It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME
1. Interesting fact. Did you know that there are people on this good Earth, who have never seen a baseball game? Really. There are. But now there is one fewer.
Last night, Jose gave a Kosovar Albanian the greatest gift that an American can give a Kosovar, you know except for freedom from tyranny and pending, genocide, a chance to see a major league game. In 2005, while visiting Kosovo, Jose had tried to explain the great American game to this fellow, let’s call him Jack, but despite the innate Albanian love of all things American, he struggled to follow Jose’s lovingly hand scratched diagram.
“Where are the other eight men?” he asked when Jose explained that the batter was the only offensive player on the field. It’s all in the 2005 KEYS, you should read it. It’s excellent.
But a mere diagram is no substitute for the actual experience of attending a baseball game, much less a major league game at Fenway Park. As the emerald turf stretched before him as he emerged from the tunnel, Jack got that look that we’ve all seen in four year olds attending their first game, that we remember having ourselves when we first entered Fenway. But seeing it on a 33 year old man, dressed in what can best be described as a Miami Vice getup, is a different experience entirely. Wonder on the face of a child is beautiful, but common, wonder on the face of an adult, by contrast, is as rare as an inside the park homerun.
And that’s when the questions started.
Why is this guy going to the base? Why is a foul a strike sometimes but other times not a strike? How come the Japanese guy doesn’t pitch every day?
Some of the questions were easier to answer. Jose can explain the strike zone or the ground rule double, but others such as why Casey Blake was out after getting hit on the fingers on a swing, or why in God’s name we play Sweet Caroline in the eighth, reminded Jose that there are many things in this game that remain opaque, hidden beneath cloaks of time and behind walls of dusty tradition.
2. Jose loved Amelie Benjamin’s piece in today’s Globe Red Sox Notebook about the feud between Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia about who is slower. The centerpiece of the article was Youks claiming that his inside the park home run last night proved that he is faster. This, of course, proves nothing, as Steven Hawking could have rounded the bases on that ball.
Jose likes it because it reminds him of his feud his freshman year of high school with his friend Dan over who would be the slowest cross country runner not only on the team , but in Belmont High School history. Dan tried his best. Despite his long legs and lanky frame, he managed to run truly pathetic 10 minute miles throughout the 3.5 mile course. But Dan couldn’t compete with Jose. Jose’s inferior conditioning and general unwillingness to exert too much effort gave him the edge he needed to run 10 minute 30 second miles, allowing him to still be chugging away, long after Dan had crossed the tape. Jose’s specialty was lollygagging his way through the course and then going into the high kick down the final stretch, once everyone who had finished 10 minutes prior could see him, thereby demonstrating his grit and determination.
Only once, in the entire season, did Jose outpace another runner. Sadly, one competitor from Lexington out-slothed Jose running an astonishing five minutes behind him. Jose figures either the guy got hit by a bus while running or it was one of the Molina brothers, either way, Jose has to tip his cap.
3. Let’s be honest. As happy as we all were to see Mosey Nixon back at Fenway last night, to stand and shout and give him his due, weren’t we even happier that he was the guy up with the bases juiced in the eighth against a lefty? (Note: Yes, he did have a long sac fly rather than his more traditional “struck out swinging on a changeup away.”)
As hard as Nixon played for us, and as well as he played, there are few things in Red Sox history that Jose will miss less than watching Mosey face lefties in critical situations. On the list of things at bats has hated to watch over the years, it’s pretty much any Cesar Crespo at bat, Jim Rice with a runner on against a groundball pitcher in his last few years and then Mosey versus a lefty.
You’d think Wily Mo Pena would be making the list, with his remarkable ability to get so far ahead of an off speed pitch that he actually swings before the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, but even if it’s futile the chance that he might inadvertently start World War III by knocking the ball to Red Square makes Jose not hate his at bats.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, May 29
Wednesday, May 23
Jose's Secret Love
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose has a secret.
It’s not a secret that he readily admits to family and friends, and sometimes he even has a hard time admitting it to himself. Deep down, Jose sort of maybe possibly thinks that he might love the Celtics more than the Red Sox.
Jose would never have guessed it. He certainly doesn’t watch the Celtics religiously like he does the Red Sox, and he would never blog about them incessantly, and yet there is real evidence that he loves them more.
In 2002, when the Celtics made their return to the playoffs, Jose had more anxiety from their first round series with the Sixers than he did for any of the Red Sox playoff games. (Note: Which, as anyone who watched a Sox playoff game with Jose knows, is saying something.) Why would he have that kind of stress, that kind of agony, about a first round series by a team that was certain to not win a championship? Love. Sweet love.
When Jose was a kid, his father introduced him to Johnny Most’s coffee and nicotine ruined larynx, and at the age of five Jose listened to the Cs come back from down 3-1 to the hated 76ers and then beat Houston for title number 14. He changed his favorite color from red to green, because red may have been a Red Sox color, but it was a Sixers color too. He prayed for playoff wins and for unspeakable tragedy to befall Tree Rollins who had bitten his favorite player—a fiery, yet strangely incompetent two guard named Danny Ainge.
In recent years, Jose’s love has ebbed and flowed, and as the tragedy of decades wore on him, he went from being a fan who went to six games in the Szabo-Hamer era, to a fan who could not pull himself together to walk three blocks to the Garden for a game a single time last year.
And then came last night. The Lottery. You know how they say buying lottery tickets is not an investment strategy? Well, the same holds true for the NBA Draft Lottery—maybe you’ll get lucky, but if winning the lottery is your plan, you’re probably screwed. On the upside, it could have been worse than the Celts finishing with the fifth pick. Though Jose’s not sure how. The only lottery he can think of with a more ominous result was the one in the Shirley Jackson short story, though who wouldn’t enjoy seeing Danny Ainge in that Lottery today, waiting to see if he’ll be stoned to death.
Does Jose really love the Celtics more than the Red Sox? Maybe not, but all he know is that on a night when the Red Sox beat the Yankees and the Celtics lost the future, Jose’s heart bled. Perhaps the love of a sports team is more like loving one’s children than like loving a spouse. Even when one feels the joy of one child, it cannot drown out the pain of another. And while Jose felt the Red Sox joy last night, they weeping of his beloved Celtics is what sat, heavily, in his heart.
2. On cheerier subjects, the Yankee team’s brief try at metaphorical sobriety ended last night, as they fell off the wagon. The return to figurative alcoholism was due largely to Mike Mussina throwing 85 mph fastballs with the obvious difficulty of an alcoholic handing a shot of Jack to a pal while waiting for his seltzer with a twist. Say what you want about amphetamines in baseball, they are clearly not a problem for Moose.
But while drugs are not the problem with Yankee pitching they may be the problem with Yankee bats. In his story today, barbiturates,” the Yankees have an even bigger problem, as barbiturates are central nervous system depressants that “produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to anesthesia. Some are also used as anticonvulsants ,” Not exactly the thing to get bats hopping. On the other hand, it kind of makes sense. These Yankees have indeed showed symptoms ranging from mild sedation to anesthesia, yet George Steinbrenner has, somehow, been prevented from convulsing thus far.
Poor Yankees. They can’t pitch, they can’t hit and they can’t even medicate properly.
3. In other news, Manny is still Manny, Julian Tavarez is still crazy and Alex Rodriguez is still an *sshole.
The evidence? Manny popped out of his slump last night with a three run homer in the first, Tavarez was wearing shower shoes with David Ortiz’s face on them, and Alex Rodriguez was throwing elbows at Dustin Pedroia on a most dubious slide.
Basically, Rodriguez slid hard in to second as part of an effort to break up a double play. Fine. But when he popped up he headed in an entirely different direction, lofting an elbow at Pedroia’s nether regions. After watching it again on tape, the diminutive Pedroia complained to umpire Joe West.
The incident is, of course, the latest in a series of Rodriguez missteps designed to demonstrate hard-nosed play. The most famous of these, his slap during Game 6 of the ALCS, made him look less hard-nosed and more like a lady in the midst of a catfight. This is a recurring trend, as last night’s play featured him trying a little too hard to come in contact with another person's genitals. Jose is not being homophobic not at all. He just thinks it is wrong to try to grope someone under the cover “playing tough ball.” If Dustin Pedroia had been a woman it would have been just as wrong. Ultimately, the play, rather than making him look tough, made him appear weak, pathetic, and more than a little creepy.
Tonight, Jose fully expects Alex to continue this sort of behavior by attempting to break up a double play by calling Pedroia names like “whore” and “bitch” and if that doesn’t work, by scratching him and pulling his hair.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose has a secret.
It’s not a secret that he readily admits to family and friends, and sometimes he even has a hard time admitting it to himself. Deep down, Jose sort of maybe possibly thinks that he might love the Celtics more than the Red Sox.
Jose would never have guessed it. He certainly doesn’t watch the Celtics religiously like he does the Red Sox, and he would never blog about them incessantly, and yet there is real evidence that he loves them more.
In 2002, when the Celtics made their return to the playoffs, Jose had more anxiety from their first round series with the Sixers than he did for any of the Red Sox playoff games. (Note: Which, as anyone who watched a Sox playoff game with Jose knows, is saying something.) Why would he have that kind of stress, that kind of agony, about a first round series by a team that was certain to not win a championship? Love. Sweet love.
When Jose was a kid, his father introduced him to Johnny Most’s coffee and nicotine ruined larynx, and at the age of five Jose listened to the Cs come back from down 3-1 to the hated 76ers and then beat Houston for title number 14. He changed his favorite color from red to green, because red may have been a Red Sox color, but it was a Sixers color too. He prayed for playoff wins and for unspeakable tragedy to befall Tree Rollins who had bitten his favorite player—a fiery, yet strangely incompetent two guard named Danny Ainge.
In recent years, Jose’s love has ebbed and flowed, and as the tragedy of decades wore on him, he went from being a fan who went to six games in the Szabo-Hamer era, to a fan who could not pull himself together to walk three blocks to the Garden for a game a single time last year.
And then came last night. The Lottery. You know how they say buying lottery tickets is not an investment strategy? Well, the same holds true for the NBA Draft Lottery—maybe you’ll get lucky, but if winning the lottery is your plan, you’re probably screwed. On the upside, it could have been worse than the Celts finishing with the fifth pick. Though Jose’s not sure how. The only lottery he can think of with a more ominous result was the one in the Shirley Jackson short story, though who wouldn’t enjoy seeing Danny Ainge in that Lottery today, waiting to see if he’ll be stoned to death.
Does Jose really love the Celtics more than the Red Sox? Maybe not, but all he know is that on a night when the Red Sox beat the Yankees and the Celtics lost the future, Jose’s heart bled. Perhaps the love of a sports team is more like loving one’s children than like loving a spouse. Even when one feels the joy of one child, it cannot drown out the pain of another. And while Jose felt the Red Sox joy last night, they weeping of his beloved Celtics is what sat, heavily, in his heart.
2. On cheerier subjects, the Yankee team’s brief try at metaphorical sobriety ended last night, as they fell off the wagon. The return to figurative alcoholism was due largely to Mike Mussina throwing 85 mph fastballs with the obvious difficulty of an alcoholic handing a shot of Jack to a pal while waiting for his seltzer with a twist. Say what you want about amphetamines in baseball, they are clearly not a problem for Moose.
But while drugs are not the problem with Yankee pitching they may be the problem with Yankee bats. In his story today, barbiturates,” the Yankees have an even bigger problem, as barbiturates are central nervous system depressants that “produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to anesthesia. Some are also used as anticonvulsants ,” Not exactly the thing to get bats hopping. On the other hand, it kind of makes sense. These Yankees have indeed showed symptoms ranging from mild sedation to anesthesia, yet George Steinbrenner has, somehow, been prevented from convulsing thus far.
Poor Yankees. They can’t pitch, they can’t hit and they can’t even medicate properly.
3. In other news, Manny is still Manny, Julian Tavarez is still crazy and Alex Rodriguez is still an *sshole.
The evidence? Manny popped out of his slump last night with a three run homer in the first, Tavarez was wearing shower shoes with David Ortiz’s face on them, and Alex Rodriguez was throwing elbows at Dustin Pedroia on a most dubious slide.
