feat of going an entire game without going to the bathroom. From first pitch to last out, he maintained his poise, declaring only after the game was complete “Sam has pitched a no-hitter.”
This prompted some debate about whether this was really a no-hitter. Certainly there were some similarities. He did not talk about it in the middle for fear of jinxing it, and it probably provoked some anxiety by the ninth, but was it really a no hitter? Jose says yes. Whatever else it was, it was a grand achievement and deserves to be in the Urination Hall-of-Fame in Flushing, Queens (Note: Thanks Simpsons). What it was not, however, was a perfect game. After debating whether a perfect game would be not even thinking about urinating through nine innings, we concluded that the analogy seemed inadequate and too psychological. Ultimately, the achievement must be about what the body does regardless of the stresses on the psyche. In baseball a perfect game is no less perfect if the pitcher was nervous about blowing it.
Thus, we settled on defining a perfect game as not going to the bathroom from the moment one leaves home or work, until the moment one steps back into the safety of one’s home bathroom. It is rare, it is difficult and I suspect that there has not been one in Fenway Park history.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Friday, April 27
Blood and Lies
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1.In the finest tradition of the late great “Big” John Studd, who offered $15,000 cash to anyone who could body slam him (note: and Andre the Giant could), Curt Euro has offered $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove that that his legendary sock is not dripping in the savory blood of victory.
Of course, Euro has a hedge. Rather than simply offering the money to anyone who can prove him wrong, he has demanded that anyone who dares to test the sock put up $1 million of his own money. As exceedingly few people have $1 million to spare, it neutralizes all but the richest among us from taking the challenge.
But someone should take it. Some brave soul should toss his chips on the felt, because we know the reason that Curt made his hedge, is that he doesn’t want anyone to call his bluff. He knows, Jose knows, you know, that it isn’t blood on that sock, that it can’t be blood on that sock. We know, because it has proven time and again. In the World Series with the Phillies, with the Diamondbacks, with the Red Sox, we have seen, we have acquired empirical evidence, that Curt Euro does not have so much as a drop of blood in his veins—all he’s got is ice water. So if fluids were seeping from his foot onto that sock, they would be clear, not that ghastly shade of red. Unless, maybe the ice water in Curt’s veins is mixed with red crystal light. That would explain everything.
2. The evidence was right there. As Jose perused Dan Shaughnessy’s column this morning, it jumped out of him, springing out of the written page like Doc Gooden out of rehab. And sure enough, there it was. Fabrication. Like Mike Barnacle before him, like Patricia Smith, and Jason Blair, he was writing fiction and calling it fact. Like so many Seth Mnookin article subjects, there was old Danny Shaughnessy making things up in the name of a better story.
That’s Dan Shaughnessy for you. This is the man who loves to lie.
Got one of those kids in your neighborhood who likes to tell stories about wolves coming over the hill when there are no wolves in site? That’s Shaughnessy when it comes to lying. Rick Pitino called it being disingenuous and advocated doing it all the time.
“I am a man of my word,” said Pitino, clearly lying. (Note: He did not say that.)
Pitino would love Shaughnessy. The old man from Groton is lying in the morning, he’s lying at night. He’s lying, lying, lying.
If the Globe would allow him to do what he wants to do Shaughnessy would make James Frey look like Abe Lincoln.
Remember a few weeks ago when Shaughnessy printed emails to Curt Euro’s Web site from shut in sycophants? At the end of the piece, long after you’d probably stopped reading, he admitted it was all made up.
Remember the “Curse of the Bambino?” Fiction.
The Globe wouldn’t let him lie earlier this week, so he went into a lesbian chat room and pretended to be a Wellesley co-ed exploring her sexuality.
Then that evening he wrote someone else’s name and social security number down and ordered a few credit cards.
The Globe finally let him lie again this morning, but what they didn’t know was that he’d spent last night lying to his wife about what had happened to the $20 in her wallet.
Full disclosure here: Everything above was made up. None of it happened. But it is perhaps only a slight exaggeration.
These are absolute facts: Dan Shaughnessy told no fewer than eight lies in his column this morning. He has gotten into the habit of writing long fictional columns that start with vaguely plausible claims and then get progressively more absurd, before ending with a disclaimer that it the story is wholly or partly fictional.
So if he can do it why can’t Jose? Why can’t Jose publish out and out lies and then have a cute little disclaimer like this at the end that confesses, and thereby absolves, his sins? Why can’t Jose imitate the form, and it some cases the exact words of a Dan Shaughnessy column and use the words against him? Not sure if something in this piece is original? It’s probably not. Heck, you can assume it’s almost entirely Shaughnessy’s words… except for the parts talking about how much of a liar he is. Just check out the piece in the Globe. You’ll see what’s the same and what’s different.