Basically, Rodriguez slid hard in to second as part of an effort to break up a double play. Fine. But when he popped up he headed in an entirely different direction, lofting an elbow at Pedroia’s nether regions. After watching it again on tape, the diminutive Pedroia complained to umpire Joe West.
The incident is, of course, the latest in a series of Rodriguez missteps designed to demonstrate hard-nosed play. The most famous of these, his slap during Game 6 of the ALCS, made him look less hard-nosed and more like a lady in the midst of a catfight. This is a recurring trend, as last night’s play featured him trying a little too hard to come in contact with another person's genitals. Jose is not being homophobic not at all. He just thinks it is wrong to try to grope someone under the cover “playing tough ball.” If Dustin Pedroia had been a woman it would have been just as wrong. Ultimately, the play, rather than making him look tough, made him appear weak, pathetic, and more than a little creepy.
Tonight, Jose fully expects Alex to continue this sort of behavior by attempting to break up a double play by calling Pedroia names like “whore” and “bitch” and if that doesn’t work, by scratching him and pulling his hair.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, May 22
12 Easy Steps
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. In his New York Post column today, George King compared the streaking Yankees (note: they’ve won two in a row!) to a drunk struggling to make it through his first days of sobriety, constantly reminding himself that the goal is not to be sober forever, but simply to “make it through the day.” If this analogy were correct, Jose would declare that the relapse is coming any day now, and that the men in pinstripes will, very soon, find themselves once again passed out in a Bronx gutter, their mouths bloodied, their wallets missing and stinking of Rubinoff Vodka, cheap Kyrgyz perfume and failure.
But Jose does not accept the analogy. The Yankees are nothing like an alcoholic slogging timidly towards a better life. If they were, they would be following the twelve steps, and they decidedly are not. Just look.
1. Admitting that they are powerless over bad baseball—that their lives had become unmanageable.
Do you remember any Yankee suggesting that they weren’t “better than this?” Or that the team was unmanageable? They have a manger right there.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity.
They’ve got the great Power in Georgie Porgie Steinbrenner, but Jose is pretty sure restoration is not typically what he does with sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to the care ofGod as they understood Him.
Money does not count as God. Sorry Roger.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves.
Yeah. Not the most reflective bunch. Think Johnny Damon is going to give up skanks, Derek Jeter is going to give up looking in the mirror, Jason Giambi is going to give up HGH or Jorge Posada is going to give up being a little bitch any time soon?
5. Admitted to God, to themselves, and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongs.
Note to Yankees: Your agent does not count as a human being.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of charachter.
See step 4.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove their shortcomings.
Humility, not really at a premium in the Bronx.
8. Made a list of all persons they had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Have all of the women in Boston with the now unfashionable Damon shirts gotten that apology call yet? Has Balki Arroyo gotten a call from A-Rod apologizing for striking him? Has Doug Mientkiewiecz returned the World Series ball?
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Come on, this is the same as step 8.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when they were wrong promptly admitted it. Trying to release a steroid riddled Giambi six years after you signed him, when he had stopped producing is not prompt. You were wrong sure, but not prompt in admitting it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out. Signing Carl Everett would be a huge move towards step, he knows exactly what God wants.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, they tried to carry this message to bad baseball players, and to practice these principles in all their affairs.
Jose eagerly anticipates the Yankees intervention for the Kansas City Royals, where they will gather together the 15 remaining Royals fans, each of whom will explain how the Royals have hurt them.
So, as you can see, even if the Yankees are indeed like alcoholics, they are not exactly skipping down the 12 steps to recovery.
No, if anything, the Yankees remind Jose of the patients in the De Niro/Williams film Awakenings. In the movie, patients suffering from sleeping sickness who have been catatonic for years, suddenly regain consciousness when given a drug called L. Dopa. But here’s the catch: They don’t stay conoscious. No matter how much the dosage is increased, the patients cannot remain permanently lucid and return to their vegetative state. There is no noble struggling against personal vice for these New York Yankees, only brief awakenings followed yet again, inevitably, by a return to unfathomable lethargy.
2. Jose noticed a lot of empty seats in the rain soaked final innings of last Saturday’s nightcap drubbing at the hand of the Braves—a lot. And for that Jose has a message.
For shame. For shame. FOR SHAAAAAAAMMMMMMEEEE.
You shame yourself, and you disgust Jose. You claim to be true Red Sox fans, the best baseball fans in the world and yet you are deterred by a 14 run deficit and driving rain? Pathetic.
Do you know how many people have told Jose that they missed the Mother’s Day miracle because they left after the eighth inning? They are even worse.
A real fan never leaves early no matter the situation. A fire in the stands? Tough it out, you’re allowed to bring in a bottle of water now. An earthquake? Like that didn’t happen every time Rich Garces ran in from the bullpen anyway? A nuclear disaster? Well, going home isn’t really going to help, now is it?
Jose didn’t even leave early during Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, or as he prefers to call it “the worst night of his life.” No, real fans never give up, they never leave early. They do, however, occasionally forget that they have tickets and miss a game entirely. For instance, it turns out Jose had tickets to the Mother’s Day game, but didn’t realize it. Whoops!
But this is what they call a “good problem,” like too much pitching. Jose has so many tickets to so many games, that he can afford to occasionally forget a game all together. So for those of you who rant and rave about your inability to get any tickets, kindly remember Jose lighting his gas grill with unused tickets while you suck it.
3. For the first time in many moons, the Celtics will draw more interest tonight than a Red Sox-Yankees game, as the not-so-greats gather in Secaucus, New Jersey for the NBA Draft Lottery.
While the Celtics have the potential to rapidly turn around their ailing franchise by landing the first or second pick, Jose is deeply concerned for two reasons. First, as a religious Mormon who is philosophically opposed to gambling, Jose sort expects Celtics GM Danny Ainge to opt out and accept the fifth pick in order to be faithful to his values. Second, it can’t be good that Tommy Heinson, the Celtics representative at the lottery keeps saying “I hope I win those lifetime Red Sox season tickets.”
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
But Jose does not accept the analogy. The Yankees are nothing like an alcoholic slogging timidly towards a better life. If they were, they would be following the twelve steps, and they decidedly are not. Just look.
1. Admitting that they are powerless over bad baseball—that their lives had become unmanageable.
Do you remember any Yankee suggesting that they weren’t “better than this?” Or that the team was unmanageable? They have a manger right there.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity.
They’ve got the great Power in Georgie Porgie Steinbrenner, but Jose is pretty sure restoration is not typically what he does with sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to the care ofGod as they understood Him.
Money does not count as God. Sorry Roger.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves.
Yeah. Not the most reflective bunch. Think Johnny Damon is going to give up skanks, Derek Jeter is going to give up looking in the mirror, Jason Giambi is going to give up HGH or Jorge Posada is going to give up being a little bitch any time soon?
5. Admitted to God, to themselves, and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongs.
Note to Yankees: Your agent does not count as a human being.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of charachter.
See step 4.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove their shortcomings.
Humility, not really at a premium in the Bronx.
8. Made a list of all persons they had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Have all of the women in Boston with the now unfashionable Damon shirts gotten that apology call yet? Has Balki Arroyo gotten a call from A-Rod apologizing for striking him? Has Doug Mientkiewiecz returned the World Series ball?
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Come on, this is the same as step 8.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when they were wrong promptly admitted it. Trying to release a steroid riddled Giambi six years after you signed him, when he had stopped producing is not prompt. You were wrong sure, but not prompt in admitting it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out. Signing Carl Everett would be a huge move towards step, he knows exactly what God wants.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, they tried to carry this message to bad baseball players, and to practice these principles in all their affairs.
Jose eagerly anticipates the Yankees intervention for the Kansas City Royals, where they will gather together the 15 remaining Royals fans, each of whom will explain how the Royals have hurt them.
So, as you can see, even if the Yankees are indeed like alcoholics, they are not exactly skipping down the 12 steps to recovery.
No, if anything, the Yankees remind Jose of the patients in the De Niro/Williams film Awakenings. In the movie, patients suffering from sleeping sickness who have been catatonic for years, suddenly regain consciousness when given a drug called L. Dopa. But here’s the catch: They don’t stay conoscious. No matter how much the dosage is increased, the patients cannot remain permanently lucid and return to their vegetative state. There is no noble struggling against personal vice for these New York Yankees, only brief awakenings followed yet again, inevitably, by a return to unfathomable lethargy.
2. Jose noticed a lot of empty seats in the rain soaked final innings of last Saturday’s nightcap drubbing at the hand of the Braves—a lot. And for that Jose has a message.
For shame. For shame. FOR SHAAAAAAAMMMMMMEEEE.
You shame yourself, and you disgust Jose. You claim to be true Red Sox fans, the best baseball fans in the world and yet you are deterred by a 14 run deficit and driving rain? Pathetic.
Do you know how many people have told Jose that they missed the Mother’s Day miracle because they left after the eighth inning? They are even worse.
A real fan never leaves early no matter the situation. A fire in the stands? Tough it out, you’re allowed to bring in a bottle of water now. An earthquake? Like that didn’t happen every time Rich Garces ran in from the bullpen anyway? A nuclear disaster? Well, going home isn’t really going to help, now is it?
Jose didn’t even leave early during Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, or as he prefers to call it “the worst night of his life.” No, real fans never give up, they never leave early. They do, however, occasionally forget that they have tickets and miss a game entirely. For instance, it turns out Jose had tickets to the Mother’s Day game, but didn’t realize it. Whoops!
But this is what they call a “good problem,” like too much pitching. Jose has so many tickets to so many games, that he can afford to occasionally forget a game all together. So for those of you who rant and rave about your inability to get any tickets, kindly remember Jose lighting his gas grill with unused tickets while you suck it.
3. For the first time in many moons, the Celtics will draw more interest tonight than a Red Sox-Yankees game, as the not-so-greats gather in Secaucus, New Jersey for the NBA Draft Lottery.
While the Celtics have the potential to rapidly turn around their ailing franchise by landing the first or second pick, Jose is deeply concerned for two reasons. First, as a religious Mormon who is philosophically opposed to gambling, Jose sort expects Celtics GM Danny Ainge to opt out and accept the fifth pick in order to be faithful to his values. Second, it can’t be good that Tommy Heinson, the Celtics representative at the lottery keeps saying “I hope I win those lifetime Red Sox season tickets.”
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Monday, May 21
Be Precautious
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. While Jose mentions politics in the KEYS from time to time in order to make a funny point funnier or a salient point…ummm… salienter, Jose has, as a rule stayed away from the most controversial issues of the day. Today that changes as Jose addresses—abortion. (Note: Gasp.)
Why would Jose take the risk of jumping directly into the middle of one of the most polarizing issues in American society today? Comments. Jose would like to get some more comments on this blog, and short of attacking Pride and Prejudice or Bob Stanley, he can’t think of any better way to do it then by tackling the abortion issue. Besides, the door was opened this morning when conservative/Red Sox blogger Dean Barnett took a crack at the abortion issues in today’s Boston Globe.
In the column, Barnett argued that even without believing in the Creator, pro-life is the only moral position one can have on abortion. His argument can be boiled down to one simple, logical fallacy. “Because we don't know where life begins, the only logical thing to do is to err on the side of caution -- the side of life. In other words, because an abortion might take an innocent life, it should be avoided. It should also be illegal in most cases.”
While Barnett declines to say so, he is applying the famed “precautionary principle” to abortion. The precautionary principle dictates that if the consequences of an action are not scientifically certain, one who might act should err on the side of caution and refrain. In other words, unless one is 100% certain that doing something will not cause irreparable harm, don’t do it. It is the case for inaction.
The irony of Barnett using the precautionary principle is that conservatives typically hate it. (Note: And rightly so.) Most often it is used to advocate for environmental controls to prevent global warming or to battle against the use of agricultural biotechnology. It is also, of course, insane. If it is even a tiny bit possible an action could cause harm, you shouldn’t act? What if you know that inaction will cause harm?
Allow Jose to illustrate the absurdity with a number of hilarious baseball examples.
In Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, Grady Little, lacking certainty that his relief staff would be effective, chose not to bring in Mike Timlin, even though he had certainty that Pedro Martinez was tired. He chose the known danger over the hypothetical risk of danger, with predictable results.
In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, John McNamara failed to remove Bill Buckner from the game, choosing the certainty of playing with a hobbled first baseman over the uncertainty of putting in Dave Stapleton. But wait… maybe that’s an issue of him not applying the precautionary principle? Maybe since he had uncertainty about whether Buckner could scoop a ground ball, putting Stapleton in would have been the right act?
Ah…Jose gets the problem now. The precautionary principle is stupid. It can be played either way. You can use it to justify inaction unless one is 100% certain that action will cause no harm (note: see frankenfoods, abortion, Grady and Pedro) or if you prefer you can use it to demand action unless you are 100% certain that not acting will cause no harm (note: see global warming, pretty much any pinch hitting situation in history.) Since there is precious little certainty in this world, you can use it to argue either side of any issue. As the Red Stripe beer spokesman might say, “Hooray pointlessness!”
What the precautionary principle is, at the end of the day, is a cute philosophical mask for a value-based decision that one wishes to make anyway. McNamara made the evaluation, incorrectly mind you, that having Buckner out there for last out was worth the risk that his injury would yield disaster. Grady left Pedro in because his baseball values told him to leave in a gassed “best pitcher” rather than go to an inferior fresh pitcher. And Barnett advocated the pro-life position because his values dictate that a risk, however small, that a cluster of cells a few week old is a person, is more important than a risk of physical or psychological harm, or any other consequence for the woman . All of those decisions are fine. They are wrong, but they are perfectly good values based decisions. But it is every bit as absurd for Barnett to claim that some pseudo-scientific moral calculus validates his belief as it is for McNamara or Grady to do so. They all hold their positions because of what they believe, not because of scientific evidence.
All of human endeavor is about weighing values and risks and making the best decisions in light of imperfect information. It is certainly what baseball is about, and it is just as certainly what public policy is about. So let’s weigh the pros and cons of the hit and run with two men on or of abortion or the death penalty, but let’s not rely on the precautionary principle as some pseudoscientific basis for our own values, be they moral or sabermetric.
2. The Red Sox head in to New York this week to take on a struggling Yankees team that has lost more pitchers than Crate and Barrel during a shoplifters' convention.
It is also a Yankees club that is considering trying to void Jason Giambi’s contract, now that Giambi, after many years and a grand jury leak, admitted to using “stuff.” Jose can understand how the Yankees would feel misled. After all, when they signed Giambi, they had no idea he was a stuff user, unlike say, Steve Howe, whose problem putting “other stuff” up his nose was legendary.
In related news, the Yankees announced that they will no longer allow Oreos in the clubhouse, particularly “double stuff” Oreos.
While coming clean about his stuff abuse, Giambi also appeared to be unrepentant about other enhancements.
“It’s a lot better with the new orthotics,” boasted Giambi to the New York Post, predicting that his new performance enhancing devices will lead to a turn around. Whether the Yankees will try to use these orthotics as additional grounds to invalidate Giambi’s contract is unknown. What is known is that they do not plan to validate the contract of Alex Rodriguez for his lip implants.
3. Javier Lopez came in for a struggling Brendan Donnelley in the sixth yesterday and got yet another double play. As SoSHer Steve Brady points out, that gives him eight double plays in 24.2 innings with the Red Sox since last year. That is downright absurd. And it gets more absurd. If you count the double plays he was involved in while masquerading as catcher Javier Lopez last year, he’s got 85.
Seriously, he is so good at turning double plays that Jose’s heard that sometimes he walks a man just to set up a double play. Other times, after a strike out he’ll run up and tag the guy in the on deck circle. It doesn’t count, of course, but Jose appreciates the enthusiasm.
Moreover, Jose can’t confirm it, but he’s pretty sure Lopez stared alongside William Shatner in the 1997 film Double Play, which rottentomatoes.com describes as “The Prince and the Pauper meets The Parent Trap, which is, ironically, exactly how The New York Times described the last Yankees-Royals series.
Okay, that was completely all over the place but the important thing is that Javier Lopez got some well-deserved love, and maybe, just maybe, moved one step closer towards not being known as “the other Javier Lopez,” or even worse “the guy Jose keeps calling Javier Vasquez by mistake.”
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. While Jose mentions politics in the KEYS from time to time in order to make a funny point funnier or a salient point…ummm… salienter, Jose has, as a rule stayed away from the most controversial issues of the day. Today that changes as Jose addresses—abortion. (Note: Gasp.)
Why would Jose take the risk of jumping directly into the middle of one of the most polarizing issues in American society today? Comments. Jose would like to get some more comments on this blog, and short of attacking Pride and Prejudice or Bob Stanley, he can’t think of any better way to do it then by tackling the abortion issue. Besides, the door was opened this morning when conservative/Red Sox blogger Dean Barnett took a crack at the abortion issues in today’s Boston Globe.
In the column, Barnett argued that even without believing in the Creator, pro-life is the only moral position one can have on abortion. His argument can be boiled down to one simple, logical fallacy. “Because we don't know where life begins, the only logical thing to do is to err on the side of caution -- the side of life. In other words, because an abortion might take an innocent life, it should be avoided. It should also be illegal in most cases.”
While Barnett declines to say so, he is applying the famed “precautionary principle” to abortion. The precautionary principle dictates that if the consequences of an action are not scientifically certain, one who might act should err on the side of caution and refrain. In other words, unless one is 100% certain that doing something will not cause irreparable harm, don’t do it. It is the case for inaction.
The irony of Barnett using the precautionary principle is that conservatives typically hate it. (Note: And rightly so.) Most often it is used to advocate for environmental controls to prevent global warming or to battle against the use of agricultural biotechnology. It is also, of course, insane. If it is even a tiny bit possible an action could cause harm, you shouldn’t act? What if you know that inaction will cause harm?
Allow Jose to illustrate the absurdity with a number of hilarious baseball examples.
In Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, Grady Little, lacking certainty that his relief staff would be effective, chose not to bring in Mike Timlin, even though he had certainty that Pedro Martinez was tired. He chose the known danger over the hypothetical risk of danger, with predictable results.
In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, John McNamara failed to remove Bill Buckner from the game, choosing the certainty of playing with a hobbled first baseman over the uncertainty of putting in Dave Stapleton. But wait… maybe that’s an issue of him not applying the precautionary principle? Maybe since he had uncertainty about whether Buckner could scoop a ground ball, putting Stapleton in would have been the right act?
Ah…Jose gets the problem now. The precautionary principle is stupid. It can be played either way. You can use it to justify inaction unless one is 100% certain that action will cause no harm (note: see frankenfoods, abortion, Grady and Pedro) or if you prefer you can use it to demand action unless you are 100% certain that not acting will cause no harm (note: see global warming, pretty much any pinch hitting situation in history.) Since there is precious little certainty in this world, you can use it to argue either side of any issue. As the Red Stripe beer spokesman might say, “Hooray pointlessness!”
What the precautionary principle is, at the end of the day, is a cute philosophical mask for a value-based decision that one wishes to make anyway. McNamara made the evaluation, incorrectly mind you, that having Buckner out there for last out was worth the risk that his injury would yield disaster. Grady left Pedro in because his baseball values told him to leave in a gassed “best pitcher” rather than go to an inferior fresh pitcher. And Barnett advocated the pro-life position because his values dictate that a risk, however small, that a cluster of cells a few week old is a person, is more important than a risk of physical or psychological harm, or any other consequence for the woman . All of those decisions are fine. They are wrong, but they are perfectly good values based decisions. But it is every bit as absurd for Barnett to claim that some pseudo-scientific moral calculus validates his belief as it is for McNamara or Grady to do so. They all hold their positions because of what they believe, not because of scientific evidence.
All of human endeavor is about weighing values and risks and making the best decisions in light of imperfect information. It is certainly what baseball is about, and it is just as certainly what public policy is about. So let’s weigh the pros and cons of the hit and run with two men on or of abortion or the death penalty, but let’s not rely on the precautionary principle as some pseudoscientific basis for our own values, be they moral or sabermetric.
2. The Red Sox head in to New York this week to take on a struggling Yankees team that has lost more pitchers than Crate and Barrel during a shoplifters' convention.
It is also a Yankees club that is considering trying to void Jason Giambi’s contract, now that Giambi, after many years and a grand jury leak, admitted to using “stuff.” Jose can understand how the Yankees would feel misled. After all, when they signed Giambi, they had no idea he was a stuff user, unlike say, Steve Howe, whose problem putting “other stuff” up his nose was legendary.
In related news, the Yankees announced that they will no longer allow Oreos in the clubhouse, particularly “double stuff” Oreos.
While coming clean about his stuff abuse, Giambi also appeared to be unrepentant about other enhancements.
“It’s a lot better with the new orthotics,” boasted Giambi to the New York Post, predicting that his new performance enhancing devices will lead to a turn around. Whether the Yankees will try to use these orthotics as additional grounds to invalidate Giambi’s contract is unknown. What is known is that they do not plan to validate the contract of Alex Rodriguez for his lip implants.
3. Javier Lopez came in for a struggling Brendan Donnelley in the sixth yesterday and got yet another double play. As SoSHer Steve Brady points out, that gives him eight double plays in 24.2 innings with the Red Sox since last year. That is downright absurd. And it gets more absurd. If you count the double plays he was involved in while masquerading as catcher Javier Lopez last year, he’s got 85.
Seriously, he is so good at turning double plays that Jose’s heard that sometimes he walks a man just to set up a double play. Other times, after a strike out he’ll run up and tag the guy in the on deck circle. It doesn’t count, of course, but Jose appreciates the enthusiasm.
Moreover, Jose can’t confirm it, but he’s pretty sure Lopez stared alongside William Shatner in the 1997 film Double Play, which rottentomatoes.com describes as “The Prince and the Pauper meets The Parent Trap, which is, ironically, exactly how The New York Times described the last Yankees-Royals series.
Okay, that was completely all over the place but the important thing is that Javier Lopez got some well-deserved love, and maybe, just maybe, moved one step closer towards not being known as “the other Javier Lopez,” or even worse “the guy Jose keeps calling Javier Vasquez by mistake.”
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Friday, May 18
Like Paul Bunyan on Crack
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Meet Julian Tavarez, folk hero.
You may remember him from such roles as Rudy Seanez’s Siamese twin and guy who couldn’t get anyone out #2.
Who’d have thunk it? Somehow, by sheer force of his quirks and eccentricities, Tavarez has become the most strangely beloved pitcher in Boston since Rich Garces. One could sort of understand the love for Garces though. It was simply; he was fat. Who doesn’t love fat guys? Garces let every Red Sox fan know that it was talent, not physical conditioning keeping him out of the majors. Any Sox fan who saw Garces could proudly walk down the street and say “I’m not too fat to be an elite athlete.” And for that we were grateful and thus showered him with love.
So why is it that we have grown to love the lanky Tavarez, who lacks the jolly flab that made El Guapo so appealing? Jose thinks that is because just as El Guapo let all of us couch potatoes know we weren’t too fat for the majors, Tavarez lets the mentally ill among us know that we are not too crazy to play in the majors. His NWO-style pointing at first base on ground balls, his bizarre obsession with Daisuke Matsuzaka, his tendency to punch people in the face for no particular reason, the fact that he actually relates to Manny Ramirez, all mark him as a certifiable lunatic who if he wasn’t playing baseball, would be in a cabin somewhere in the woods gathering jars of urine for resale to Moises Alou as a hand toughener.
Or maybe it’s not that he’s crazy, maybe it is that he is a sort of everyman. He eats at Burger King before going to work just like us, he punches walls when he gets mad just like us and he says that if he hadn’t gone into his current line of work, he would have been an adult film star just like us.
Or maybe, just maybe, we like him because he has started to get outs. Free from the uncertainty of bullpen life. Tavarez has started to look like Derek Lowe, throwing the most leaden of sinkers for ground out after ground out, looking terrible from time to time, but also showing flashes of brilliance.
Nah… Jose likes him because he’s looney tunes.
2. Interleague play begins tonight with the Braves coming to town for a three game set. When interleague play first began it was kind of fun, as one would see the first meeting between teams in 90 years, or perhaps the first meeting ever, but as the years have worn on, the firsts have disappeared, and with them a fair amount of the excitement surrounding the games.