He is Dan Shaughnessy. He is the man who loves to lie.
3. Remember the last Friday night the Red Sox played the Yankees? Sure you do. The Yankees were all excited having completed a shocking two out comeback to upend the Cleveland Indians and came surging into Fenway ready to bust some heads and break some hearts.
Do you know what has happened since then? The Yankees have lost. They have lost, and lost and lost some more, dropping six straight games to fall to 8-12, last in the American League East, behind the Red Sox, behind Toronto, behind Baltimore, behind Tampa Bay, and probably even behind the Washington Senators who do not, technically speaking, exist.
“There’s going to be panic soon if the winning doesn’t start,” traitor Johnny Damon told the Associated Press.
Thankfully, Jose has some advice on what to do in the event of panic. Jose saw a documentary on it. Should the Yankees lose three more this weekend, or even two, they should, as a team, retreat into a giant sealed “panic room.” Inside the panic room, they will be safe from all of the dangers that have troubled them. There is no mound, which prevents bad pitching, no need to whiz perilous throws across the diamond and even the pernicious George Steinbrenner cannot get in.
Of course, the documentary revealed other, new dangers that lurk in the panic room, such as gas being pumped in the room in order to force evacuation. Given Jason Giambi’s legendary “HGH farts” this seems like a distinct risk. (Note: Also, they don’t call them the “Bronx Bombers” for nothing.) And other dangers persist. Can anyone stand being locked in a room with A-Rod? Stuck in a room, will Derek Jeter insist on playing seven minutes of heaven? How will Roger Clemens ever come back to save them if they are locked in what is, for all intents and purposes, a vault?
No, New York Yankees, you can panic all you want, but you cannot run from your fate. Try all you want, but like Oedipus before you, you cannot escape your destiny, though hard as it may be to believe, after this weekend, you will feel like old Oedipus caught off easy. All he had to deal with was patricide and mother f*cking and a bunch of furies hounding him. You, on the other hand, will have to deal with an 8.5 game deficit and an angry, demented George Steinbrenner.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1.In the finest tradition of the late great “Big” John Studd, who offered $15,000 cash to anyone who could body slam him (note: and Andre the Giant could), Curt Euro has offered $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove that that his legendary sock is not dripping in the savory blood of victory.
Of course, Euro has a hedge. Rather than simply offering the money to anyone who can prove him wrong, he has demanded that anyone who dares to test the sock put up $1 million of his own money. As exceedingly few people have $1 million to spare, it neutralizes all but the richest among us from taking the challenge.
But someone should take it. Some brave soul should toss his chips on the felt, because we know the reason that Curt made his hedge, is that he doesn’t want anyone to call his bluff. He knows, Jose knows, you know, that it isn’t blood on that sock, that it can’t be blood on that sock. We know, because it has proven time and again. In the World Series with the Phillies, with the Diamondbacks, with the Red Sox, we have seen, we have acquired empirical evidence, that Curt Euro does not have so much as a drop of blood in his veins—all he’s got is ice water. So if fluids were seeping from his foot onto that sock, they would be clear, not that ghastly shade of red. Unless, maybe the ice water in Curt’s veins is mixed with red crystal light. That would explain everything.
2. The evidence was right there. As Jose perused Dan Shaughnessy’s column this morning, it jumped out of him, springing out of the written page like Doc Gooden out of rehab. And sure enough, there it was. Fabrication. Like Mike Barnacle before him, like Patricia Smith, and Jason Blair, he was writing fiction and calling it fact. Like so many Seth Mnookin article subjects, there was old Danny Shaughnessy making things up in the name of a better story.
That’s Dan Shaughnessy for you. This is the man who loves to lie.
Got one of those kids in your neighborhood who likes to tell stories about wolves coming over the hill when there are no wolves in site? That’s Shaughnessy when it comes to lying. Rick Pitino called it being disingenuous and advocated doing it all the time.
“I am a man of my word,” said Pitino, clearly lying. (Note: He did not say that.)
Pitino would love Shaughnessy. The old man from Groton is lying in the morning, he’s lying at night. He’s lying, lying, lying.
If the Globe would allow him to do what he wants to do Shaughnessy would make James Frey look like Abe Lincoln.
Remember a few weeks ago when Shaughnessy printed emails to Curt Euro’s Web site from shut in sycophants? At the end of the piece, long after you’d probably stopped reading, he admitted it was all made up.
Remember the “Curse of the Bambino?” Fiction.
The Globe wouldn’t let him lie earlier this week, so he went into a lesbian chat room and pretended to be a Wellesley co-ed exploring her sexuality.