However, tonight the excitement returns. It would be enough that ER himself, Edgar Renteria makes his return to Boston. Heck that alone would be the biggest event since Jackie Guiterrez made his 1986 return to Boston in a Baltimore uniform, but there is much, much more. (Note: Jose cannot confirm that Guitierez ever played at Fenway in an O’s uniform, but let’s pretend.) Yes, tonight marks the return of Anthony “Buddy” Lerew to Fenway Park.
As you will recall, Lerew was a part owner of the Red Sox from 1978 to 1985. In 1983 he launched a coup to take over the team from Jean Yawkey and Haywood Sullivan. Unfortunately he forgot that the most important part of a coup is the “armed” part, thus his effort was blocked by an injunction and he lost later court challenges. Ultimately, Leroux sold his interest in the team.
What happened to him since then had been something of a mystery. He was known to have an ownership interest in the Suffolk Downs race track and to maintain involvement in a number of rehabilitation hospitals. It is the second element that is important today, as we learn that Lerew has apparently used advanced rehab technology to sculpt his body into the form of a much younger man and to rehabilitate the spelling of his last name from LeRoux to Lerew. Thus we come to this evening, when Buddy, as a starting pitcher for the hated natural rival Atlanta Braves, attempts to take an awful revenge against his former club.
3. Curt Euro’s six inning, two run, four walk, eight extra base hit performance last night was a stunning achievement. Jose can’t find records to prove it, but it may well have been the worst six inning two run pitching display in Major League history.
Jose vaguely remembers Steve Avery having an effort where he scattered 15-20 hits over six innings in 1998, but it can’t have been any worse than what we saw last night. Heck, there have only been a very small number of endeavors in all of human history that match the horrible execution AND the positive result of Curt Euro’s performance.
1. Meet Julian Tavarez, folk hero.
You may remember him from such roles as Rudy Seanez’s Siamese twin and guy who couldn’t get anyone out #2.
Who’d have thunk it? Somehow, by sheer force of his quirks and eccentricities, Tavarez has become the most strangely beloved pitcher in Boston since Rich Garces. One could sort of understand the love for Garces though. It was simply; he was fat. Who doesn’t love fat guys? Garces let every Red Sox fan know that it was talent, not physical conditioning keeping him out of the majors. Any Sox fan who saw Garces could proudly walk down the street and say “I’m not too fat to be an elite athlete.” And for that we were grateful and thus showered him with love.
So why is it that we have grown to love the lanky Tavarez, who lacks the jolly flab that made El Guapo so appealing? Jose thinks that is because just as El Guapo let all of us couch potatoes know we weren’t too fat for the majors, Tavarez lets the mentally ill among us know that we are not too crazy to play in the majors. His NWO-style pointing at first base on ground balls, his bizarre obsession with Daisuke Matsuzaka, his tendency to punch people in the face for no particular reason, the fact that he actually relates to Manny Ramirez, all mark him as a certifiable lunatic who if he wasn’t playing baseball, would be in a cabin somewhere in the woods gathering jars of urine for resale to Moises Alou as a hand toughener.
Or maybe it’s not that he’s crazy, maybe it is that he is a sort of everyman. He eats at Burger King before going to work just like us, he punches walls when he gets mad just like us and he says that if he hadn’t gone into his current line of work, he would have been an adult film star just like us.
Or maybe, just maybe, we like him because he has started to get outs. Free from the uncertainty of bullpen life. Tavarez has started to look like Derek Lowe, throwing the most leaden of sinkers for ground out after ground out, looking terrible from time to time, but also showing flashes of brilliance.
Nah… Jose likes him because he’s looney tunes.
2. Interleague play begins tonight with the Braves coming to town for a three game set. When interleague play first began it was kind of fun, as one would see the first meeting between teams in 90 years, or perhaps the first meeting ever, but as the years have worn on, the firsts have disappeared, and with them a fair amount of the excitement surrounding the games.
However, tonight the excitement returns. It would be enough that ER himself, Edgar Renteria makes his return to Boston. Heck that alone would be the biggest event since Jackie Guiterrez made his 1986 return to Boston in a Baltimore uniform, but there is much, much more. (Note: Jose cannot confirm that Guitierez ever played at Fenway in an O’s uniform, but let’s pretend.) Yes, tonight marks the return of Anthony “Buddy” Lerew to Fenway Park.
As you will recall, Lerew was a part owner of the Red Sox from 1978 to 1985. In 1983 he launched a coup to take over the team from Jean Yawkey and Haywood Sullivan. Unfortunately he forgot that the most important part of a coup is the “armed” part, thus his effort was blocked by an injunction and he lost later court challenges. Ultimately, Leroux sold his interest in the team.
What happened to him since then had been something of a mystery. He was known to have an ownership interest in the Suffolk Downs race track and to maintain involvement in a number of rehabilitation hospitals. It is the second element that is important today, as we learn that Lerew has apparently used advanced rehab technology to sculpt his body into the form of a much younger man and to rehabilitate the spelling of his last name from LeRoux to Lerew. Thus we come to this evening, when Buddy, as a starting pitcher for the hated natural rival Atlanta Braves, attempts to take an awful revenge against his former club.
3. Curt Euro’s six inning, two run, four walk, eight extra base hit performance last night was a stunning achievement. Jose can’t find records to prove it, but it may well have been the worst six inning two run pitching display in Major League history.
Jose vaguely remembers Steve Avery having an effort where he scattered 15-20 hits over six innings in 1998, but it can’t have been any worse than what we saw last night. Heck, there have only been a very small number of endeavors in all of human history that match the horrible execution AND the positive result of Curt Euro’s performance.
- Columbus discovers America—Guy think’s he’s sailing to India, totally screws up, finds continent.
- Discovery of penicillin— Genius leaves bread out ruining perfectly good bread, discovers antibiotics.
- Iraq war— War under false pretenses, managed by incompetents with no occupation plan, leads to blossoming of multi-cultural democracy in heart of world’s most volatile region.
And that’s about it. So we saw some history made last night. Jose can hardly wait for the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Thursday, May 17
A Little Light Blasphemy
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. With the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jose has been contemplating God and religion quite a bit lately and thinking about what we can do to make this a more godly country. Rev. Falwell focused his efforts at making America more Christ-like through traditional methods, such as rallying a political constituency for Christianity, identifying particular groups as sinners hateful to God, fighting integration, going on television, and suing Larry Flint, you know the sorts of things Christ himself might have done had be a self-righteous, egomaniacal bigot, rather than the Prince of Peace.
But Jose thinks Falwell’s approach was ineffective. Just look at our society. Conservative Christians are politically ascendant and yet decadence and sin remains. One cannot change the hearts of people simply by claiming political power. The culture itself must change first, and where better to start than with our national pastime—pornography. Wait… sorry… baseball. Baseball is the national pastime. Jose has come up with a few ideas to make the game godlier.
- Starters should work on one day of rest. If God had taken four days of rest before every one day of work, He never would have found time to fake dinosaur bones and bury them all over the place to amuse scientists.
- In the Protestant tradition, players shouldn’t have to rely on umpires, baseball’s priest class to tell them what the rulebook means. Players should be able to interpret baseball’s sacred texts themselves.
- No one should play rounders, the game from which baseball emerged, ever. When baseball emerged, it superseded rounders, making it, and all of its rules and traditions irrelevant.
- What part of the eighth commandment does Julio Lugo not understand? “Thou shall not steal.”
- Since abortions are morally wrong, the Kansas City Royals, must be ended.
- Baseball cards are graven images. Cards should just list the name of a player, his statistics and his favorite Bible verse.
- Why stop at playing God Bless America in the seventh inning stretch? We should have a hymn for each inning? Who wouldn’t want to hear “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” rather than “YMCA?”
- Be frank about the fact that the wave is a ritual designed to commemorate the parting of the Red Sea.
- Make Carl Everett commissioner.
2. In the first game of this afternoon’s double header, Julienned Tavarez goes up against Zach Miner. As the Red Sox try to solve the sophomore pitcher, Jose has some important scouting data that he needs to share with the team.
Based on Jose’s careful analysis, miner is an “8”, which mean’s he is vulnerable to any player whose number is 7 or lower. These include Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, Colonels, Generals and Marshalls. (Note: What’s Mike Marshall up to these days? Could we sign him for one game?) However, Miner absolutely destroys scouts, who number 9, which is why there is so little good data on him.
Another important note for the Red Sox is to focus on hitting, singles, doubles and triples tonight, because while Miner has many vulnerabilities, he is the only pitcher on the Detroit staff who automatically defuses bombs.
(Note: This KEY sponsored by the Stratego Society of America.)
3. Jose would like to apologize to anyone who had planned to attend last night’s cancelled game and is unable to attend today’s afternoon makeup. Jose did not get around to writing KEYS yesterday due to a combination of busyness, crankiness, and a general unwillingness to spent the day trying to come up with snarky yet safe jokes about the impact a finger injury will have on St. Josh a Beckett’s sex life.
What he forgot is that they can’t start a weekday game without KEYS any more than one can start a car without KEYS. Sure, Jose’s supposes they could have hot wired the game, to get it started, but then the steering column ends up being an unsightly mess of holes, and live wires, not unlikely the New York Yankees.
As a result, Jose is forcing himself to write KEYS today, even though he has nothing better to go on today than comparisons of baseball to popular board games and mild blasphemy. Well tough, if you want a game, this is what you’re stuck with.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, May 15
Jose’s Orgy of Self-Reflection Continues
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose isn’t sure why it never occurred to him before, but he has a lot in common with Manny Ramirez. Jose supposes that he never saw it because at the surface level the differences are so stark. Manny is a tower of lean muscle, Jose is a tub of jiggling goo. Manny is a millionaire, the only time Jose could call himself a millionaire was when he was carrying around Turkish Lira. Manny is one of the best, if not the best right handed hitters on the planet, Jose got cut from Little League and uninvited from his softball team. Manny is actually Latino, Jose pretends to be Latino. See, big visible differences.
And yet the overarching similarity has been there for a long time. For years, both of us have been trying desperately, futilely, to get out of Boston.
The Manny saga is well-known. It starts pretty much the day he arrived here in 2001 and has recurred annually ever since. You know the story, Manny says he’s sad and wants to leave, the team tries to release/trade him, they can’t get equal value, he stays and says he never wanted to leave.
Jose’s story is less well known. It begins in 1993, when a young Jose Melendez vowed to go away to college, such that he could experience a place other than Boston. But then along came BU with their “being the best school Jose got into” and their “offering Jose a lot of money” and here he stayed. That put the escape on hold for a few years, but once Jose graduated, he renewed his efforts, as he began the annual rite of applying for fellowships, grad school, State Department positions etc. that would get him out of town. And one by one, year after year, Jose would fall just short. If Manny has stayed in Boston because no one was willing to offer more than Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron for him, Jose has stayed in Boston because not even a Huff-Cameron fellowship has come his way.
But Jose’s similarity with Manny is deeper, more spiritual than simply wanting, for far too long, to flee the hub. The dirty little secret is that we both actually like it here, that we have thrived here. Manny has won a World Series and solidified his Hall-of-Fame credentials, Jose has done great things for the Commonwealth, built a great network of friends (note: a real network, not myspace) and made it to no fewer than 10 Sox games per year. Sure, we both rage and fume about the injustice of being stuck here, about the futility of our efforts to leave, but each time a deadline passes and he remains firmly inside 128, Jose is secretly a little relieved. And he suspects Manny is too.
Some day this will change. Some day, perhaps soon, Manny will leave these Red Sox and leave this city, and Jose will wander off to a new adventure, but from wherever in the world Jose lands, and regardless of whether Manny goes off to the Dominican, returns to Cleveland or visits China, we will both look back at the hub with a pining sadness, a genuine fondness for the city that made us the men we are.
2. In today’s Herald, Detroit designated hitter “Mr. Yankee” Gary Sheffield, offered Rob Bradford a new perspective on the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry from his spot in the Motor City, insights that revealed that while Sheffield’s bat may have slowed a bit, his brain is as sharp as ever.
For instance, when asked about the Yankees eight and one-half game deficit to the Red Sox, Sheffield displayed some of his famous mathematical prowess saying “When you’re eight games out, you have to make up 16 games.” Non-Euclidian geometry at its best right there or possibly algebraic topology. Who but Gary Sheffield could grasp that eight and 16 are the same? Maybe God, but that’s about it.
Sheffield also revealed his mastery of anatomy when he stated “Everybody has holes.” (Note: Sheffield may have learned this by studying tapes of his wife with rapper R. Kelly.)
The big slugger also appears to have picked up some automotive expertise in his time in Detroit, pointing out that for a motor to operate properly “It was just a matter of clicking on all cylinders.”
Unfortunately, while Sheffield did demonstrate formidable command of most areas of human knowledge, he proved himself to a have a very limited understanding of statecraft when the best idea he could offer on how to win in Iraq, was “You have to hope something drastic happens to get that to turn around.”
3. Tonight Tim Wakefield goes to the hill for the Red Sox, bringing with him his league leading 1.79 ERA and his floating, fluttering, batters stuttering metaphor for Jose’s life. He goes up against Detroit’s sophomore phenom Justin Verlander who brings an also impressive 2.83 ERA to the mound.
The question this matchup raises is: If Wakefield’s knuckleball is a metaphor for Jose’s life, for the life of whom is Veralnder’s signature pitch, his 100 mph fastball, a metaphor?
Let’s think about the qualities of Verlander’s fastball. It is absolutely filthy, no one likes to see it coming, it leaves people feeling angry and frustrated, it has real potential to injure and it gets hit hard in Boston.
Hmmm…. Jose’s got it. Justin Verlander’s fastball is a metaphor for the life of Bill Lambieer.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose isn’t sure why it never occurred to him before, but he has a lot in common with Manny Ramirez. Jose supposes that he never saw it because at the surface level the differences are so stark. Manny is a tower of lean muscle, Jose is a tub of jiggling goo. Manny is a millionaire, the only time Jose could call himself a millionaire was when he was carrying around Turkish Lira. Manny is one of the best, if not the best right handed hitters on the planet, Jose got cut from Little League and uninvited from his softball team. Manny is actually Latino, Jose pretends to be Latino. See, big visible differences.
And yet the overarching similarity has been there for a long time. For years, both of us have been trying desperately, futilely, to get out of Boston.
The Manny saga is well-known. It starts pretty much the day he arrived here in 2001 and has recurred annually ever since. You know the story, Manny says he’s sad and wants to leave, the team tries to release/trade him, they can’t get equal value, he stays and says he never wanted to leave.
Jose’s story is less well known. It begins in 1993, when a young Jose Melendez vowed to go away to college, such that he could experience a place other than Boston. But then along came BU with their “being the best school Jose got into” and their “offering Jose a lot of money” and here he stayed. That put the escape on hold for a few years, but once Jose graduated, he renewed his efforts, as he began the annual rite of applying for fellowships, grad school, State Department positions etc. that would get him out of town. And one by one, year after year, Jose would fall just short. If Manny has stayed in Boston because no one was willing to offer more than Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron for him, Jose has stayed in Boston because not even a Huff-Cameron fellowship has come his way.
But Jose’s similarity with Manny is deeper, more spiritual than simply wanting, for far too long, to flee the hub. The dirty little secret is that we both actually like it here, that we have thrived here. Manny has won a World Series and solidified his Hall-of-Fame credentials, Jose has done great things for the Commonwealth, built a great network of friends (note: a real network, not myspace) and made it to no fewer than 10 Sox games per year. Sure, we both rage and fume about the injustice of being stuck here, about the futility of our efforts to leave, but each time a deadline passes and he remains firmly inside 128, Jose is secretly a little relieved. And he suspects Manny is too.
Some day this will change. Some day, perhaps soon, Manny will leave these Red Sox and leave this city, and Jose will wander off to a new adventure, but from wherever in the world Jose lands, and regardless of whether Manny goes off to the Dominican, returns to Cleveland or visits China, we will both look back at the hub with a pining sadness, a genuine fondness for the city that made us the men we are.
2. In today’s Herald, Detroit designated hitter “Mr. Yankee” Gary Sheffield, offered Rob Bradford a new perspective on the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry from his spot in the Motor City, insights that revealed that while Sheffield’s bat may have slowed a bit, his brain is as sharp as ever.
For instance, when asked about the Yankees eight and one-half game deficit to the Red Sox, Sheffield displayed some of his famous mathematical prowess saying “When you’re eight games out, you have to make up 16 games.” Non-Euclidian geometry at its best right there or possibly algebraic topology. Who but Gary Sheffield could grasp that eight and 16 are the same? Maybe God, but that’s about it.
Sheffield also revealed his mastery of anatomy when he stated “Everybody has holes.” (Note: Sheffield may have learned this by studying tapes of his wife with rapper R. Kelly.)
The big slugger also appears to have picked up some automotive expertise in his time in Detroit, pointing out that for a motor to operate properly “It was just a matter of clicking on all cylinders.”
Unfortunately, while Sheffield did demonstrate formidable command of most areas of human knowledge, he proved himself to a have a very limited understanding of statecraft when the best idea he could offer on how to win in Iraq, was “You have to hope something drastic happens to get that to turn around.”
3. Tonight Tim Wakefield goes to the hill for the Red Sox, bringing with him his league leading 1.79 ERA and his floating, fluttering, batters stuttering metaphor for Jose’s life. He goes up against Detroit’s sophomore phenom Justin Verlander who brings an also impressive 2.83 ERA to the mound.
The question this matchup raises is: If Wakefield’s knuckleball is a metaphor for Jose’s life, for the life of whom is Veralnder’s signature pitch, his 100 mph fastball, a metaphor?
Let’s think about the qualities of Verlander’s fastball. It is absolutely filthy, no one likes to see it coming, it leaves people feeling angry and frustrated, it has real potential to injure and it gets hit hard in Boston.
Hmmm…. Jose’s got it. Justin Verlander’s fastball is a metaphor for the life of Bill Lambieer.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Monday, May 14
Life is like a...
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. With the stunning success of Friday’s “Life is a Knuckleball” KEY 1, easily the most popular KEY of the year, it has become clear to Jose that if he wants to keep the people engaged, he needs to ease up on the quippy one liners and rededicate himself to melodramatic schmaltz. After three years, Jose can at last see, that it is not the sinewy flesh of analysis that Red Sox fans crave, but the savory fat of emotion. Thus, rather than releasing another KESY book this year, Jose will instead focus his attention on a book of Mitch Alborn style life lessons (note: but not made up) entitled “Everything Jose Needed to Know, He Learned at Fenway.”
The book will be chock full o’ folksy stories illustrating valuable baseball-based life lessons such as “Never pull a pitcher who is dealing after 91 pitches with a shut out and a five run lead, just because some goober dropped a pop up with one out in the ninth.” If you apply that lesson to raising your kids, you know they’ll come out on the straight and narrow.
So, having exhausted the subject of how life is like a knuckleball, Jose will move on to a tale of how life is like the infield fly rule.
Jose has never really understood the infield fly rule. Well, that’s not exactly right. Sure, he understands it technically: If there is an infield pop up when there is a force at third, the batter is automatically out, with the purpose being to prevent easy double or triple plays. But Jose doesn’t understand it on an existential level. Would Sartre understand the infield fly rule? Would Camus?
There are lots of times in the game when a batter fails, grounding into a double play, for instance, and there is nothing protecting him from doing severe damage to his team there. There’s no infield grounder rule. Why is it that one kind of failure, a pop up, should have an offensive safety net strung tight beneath it, and another kind of failure, an easy grounder, should offer nothing but the hard ground three stories below?
Jose supposes that the infield fly rule is kind of like life. There are lots of errors one can make, lots of chances to fail, but the consequences of different kinds of failure aren’t necessarily the same. Why is it, for instance, that if one get fired for gross incompetence, there is not unemployment to cushion the blow, whereas if one gets fired because he is not longer of use, he gets government checks? In both cases there is a failure isn’t there? Unemployment fly rule, Jose supposes.
Or why is it, that if one cries going in for the first day of kindergarten his parents are caring and sympathetic, but if he starts bawling when he gets dropped off for his first day of college, he is a crybaby, to be scorned? Educational fly rule, it seems.
The simple fact is that as a society and as individuals, we are just like the Major Leagues. We place different values on different kinds of failure. For some we say, “tough break, let’s limit the damage” and for other’s we say, “that’s your own damn fault, now live with the consequences.”
And is that fair? Is it right? Is there good failure and bad failure? Deserving losers and undeserving losers? All Jose knows is that when he comes up to bat in the game of life, a base runner named work on first and a baserunner named family on second, and less than two of the life chances blown we call outs on the scoreboard, Jose will put a little uppercut in his swing. Because if he’s going to fail, he’s sure not going to ground into the double play of professional disappointment and personal immorality. He’ll risk popping it up, secure in the knowledge that the infield fly rule of life will limit the damage.
Tomorrow: How the slide step is like getting over the loss of a pet.
2. Long before the Red Sox made their dramatic six run, ninth inning comeback yesterday, starter St. Josh a Beckett left the game after four innings with what the Red Sox termed an “avulsion.” The popular theory in the press and the fan base is that by calling the pitcher’s injury an avulsion, the Red Sox were trying to make clear that this was not a recurrence of the blister problems that had sent him to the DL in year’s past. But has it occurred to anyone that the Red Sox might have used this strange medical term, not to accurately convey a lack of seriousness, but to hide a far graver injury?
Jose actually looked up avulsion on dictionary.com and do you know what it means? According to the American Heritage Dictionary entry it is “The forcible tearing away of a body part by trauma or surgery.” Very reassuring isn’t it? But Jose knows what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Wait, Jose just chose the direst, scariest possible definition for comic effect, and that’s not what it means in this case.”
Fair enough. Do you want the other definition? It’s “the sudden movement of soil from one property to another as a result of a flood or a shift in the course of a boundary stream.” Does that make you feel better? Do you like the idea that our star pitcher is literally being eroded by a shift in the course of a body of water?
No, the use of “avulsion” this strange new technical nomenclature in a world where other technical vocabulary like, ACL, labrum and contusion are used freely, signifies something far more sinister than a blister. Jose is convinced, convinced that either Beckett lost an entire finger out there yesterday, or that he is made out of sand. Either way, it’s bad news.
3. But enough looking backwards. The Detroit Tigers come to town tonight for the first of a four game set that will pit the two best teams in the American League against each other. The red hot Tigers come to the series winners of eight of their last ten. However, they will have to struggle through this series without relief ace Joel Zumaya who is out with an injury presumable sustained playing Dance Dance Revolution or one of those Nintendo Wii games. (Note: Jose knows Zumaya got hurt playing Guitar Hero II, but when are we going to start getting the rotator cuff injuries from the Wii, that’s what Jose really wants to see.)
The Tigers team that comes to Fenway tonight is, save for the addition of Mr. Yankee Gary Sheffield, the same team that bowed to the Cardinals in five games in the 2006 World Series. And that’s why, despite their formidable record and fearsome rotation, Jose has no fear. This is a team that lost a post season game where their opposition started Jeff Suppan without even having noted Suppan’s-bitch Roger Clemens as their starter. You can’t fear that, you just can’t.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. With the stunning success of Friday’s “Life is a Knuckleball” KEY 1, easily the most popular KEY of the year, it has become clear to Jose that if he wants to keep the people engaged, he needs to ease up on the quippy one liners and rededicate himself to melodramatic schmaltz. After three years, Jose can at last see, that it is not the sinewy flesh of analysis that Red Sox fans crave, but the savory fat of emotion. Thus, rather than releasing another KESY book this year, Jose will instead focus his attention on a book of Mitch Alborn style life lessons (note: but not made up) entitled “Everything Jose Needed to Know, He Learned at Fenway.”
The book will be chock full o’ folksy stories illustrating valuable baseball-based life lessons such as “Never pull a pitcher who is dealing after 91 pitches with a shut out and a five run lead, just because some goober dropped a pop up with one out in the ninth.” If you apply that lesson to raising your kids, you know they’ll come out on the straight and narrow.
So, having exhausted the subject of how life is like a knuckleball, Jose will move on to a tale of how life is like the infield fly rule.
Jose has never really understood the infield fly rule. Well, that’s not exactly right. Sure, he understands it technically: If there is an infield pop up when there is a force at third, the batter is automatically out, with the purpose being to prevent easy double or triple plays. But Jose doesn’t understand it on an existential level. Would Sartre understand the infield fly rule? Would Camus?