Then that evening he wrote someone else’s name and social security number down and ordered a few credit cards.
The Globe finally let him lie again this morning, but what they didn’t know was that he’d spent last night lying to his wife about what had happened to the $20 in her wallet.
Full disclosure here: Everything above was made up. None of it happened. But it is perhaps only a slight exaggeration.
These are absolute facts: Dan Shaughnessy told no fewer than eight lies in his column this morning. He has gotten into the habit of writing long fictional columns that start with vaguely plausible claims and then get progressively more absurd, before ending with a disclaimer that it the story is wholly or partly fictional.
So if he can do it why can’t Jose? Why can’t Jose publish out and out lies and then have a cute little disclaimer like this at the end that confesses, and thereby absolves, his sins? Why can’t Jose imitate the form, and it some cases the exact words of a Dan Shaughnessy column and use the words against him? Not sure if something in this piece is original? It’s probably not. Heck, you can assume it’s almost entirely Shaughnessy’s words… except for the parts talking about how much of a liar he is. Just check out the piece in the Globe. You’ll see what’s the same and what’s different.
He is Dan Shaughnessy. He is the man who loves to lie.
3. Remember the last Friday night the Red Sox played the Yankees? Sure you do. The Yankees were all excited having completed a shocking two out comeback to upend the Cleveland Indians and came surging into Fenway ready to bust some heads and break some hearts.
Do you know what has happened since then? The Yankees have lost. They have lost, and lost and lost some more, dropping six straight games to fall to 8-12, last in the American League East, behind the Red Sox, behind Toronto, behind Baltimore, behind Tampa Bay, and probably even behind the Washington Senators who do not, technically speaking, exist.
“There’s going to be panic soon if the winning doesn’t start,” traitor Johnny Damon told the Associated Press.
Thankfully, Jose has some advice on what to do in the event of panic. Jose saw a documentary on it. Should the Yankees lose three more this weekend, or even two, they should, as a team, retreat into a giant sealed “panic room.” Inside the panic room, they will be safe from all of the dangers that have troubled them. There is no mound, which prevents bad pitching, no need to whiz perilous throws across the diamond and even the pernicious George Steinbrenner cannot get in.
Of course, the documentary revealed other, new dangers that lurk in the panic room, such as gas being pumped in the room in order to force evacuation. Given Jason Giambi’s legendary “HGH farts” this seems like a distinct risk. (Note: Also, they don’t call them the “Bronx Bombers” for nothing.) And other dangers persist. Can anyone stand being locked in a room with A-Rod? Stuck in a room, will Derek Jeter insist on playing seven minutes of heaven? How will Roger Clemens ever come back to save them if they are locked in what is, for all intents and purposes, a vault?
No, New York Yankees, you can panic all you want, but you cannot run from your fate. Try all you want, but like Oedipus before you, you cannot escape your destiny, though hard as it may be to believe, after this weekend, you will feel like old Oedipus caught off easy. All he had to deal with was patricide and mother f*cking and a bunch of furies hounding him. You, on the other hand, will have to deal with an 8.5 game deficit and an angry, demented George Steinbrenner.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Monday, March 5
No News Is Good News
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO TO SPRING TRAINING.
1. Amazing. We are now five days into the start of spring training competition and Jose has nothing he want to write about. Usually it takes him a good week or two to get sick of the spring training story lines, but not this year. Nope, this year he was tired of them as soon as they started. Ennui, thy name is spring training.
Jose supposes this is a function of getting older. The same story lines cycle year after year. The names change, but the narratives are timeless. They fall into a few basic categories.
- The phenom: Some highly touted player has come over by trade, free agency or through the farm system, and everyone is a titter about what he might do. This year it’s Mr. Matsu, last year it was Josh Beckett. Earlier than them it was Pedro, Nomar and probably Harry Hooper if you go back far enough.
- The distraction: We know this one better than any of them. A player says something, or does something that suggests less than total happiness with the team or his role on it, and everyone in the press takes turns lacing into him. This year it’s Manny. The year before, it was Manny. The year before that it was Manny. The year before that it was M. Ramirez.
Of course Roger Clemens wearing his headphones while Butch Hobson tried to talk to them was way, way worse.
- Camp tranquility: This is the one reporters hate, the training camp where everything is peachy keen, no one is demanding a trade, complaining about playing time or going to jail. Jose, on the other hand, loves it, because it makes him think of the Sea of Tranquility on the moon, and he loves space stuff.
- The surprise: Someone comes out of nowhere to have monstrous spring training. Dave McCarty hits a million home runs, Cesar Crespo hits at all, Pat Lennon looks big and menacing, Conner Henry lights it up, that sort of thing. But you know what? They never pan out, ever. Yay Alberto Castillo has an OPS of 1.600 so far, but do you think he’d half any where close to half of that if he got to play in the regular season? Well, his career .OPS is under .600.
Still, we can dream.
- The injury: Nomar’s ankle, Jeff Frye’s knee. You know the story, the lineup is set and then someone has to go and blow out an important body part. Jose hates this story line. Still, if we have to go through this story this season, please let it my Doug Mirabelli’s arteries.
- The weird injury: A cousin of the injury, this category can be just as devastating to a team yet at least offers some comedic value. Famous examples, include Yankee killer Vaughn “Eshel-K” Eshelman lighting his hotel room (note: and hands) on fire while warming a baby bottle, Wade Boggs “falling from a moving car” and Darren Bragg being eaten by Rich Garces. Jose’s best bet for this year’s weird injury involves Eric Hinske and Polonium-210.
So those are the possible story lines. Take any Red Sox story in the paper and it will fit quite neatly into one of those narratives, which is why spring training is boring.
2. Okay Jose was wrong. He’s man enough to admit it. No, not about everyone hating Bob Stanley, but about there being no interesting story lines in spring training this year. There is one: Who will close?
With Jonathan Paplebon returning to the rotation, the closer spot is wide open, leading some to suggest that the Red Sox may well return to the “closer by committee” approach that was regarded as a disaster in 2003. And while it certainly didn’t go well, Jose would argue that the 2003 relief debacle was not really an indictment of the closer by committee concept, but rather evidence of poor process management. Come on, even the most dimwitted of bureaucrats knows that for a committee to work, you need a carefully constructed set of governance bylaws. Why couldn’t Grady see that?
So with that it mind, Jose has taken the liberty of drafting some bylaws that will establish a process to build consensus to reach conclusions on choosing a baseball pitcher for the purpose of concluding a given baseball contest.
1. Bullpen Coach Gary Tuck shall serve as Chairman of what shell henceforth be known as the Boston Latitudinal Organization With Senior Authority Verifying Endgame Situations, or BLOW SAVES for short.
1A. In the event the bullpen coach is incapacitated (note: or drunk), pitching coach John Farrell shall serves as Chairman Pro Tempore.
2. Each member of the “bullpen” so-called shall receive one vote towards the making of decisions.
2A. Left-handed pitchers, pitching an average of less than 1.0 innings per appearance, “LOOGY’s” so-called, shall receive only one-half of the vote.
2B. The Chairman shall receive one vote
2C. Any “reliever pitcher” so-called making a spot start shall lose the franchise for a period of five games.
2D. The bullpen catcher shall receive one vote, provided it is not Doug Mirabelli, who is too stupid to vote. Doug Mirabelli shall receive negative five votes.
3. With one out in the top half of the fourth inning, the chairman shall distribute an agenda for the day’s committee meeting to all members.
3A. Members shall have until there are two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning to submit agenda changes.
4. During the seventh inning stretch, the Chair shall call the committee to order, and, after a vote on the minutes of the previous meeting, which must be adopted by a three-fourths vote on a call of the roll, accept nominations for closer
4A. Any member of the bullpen may be nominated for closer for the day.
4A(i). Except Julian Tavarez
4A(ii). Ever.
4B. To be under consideration, said nominee must receive a second.
4B(i). Anyone calling out “third” will be shot.
4C. After nominations are completed, the chair shall hold a vote by a call of the role
4D. The closer shall be which ever candidate can garner a two-thirds majority of votes.
4E. In the event that no pitcher has received the requisite two-thirds, there shall be a second ballot.
4E(i). Balloting shall continue until one pitcher receives the two-thirds majority or Tito Eurona gets pissed and put Jonathan Paplebon back in the bullpen.
See. Structure. Order. Process. And it should all be clean and straightforward. Unless someone files a motion to reconsider. Then it gets messy.
3.Carl Pavano made a spring training start for the Yankees yesterday, and the Boston Globe gave it an honest to God three-fourths of a column inch. Why would they do that?
Isn’t it time that we stop pretending that Carl Pavano pitching is actually baseball news and put it in the appropriate category. Basically, it’s like a kid with cancer or a 95 year old man coming out to throw the first pitch. Sure, it’s nice that they get to go out there, but their bodies can’t handle the rigors of the game, and there’s no way they’re ever going to pitch in a major league game. You don’t see those stories in the paper, and thus Pavano shouldn’t be there either. They should just let the man through his one pitch from the front of the mound, have Jorge Posada come shake his hand and then have an usher escort him to a seat in section 26 row L.
I’m Jose Melendez and those are my KEYS TO SPRING TRAINING.
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