There are lots of times in the game when a batter fails, grounding into a double play, for instance, and there is nothing protecting him from doing severe damage to his team there. There’s no infield grounder rule. Why is it that one kind of failure, a pop up, should have an offensive safety net strung tight beneath it, and another kind of failure, an easy grounder, should offer nothing but the hard ground three stories below?
Jose supposes that the infield fly rule is kind of like life. There are lots of errors one can make, lots of chances to fail, but the consequences of different kinds of failure aren’t necessarily the same. Why is it, for instance, that if one get fired for gross incompetence, there is not unemployment to cushion the blow, whereas if one gets fired because he is not longer of use, he gets government checks? In both cases there is a failure isn’t there? Unemployment fly rule, Jose supposes.
Or why is it, that if one cries going in for the first day of kindergarten his parents are caring and sympathetic, but if he starts bawling when he gets dropped off for his first day of college, he is a crybaby, to be scorned? Educational fly rule, it seems.
The simple fact is that as a society and as individuals, we are just like the Major Leagues. We place different values on different kinds of failure. For some we say, “tough break, let’s limit the damage” and for other’s we say, “that’s your own damn fault, now live with the consequences.”
And is that fair? Is it right? Is there good failure and bad failure? Deserving losers and undeserving losers? All Jose knows is that when he comes up to bat in the game of life, a base runner named work on first and a baserunner named family on second, and less than two of the life chances blown we call outs on the scoreboard, Jose will put a little uppercut in his swing. Because if he’s going to fail, he’s sure not going to ground into the double play of professional disappointment and personal immorality. He’ll risk popping it up, secure in the knowledge that the infield fly rule of life will limit the damage.
Tomorrow: How the slide step is like getting over the loss of a pet.
2. Long before the Red Sox made their dramatic six run, ninth inning comeback yesterday, starter St. Josh a Beckett left the game after four innings with what the Red Sox termed an “avulsion.” The popular theory in the press and the fan base is that by calling the pitcher’s injury an avulsion, the Red Sox were trying to make clear that this was not a recurrence of the blister problems that had sent him to the DL in year’s past. But has it occurred to anyone that the Red Sox might have used this strange medical term, not to accurately convey a lack of seriousness, but to hide a far graver injury?
Jose actually looked up avulsion on dictionary.com and do you know what it means? According to the American Heritage Dictionary entry it is “The forcible tearing away of a body part by trauma or surgery.” Very reassuring isn’t it? But Jose knows what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Wait, Jose just chose the direst, scariest possible definition for comic effect, and that’s not what it means in this case.”
Fair enough. Do you want the other definition? It’s “the sudden movement of soil from one property to another as a result of a flood or a shift in the course of a boundary stream.” Does that make you feel better? Do you like the idea that our star pitcher is literally being eroded by a shift in the course of a body of water?
No, the use of “avulsion” this strange new technical nomenclature in a world where other technical vocabulary like, ACL, labrum and contusion are used freely, signifies something far more sinister than a blister. Jose is convinced, convinced that either Beckett lost an entire finger out there yesterday, or that he is made out of sand. Either way, it’s bad news.
3. But enough looking backwards. The Detroit Tigers come to town tonight for the first of a four game set that will pit the two best teams in the American League against each other. The red hot Tigers come to the series winners of eight of their last ten. However, they will have to struggle through this series without relief ace Joel Zumaya who is out with an injury presumable sustained playing Dance Dance Revolution or one of those Nintendo Wii games. (Note: Jose knows Zumaya got hurt playing Guitar Hero II, but when are we going to start getting the rotator cuff injuries from the Wii, that’s what Jose really wants to see.)
The Tigers team that comes to Fenway tonight is, save for the addition of Mr. Yankee Gary Sheffield, the same team that bowed to the Cardinals in five games in the 2006 World Series. And that’s why, despite their formidable record and fearsome rotation, Jose has no fear. This is a team that lost a post season game where their opposition started Jeff Suppan without even having noted Suppan’s-bitch Roger Clemens as their starter. You can’t fear that, you just can’t.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Friday, May 11
Jose Gets All Melodramatic
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose loves Tim Wakefield and Jose loves the knuckleball. Or more accurately, Jose loves Tim Wakefield because of the knuckleball. This is not a secret.
Time and time again, Jose has described how he became enamored of the knuckleball while watching one of the Niekro brothers on The Baseball Bunch. (Note: Isn’t it time for a new Baseball Bunch? Could Barry Bonds play the Johnny Bench role, teaching kids the fundamentals, like hitting, throwing and proper use of performance enhancing drugs? “Cream on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, clear on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays kids. But on Sunday you rest. That’s God’s time.) Jose has described his lifelong effort to throw knuckleball and how it has resulted in him throwing exactly two out of, perhaps 10,000 pitches thrown. Jose has even claimed that he likes the knuckleball because it is like magic. It is the baseball equivalent of having a 5’3’’ NBA player who is in the league solely on his ability to hit half court set shots. At least that’s why Jose thought he loved the knuckleball. But he has had a change of heart. He has, if you will, flip flopped or perhaps sandaled.
Jose loves the knuckleball, because it is a metaphor for life. maybe not for everyone’s life, but for Jose’s life. The thing about the knuckleball that is so extraordinary is that unlike other pitches, it cannot be controlled, only directed, managed. Tim Wakefield cannot force the knuckleball up or down in the zone. He cannot choose for it to be a strike or a ball. What he can do is affect how sharply it breaks by speeding it up or slowing it down. And time after time, he can repeat, with the greatest possible precision, the exact motions that have brought him, and other knuckleballers before him, optimal results. Sometimes the outcomes are excellent, and sometimes, like now or in his magical 1995 stretch, they are astonishingly good for lengthy stretches. At others, such as when he was left off the 1999 ALCS roster after he seemed capable of blowing a 98 run lead in Game 4 of the ALDS, nothing he does seems to matter.
This is how life goes for Jose. He keeps the fingernails of his being trimmed and filed to exactly 3mm, he goes out of the figurative pitching motion and does his best to make the little tweaks required to keep the knuckleballs of daily life breaking hard over the plate. Sometimes the results are wonderful. Sometimes the Jason Giambis of despair, the Derek Jeters of adversity swing and miss and look as foolish as jesters. Sometimes, even thought they swing and miss, the ball evades the catcher and sneaks to the back stop, as seemingly good fortune melts into bad. But other times, there is Aaron Boone. Other times, Jose does the best he can, rotates the horsehide of his being forward by exactly one-fourth of a rotation, and still, there is no break, no movement. Whether it is a gust of wind from the frozen north, a butterfly batting its wings in Malaysia or a fan sneezing in section 23, the knuckleball fails to knuckle, the good intentions yield bad results and the ball makes an abrupt about face into the bleachers and into the emotional void of failure.
Jose cannot control his life any more than Tim Wakefield can control his knuckleball. He can only put faith in the soundness of his actions, the purity of his intentions and know that when his wins and losses are counted up at the end of the season, his record will be a little above five hundred. No, he may not be extraordinary, but he will be effective, he will be valued and maybe, just maybe he will hit that hot streak, that mystical spot at just the right time, and he can do something truly legendary.
2. With Hideki Okajima’s latest scoreless inning last night, that man who was once known as “the other Japanese guy” is now well on his way to being known simply as “OK.”
In light of OK’s emergence as the best setup man in baseball, Jose would like to revive a long dead, failed product. Now, Jose is always looking for opportunities to revive failed products ranging from PB Max candy bars (note: if only Pedro Borbon would return) to new Coke (note: is Steve Howe dead?), but this one is special.
In the summer of 1994, a series of chain letters mysteriously began to spread through Boston and perhaps the country like Herpes Simplex II through Daytona Beach. These letters spoke of a mysterious beverage that had brought great good fortune to those who consumed it and grave misfortune to those who had not. This beverage was called OK Soda. But despite the incredibly illegal marketing idea, despite the cool 800 number where on could hear stories of the great powers of the alterna-beverage as well as bird calls, the product failed. Perhaps it was because cynical Generation Xers realized that OK was secretly a product of the Coca-Cola Corporation, or perhaps it was because it tasted like a mix of Mountain Dew, Orange Fanta (note: the American kind, not the good European kind) and day old Folger’s crystals. Either way, no one drank it.
But now that there is, at last, a credible spokesman, it is time for OK Soda to make a comeback. According to wikipedia, it can be duplicated by mixing ¼ orange soft drink,¾ semi-flat Coca-Cola a splash of Dr. Pepper or Sprite. Jose calls on all Fenway stand concessionaires to start making this concoction as tribute to OK, our left-handed life saver. Let us all join together when he enters the game, no matter the hardship, no matter the burden and raise our glasses and recite the OK Soda slogan: With Hideki Okajima in the game “Things are going to be OK.”
Official Soft Drink of the Boston Red Sox?
3. There was a brawl last night at the Boston Pops and it got Jose thinking. Jose thinks a lot about the differences between high culture, like the symphony or professional wrestling, and low culture like baseball or cockfighting, and he thinks they could learn some things from each other.
- You never hear orchestras talking about how they need a new publicly financed symphony hall to remain economically viable or how the seats are too small and uncomfortable for modern people. Why is that? Don’t they know that if an institution is important to a city they can get a free ride?
- Jose knows the brawl wasn’t among musicians but what if it had been? If a clarinetist got into a fight with a cellist, would the rest of the woodwinds have to get involved to defend their compatriot? Would it be a rallying moment leading to better woodwind play for the rest of the orchestral season?
- They should sing Sweet Caroline before the last song at the Symphony.
- Why no wave at the Symphony? Not during the good parts with the brass, but during the boring string solos?
- Do professional musicians ever refuse to talk to jerk music critics?
- Jose is always quick to condemn performance enhancing drugs in sports, but so many musicians throughout history have used drugs to enhance their performance. From Miles Davis and pot, to Yo-Yo Ma’s crystal meth habit. Should Jose be condemning them too?
- Given that the Boston Pops is basically the Boston Symphony Orchestra minus the best player in each instrumental section and plus someone worse in each section, why are they so celebrated? Isn’t it a little like taking the staring nine and top two pitchers away from the Red Sox, and bringing up 11 minor leaguers to fill in. Jose wouldn’t care how charming and cute the manager was, he still wouldn’t want to watch it.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Wednesday, May 9
Men of Cruelty
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Terry Eurona won his 300th game as Red Sox manager last night, and Jose is genuinely happy for him, and, in a real way, happy for America.
We live in an age where cruelty is rewarded, not only rewarded but revered. In a time when Bill Parcells is lionized for his efficient, professional meanness, when CEOs are praised to the hilt for the callousness of their layoffs, when “you’re fired” is a beloved catch phrase more than a statement of lives and families destroyed, it is refreshing to see one of the genuinely good people have such success.
Despite the constant clamoring among this fan base, among every fan base for men of cruelty, for old school Dick Williams, Bill Fitch, Bobby Knight types who will bludgeon and brutalize spoiled, athletes into humble submission, these men are wrong for this day and age. And Jose is glad. It is a sign of progress, when personal viciousness is no longer a virtue.
And thus, Tito Eurona, surprisingly enough, is a man of today, a modern man and a modern manager. When Tito took this job, he said something to the effect of “I’m a nice guy, and I don’t want this job if it means I have to stop being nice.” It was a good sound bite, it was a sign of decency, but what one didn’t know was that it was a management manifesto, and a sound manifesto at that.
Be nice.
Pretty simple, pretty good. Don’t be a push over, but don’t be a d*ck. Air grievances privately, rather than on the back page of the Herald. Treat players fairly. Only criticize constructively. Do not tear people down.
Tito has not only won, he has not only been nice, but he has won by being nice. And he’s done it 300 times.
2. Last Thursday, Jose attended the battle of Japan with one of Jose’s People, Empyreal Environs, who has somehow, in the just the last 10 years, reached the level of delusion required to write about every single Red sox game (Note: The correct amount of time for it to take is 27 years.). Think about this. She arrived in Boston at the height of the Steve Avery era, and yet still chose, CHOSE, to descend into the madness.
While the conversation throughout the evening was scintillating, as one might expect from a meeting of Boston’s two premiere Japanese American baseball minds, one subject of conversation stood out as particularly exceptional—when is it okay for a Red Sox fan to accept a Yankee autographed ball?
The impetus for this particular discussion was Empyreal’s story of the difficult choice a friend had (note: Jose thinks it was a friend and not a relative… or Empyreal herself… Jose spent much of the evening in a haze, as one tends to when the $101 million starter walks 800 batters) as to whether or not to accept a Yankee ball autographed by among others, legendary alcoholic and peeping tom Mickey Mantle, despite his being a Red sox fan.
It got Jose thinking. Would he accept a Mantle ball? No. What about a 1996 Yankee ball? Please. A Lou Gehrig ball? Is ALS contagious? (Note: No) What about a Ruth ball? Red Sox era yes, Yankee era no. Braves era, absolutely. An Andy Stankiewiecz ball? Tempting on an ironic level, but still no.
So Jose gave it a lot of thought and determined that there is only one Yankee ball he would ever want (Note: Aside from Jim Bouton.). Jose would accept, hell, Jose would pay for a ball signed by both Thurman Munson and Corey Lidle. There. He said it. It’s tasteless, but he said it. And it was funny, as plane crash jokes tend to be. Actually, Jose would like one ball even more than that. If he could get a Yankee ball signed by Thurman Munson, Corey Lidle and…
Nuts, Jose really wanted to put Jorge Posada in there. He hates Jorge Posada…weasel faced creep, but damn it, Jose simply cannot wish death in a plane crash on anyone. Too bad. It would have been funny too. Maybe if Munson and Lidle had died peacefully in their sleep, Jose could have joked about having Posada’s name on a ball with them, but a plane crash? That’s too tacky even for Jose… barely.
3. Curt Euro, shockingly, called out Barry Bonds yesterday for cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes and cheating at the great game of baseball.
He was unusual in being willing to call out Bonds in earnest and publicly when disturbingly few active players are willing to do so. That said, his statement lacked balance. While Euro did list all of the things that Bonds does cheat at, he utterly failed to list the many aspects of life wherein he has not cheated.
Consider the following:
• Bonds has not, as best we know cheated at cards.
• He has never performed Cheat, by the Clash at karaoke.
• He is not a “pumpkin eater.”
• Not a big fan of Cheetos. (Note: Wait… that’s Cheetah, not cheater?)
• Not technically a member of the Guerrero wrestling family (Motto: Cheat to Win.)
• Has never hit opposing player with a steel chair.
On the other hand, Jose is pretty sure he has a Jessie “The Body” Ventura inspired tattoo reading “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Terry Eurona won his 300th game as Red Sox manager last night, and Jose is genuinely happy for him, and, in a real way, happy for America.
We live in an age where cruelty is rewarded, not only rewarded but revered. In a time when Bill Parcells is lionized for his efficient, professional meanness, when CEOs are praised to the hilt for the callousness of their layoffs, when “you’re fired” is a beloved catch phrase more than a statement of lives and families destroyed, it is refreshing to see one of the genuinely good people have such success.
Despite the constant clamoring among this fan base, among every fan base for men of cruelty, for old school Dick Williams, Bill Fitch, Bobby Knight types who will bludgeon and brutalize spoiled, athletes into humble submission, these men are wrong for this day and age. And Jose is glad. It is a sign of progress, when personal viciousness is no longer a virtue.
And thus, Tito Eurona, surprisingly enough, is a man of today, a modern man and a modern manager. When Tito took this job, he said something to the effect of “I’m a nice guy, and I don’t want this job if it means I have to stop being nice.” It was a good sound bite, it was a sign of decency, but what one didn’t know was that it was a management manifesto, and a sound manifesto at that.
Be nice.
Pretty simple, pretty good. Don’t be a push over, but don’t be a d*ck. Air grievances privately, rather than on the back page of the Herald. Treat players fairly. Only criticize constructively. Do not tear people down.
Tito has not only won, he has not only been nice, but he has won by being nice. And he’s done it 300 times.
2. Last Thursday, Jose attended the battle of Japan with one of Jose’s People, Empyreal Environs, who has somehow, in the just the last 10 years, reached the level of delusion required to write about every single Red sox game (Note: The correct amount of time for it to take is 27 years.). Think about this. She arrived in Boston at the height of the Steve Avery era, and yet still chose, CHOSE, to descend into the madness.
While the conversation throughout the evening was scintillating, as one might expect from a meeting of Boston’s two premiere Japanese American baseball minds, one subject of conversation stood out as particularly exceptional—when is it okay for a Red Sox fan to accept a Yankee autographed ball?
The impetus for this particular discussion was Empyreal’s story of the difficult choice a friend had (note: Jose thinks it was a friend and not a relative… or Empyreal herself… Jose spent much of the evening in a haze, as one tends to when the $101 million starter walks 800 batters) as to whether or not to accept a Yankee ball autographed by among others, legendary alcoholic and peeping tom Mickey Mantle, despite his being a Red sox fan.
It got Jose thinking. Would he accept a Mantle ball? No. What about a 1996 Yankee ball? Please. A Lou Gehrig ball? Is ALS contagious? (Note: No) What about a Ruth ball? Red Sox era yes, Yankee era no. Braves era, absolutely. An Andy Stankiewiecz ball? Tempting on an ironic level, but still no.
So Jose gave it a lot of thought and determined that there is only one Yankee ball he would ever want (Note: Aside from Jim Bouton.). Jose would accept, hell, Jose would pay for a ball signed by both Thurman Munson and Corey Lidle. There. He said it. It’s tasteless, but he said it. And it was funny, as plane crash jokes tend to be. Actually, Jose would like one ball even more than that. If he could get a Yankee ball signed by Thurman Munson, Corey Lidle and…
Nuts, Jose really wanted to put Jorge Posada in there. He hates Jorge Posada…weasel faced creep, but damn it, Jose simply cannot wish death in a plane crash on anyone. Too bad. It would have been funny too. Maybe if Munson and Lidle had died peacefully in their sleep, Jose could have joked about having Posada’s name on a ball with them, but a plane crash? That’s too tacky even for Jose… barely.
3. Curt Euro, shockingly, called out Barry Bonds yesterday for cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes and cheating at the great game of baseball.
He was unusual in being willing to call out Bonds in earnest and publicly when disturbingly few active players are willing to do so. That said, his statement lacked balance. While Euro did list all of the things that Bonds does cheat at, he utterly failed to list the many aspects of life wherein he has not cheated.
Consider the following:
• Bonds has not, as best we know cheated at cards.
• He has never performed Cheat, by the Clash at karaoke.
• He is not a “pumpkin eater.”
• Not a big fan of Cheetos. (Note: Wait… that’s Cheetah, not cheater?)
• Not technically a member of the Guerrero wrestling family (Motto: Cheat to Win.)
• Has never hit opposing player with a steel chair.
On the other hand, Jose is pretty sure he has a Jessie “The Body” Ventura inspired tattoo reading “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, May 8
Get With the Losing Team
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Once, there was a man.
He was a great man, a rewriter of history, the idol and envy of millions. From modest beginnings, he rose to become greater than any before him, to become, perhaps, the greatest of all. But you know what happens to the great don’t you? Pride flows from power, heroism becomes hubris and nemesis, as the Greeks might say, is a bitch.
From his height of power, from the peak of his influence, he had nothing left to do save submit to Newton’s cruel discovery and fall, fall ever faster to Earth. Into exile he went, a comfortable exile an exile softened by all the riches of the age, but an exile nevertheless, away from the power, away from the intrigue and off to a gilded prison.
But for great men, a comfortable retirement is no comfort at all. Power is the only comfort, adulation the only opiate. And so he escaped from his exile, as fate demanded. Oh, he escaped with visions of glory restored, power reclaimed and in short order those visions were fulfilled. Hysterical woman screamed his name, praising the nobility of his return, weeping, saluting what seemed an inevitable restoration of a powerful and feared empire.
His name, you might be surprised to hear, was not Roger Clemens. Not at all.
This is the story of quite a different author of history, one of smaller stature than Clemens, and with, remarkably, a smaller ego to boot. You have, perhaps, heard of him. His was called Napoleon Bonaparte.
On March 1, 1815, Napoleon returned to France, having escaped from exile in Elba, that Houston of the Mediterranean, and, after converting the French Fifth Regiment of the Line to his cause upon encountering them at Grenoble quickly regained his position as Emperor of France.
Like Napoleon before him, Roger Clemens returns in dramatic fashion, taking in the cheers at Yankee Stadium, like Napoleon on that first day of March. Clemens standing in the owner’s box might as well have declared “Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now.” And he might as well have been greeted with cheers of "Vive L'Empereur!"
But the story does not end there. Nor does it proceed neatly to the French Empire reclaiming the continent. For all of the enthusiasm his return generated, Napoleon’s restoration ended a scant 100 days later in disaster.
And with barely more than 100 days left in the baseball season why should the Clemens restoration end any differently than that of Napoleon? Is Clemens a greater man? Is he more heroic? Has he faced adversity with more bravado?
No, he has not. No he is not. Like Napoleon before him, Clemens comes to save, to restore an empire that has crumbled, that has turned to dust as luxury, as decadence, as an endless thirst for domination overextends resources and engenders a certain incurable madness.
And like Napoleon the crowds may cheers Clemens’ return, they may envision a restoration of the grandeur that was. But like Napoleon, Clemens will battle his Wellington, he will meet his Waterloo and he will end up on his St. Helena.
2. You know who Jose blames for Clemens signing with the Yankees? Grady Little.
Now this isn’t a reflexive thing, like Jose automatically blaming Grady for a warehouse fire in Lawrence or World War I, this is serious. Grady is responsible, because he attempted to change destiny, which, as anyone who has read Oedipus Rex or seen Terminator 3 knows, is impossible.
Roger Clemens is fated, absolutely guaranteed, to end his career by picking up the loss in a pathetic performance against the Boston Red Sox.
The script was written. Game 7, 2003 ALCS and a Roger Clemens who has vowed to retire is nothing short of pathetic. His last game ever, will be a classic Clemens playoff implosion against the soon to be World Champion Red Sox. Except Grady attempts to alter the future. He kneecaps John Wilkes Booth, he poisons FDR, he hand delivers the Zimmerman Telegram, he does everything he can to fight off destiny when he leaves Pedro in and the Red Sox lose. Thus, Clemens goes on to pitch again.
But you can’t fight destiny any more than you can fight nightmares. It just keeps coming.
Since that day, Jose has been waiting for a season ending match up between Clemens and the Red Sox, such that the circle may be closed. He thought we would have it in 2004 when Clemens’ Astros nearly battled the Red Sox in the World Series, but Clemens couldn’t overcome the kryptonite that is Jeff Suppan.
So Jose has waited, waited each year as Clemens has put off retirement again and again, waited as he has taunted and teased Red Sox fans with the prospect of a return, waited for the final chapter. And here it is. Roger Clemens is, once more, a Yankee. And his last start of this season, the last start of his career, will come against these Boston Red Sox. Clemens will collapse. The Red Sox will win. Destiny will take its bounty.
3. Last year as Roger went through his absurd little process, Jose compared him to Italy in World War I, waiting to see who was most likely to triumph before jumping in with the winning team in return for a stunning ransom. It is now clear that this analogy was incorrect. For the second straight year, Clemens has chosen to go after the king’s ransom, but he has chosen to do so with a losing team. Thus, Jose would like to formally apologize to the nation of Italy circa World War I for the comparison. For you to be like Clemens, you would have had to assess the situation, bide your time and then join up with the Central Powers shortly after the Second Battle of the Somme in 1918, once defeat was assured. Jose regrets the inaccuracy.
Jose would like to find a substitute historical analogy, but he is, as yet, unable to find any nation, any person, so eager to freely choose what will clearly be the losing side in any conflict. It appears, that in the entire history of statecraft, there is no one as stupid or as arrogant as Roger Clemens.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Once, there was a man.
He was a great man, a rewriter of history, the idol and envy of millions. From modest beginnings, he rose to become greater than any before him, to become, perhaps, the greatest of all. But you know what happens to the great don’t you? Pride flows from power, heroism becomes hubris and nemesis, as the Greeks might say, is a bitch.
From his height of power, from the peak of his influence, he had nothing left to do save submit to Newton’s cruel discovery and fall, fall ever faster to Earth. Into exile he went, a comfortable exile an exile softened by all the riches of the age, but an exile nevertheless, away from the power, away from the intrigue and off to a gilded prison.
But for great men, a comfortable retirement is no comfort at all. Power is the only comfort, adulation the only opiate. And so he escaped from his exile, as fate demanded. Oh, he escaped with visions of glory restored, power reclaimed and in short order those visions were fulfilled. Hysterical woman screamed his name, praising the nobility of his return, weeping, saluting what seemed an inevitable restoration of a powerful and feared empire.
His name, you might be surprised to hear, was not Roger Clemens. Not at all.
This is the story of quite a different author of history, one of smaller stature than Clemens, and with, remarkably, a smaller ego to boot. You have, perhaps, heard of him. His was called Napoleon Bonaparte.
On March 1, 1815, Napoleon returned to France, having escaped from exile in Elba, that Houston of the Mediterranean, and, after converting the French Fifth Regiment of the Line to his cause upon encountering them at Grenoble quickly regained his position as Emperor of France.
Like Napoleon before him, Roger Clemens returns in dramatic fashion, taking in the cheers at Yankee Stadium, like Napoleon on that first day of March. Clemens standing in the owner’s box might as well have declared “Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now.” And he might as well have been greeted with cheers of "Vive L'Empereur!"
But the story does not end there. Nor does it proceed neatly to the French Empire reclaiming the continent. For all of the enthusiasm his return generated, Napoleon’s restoration ended a scant 100 days later in disaster.
And with barely more than 100 days left in the baseball season why should the Clemens restoration end any differently than that of Napoleon? Is Clemens a greater man? Is he more heroic? Has he faced adversity with more bravado?
No, he has not. No he is not. Like Napoleon before him, Clemens comes to save, to restore an empire that has crumbled, that has turned to dust as luxury, as decadence, as an endless thirst for domination overextends resources and engenders a certain incurable madness.
And like Napoleon the crowds may cheers Clemens’ return, they may envision a restoration of the grandeur that was. But like Napoleon, Clemens will battle his Wellington, he will meet his Waterloo and he will end up on his St. Helena.
Seperated at birth?
2. You know who Jose blames for Clemens signing with the Yankees? Grady Little.
Now this isn’t a reflexive thing, like Jose automatically blaming Grady for a warehouse fire in Lawrence or World War I, this is serious. Grady is responsible, because he attempted to change destiny, which, as anyone who has read Oedipus Rex or seen Terminator 3 knows, is impossible.
Roger Clemens is fated, absolutely guaranteed, to end his career by picking up the loss in a pathetic performance against the Boston Red Sox.
The script was written. Game 7, 2003 ALCS and a Roger Clemens who has vowed to retire is nothing short of pathetic. His last game ever, will be a classic Clemens playoff implosion against the soon to be World Champion Red Sox. Except Grady attempts to alter the future. He kneecaps John Wilkes Booth, he poisons FDR, he hand delivers the Zimmerman Telegram, he does everything he can to fight off destiny when he leaves Pedro in and the Red Sox lose. Thus, Clemens goes on to pitch again.
But you can’t fight destiny any more than you can fight nightmares. It just keeps coming.
Since that day, Jose has been waiting for a season ending match up between Clemens and the Red Sox, such that the circle may be closed. He thought we would have it in 2004 when Clemens’ Astros nearly battled the Red Sox in the World Series, but Clemens couldn’t overcome the kryptonite that is Jeff Suppan.
So Jose has waited, waited each year as Clemens has put off retirement again and again, waited as he has taunted and teased Red Sox fans with the prospect of a return, waited for the final chapter. And here it is. Roger Clemens is, once more, a Yankee. And his last start of this season, the last start of his career, will come against these Boston Red Sox. Clemens will collapse. The Red Sox will win. Destiny will take its bounty.
3. Last year as Roger went through his absurd little process, Jose compared him to Italy in World War I, waiting to see who was most likely to triumph before jumping in with the winning team in return for a stunning ransom. It is now clear that this analogy was incorrect. For the second straight year, Clemens has chosen to go after the king’s ransom, but he has chosen to do so with a losing team. Thus, Jose would like to formally apologize to the nation of Italy circa World War I for the comparison. For you to be like Clemens, you would have had to assess the situation, bide your time and then join up with the Central Powers shortly after the Second Battle of the Somme in 1918, once defeat was assured. Jose regrets the inaccuracy.
Jose would like to find a substitute historical analogy, but he is, as yet, unable to find any nation, any person, so eager to freely choose what will clearly be the losing side in any conflict. It appears, that in the entire history of statecraft, there is no one as stupid or as arrogant as Roger Clemens.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Thursday, May 3
Japan Night at Fenway
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. It’s Japan night at Fenway Park as Mr. Matsu battles Ichiro Suzuki with not one, but two Japanese American Red Sox bloggers looking on. Tonight, Jose will attend his third game of the season (note: record 2-0) as the guest of empyrealenvirons, who played a critical role in the graphic design of this very blog.
On such a special occasion, it became clear quite quickly that this arrangement would demand some sort of special bloging shtick. Leading to the following exchange of emails.
Jose: Jose feels like you and Jose need to come up with some sort of shared shtick for this game. The two Japanese-American Red Sox bloggers watching Matsu vs. Ichiro. There's got to be something we can come up with.
Empyreal: Thought of something: do it in "whiteface." Not literally paint, but pretend we're white people and say the things we hear all the time because of our appearance.
Jose: Have you seen a picture of Jose? He’s only 1/8 Japanese. Jose does life in whiteface.
Empyreal: :) Sorry, never saw a picture; hope I didn't offend 7/8s of you.
Yes, it’s Japan night at Fenway, and let us all hope that if Mr. Matsu decides to pitch in whiteface tonight it’s as Josh Beckett and not as Ricky Trlicek.
2. Kudos to the Boston Herald for an uncharacteristic display of conscientious journalism. Sure they ran a front page photo of Patriots quarterback/demigod Tom Brady wearing a Yankees cap with the headline “Yanks for nothing Brady…Tom, Say It Ain’t So!” a sensationalistic, pointless story, that doubtless has nothing to do with the Herald’s plunging circulation. But that’s okay, because the sub-head was 100% accurate as it read “‘Shocking’ details in the Inside Track.”
That’s right, they put “shocking” in quotes. They actually admitted through the use of those cute little quotation marks that their front page story is neither newsworthy nor shocking.
You know how some people make quotes with their fingers when they are saying something they regard a preposterous? For instance, how Carl Everett might say “I was 6 years old when man first ‘walked on the moon?’” It’s like that. Jose is glad that this is now an accepted journalistic technique and will use it to make the following statements:
- Jose is “devastated” to hear the Yankees Rookie Phillip Hughes will be out four to six weeks.
- By all reckoning, Dour Mirabelli is a “fantastic human being” and “adds a lot to this team.”
- Joe Torre is a “handsome” man with “excellent” personal hygiene.
- The ladies at the Inside Track are “absolutely not” bloated harpies who traffic in human misery.
- Beer at Fenway Park is “reasonably priced” at seven dollars.
- Tito Eurona is the best Red Sox manager in Jose’s life time. See, no quotes on that one.
3. The term “Horatio Alger story” is used to describe any story of someone who climbs from rags and desolation to a respected place in society through hard work and determination. It is a tribute to the works of novelist Horatio Alger who wrote 135 novels that have this triumph of pluck as their central theme. Modern examples of Horatio Alger Stories include Pretty Woman and the original Star Wars trilogy.
Tonight, the Red Sox go against Seattle lefty Horacio Ramirez, who’s life is not a Horatio Alger story. Quite to the contrary, a Horacio Ramirez story, after tonight’s game, will be a term used to describe a quick and catastrophic failure that results in the protagonist crying like a little girl. Modern examples include Titanic, many football games coached by Dick Vermeil and the 1972 Ed Muskie campaign.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Wednesday, May 2
Jose Wants the Airwaves
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. There’s a funny thing about month in reviews. They are almost impossible to write. The clumsy shapes of the written word some how fail to convey the awesome significance of a lunar cycle gone by. And yet they are adequate for years in review. Weird.
No, the contemplation of a full month requires the spoken word, the ebullient cacophony of air moving across larynx. Thus, it is Jose’s great privilege and pride to present to you the first of KEYS TO THE GAME PODCAST produced by SoShers OCDSS and Trotsky. If Howard Stern is “King of all Media,” by moving into this second form of communication, Jose is, perhaps, emerging as a Viscount of some media, or perhaps a squire, like Sancho Panza except lacking insight.
2. Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be an early Christian watching Christ upon the Cross?
You’ve seen this guy perform miracles. Sure the water into wine could have been a trick, and maybe, as Father Guido Sarducci suggested, he was actually standing on the shoulders of his brother Billy Christ when he walked on water. But how do you explain the loaves and fishes? Hmm? And what about healing lepers? Those are grade A miracles.
And so you look at this guy up there, the Messiah, the miracle man, the Son of God, and you keep waiting for the amazing escape. Sure, he looks awful, thin and scraggly, blood flowing from lance wound in his side, but you know he’s got something ready. And then, all of a sudden, for the grand finale… he dies. That’s right he just dies up there. Can you believe it? No, of course you can’t.
And so it was watching Jonathan Papelbon last night. You’ve seen the guy escape inescapable jams, transform losses into wins, heal the leprous Red Sox bullpen, and then… without warning, he fails. He does not save the game or save himself. He falls, bowing, it seems, to the cruelty of men.
But for Christ, his failure to save himself begat the greatest miracle of all, his stunning, history-changing resurrection. Do we, can we, except to see anything less than the resurrection Jonathan Papelbon three days hence? Amen
3. According to Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, a new study by a UPenn professor and Cornell grad student says that white NBA referees call fouls on black players at a much greater rate than on white players. If one puts aside the possible conflict of interest of having a race story written by a man whose name, Schwartz means “black” in German and is sort of a slur in Yiddish, (note: this story should only be reported by a South Asian or Eskimo, as neither are currently represented in the NBA) the story is pretty interesting. Moreover, it makes Jose wonder if a similar study of some kind could be done for baseball. Jose suspects that if one was done, it would find that umpire discrimination is rampant. While race isn’t an issue, Jose’s theory is that tall players are almost universally discriminated against with a larger strike zone then their shorter teammates and opponents.
Jose doesn’t have data to back up the theory yet, but if he’s right than MLB is wrong. Tall people should never be discriminated against, except in Fenway Park seating, where they need to be corralled in a special section just for them so Jose doesn’t get knees hitting him in the back of the neck.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. There’s a funny thing about month in reviews. They are almost impossible to write. The clumsy shapes of the written word some how fail to convey the awesome significance of a lunar cycle gone by. And yet they are adequate for years in review. Weird.
No, the contemplation of a full month requires the spoken word, the ebullient cacophony of air moving across larynx. Thus, it is Jose’s great privilege and pride to present to you the first of KEYS TO THE GAME PODCAST produced by SoShers OCDSS and Trotsky. If Howard Stern is “King of all Media,” by moving into this second form of communication, Jose is, perhaps, emerging as a Viscount of some media, or perhaps a squire, like Sancho Panza except lacking insight.
2. Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be an early Christian watching Christ upon the Cross?
You’ve seen this guy perform miracles. Sure the water into wine could have been a trick, and maybe, as Father Guido Sarducci suggested, he was actually standing on the shoulders of his brother Billy Christ when he walked on water. But how do you explain the loaves and fishes? Hmm? And what about healing lepers? Those are grade A miracles.
And so you look at this guy up there, the Messiah, the miracle man, the Son of God, and you keep waiting for the amazing escape. Sure, he looks awful, thin and scraggly, blood flowing from lance wound in his side, but you know he’s got something ready. And then, all of a sudden, for the grand finale… he dies. That’s right he just dies up there. Can you believe it? No, of course you can’t.
And so it was watching Jonathan Papelbon last night. You’ve seen the guy escape inescapable jams, transform losses into wins, heal the leprous Red Sox bullpen, and then… without warning, he fails. He does not save the game or save himself. He falls, bowing, it seems, to the cruelty of men.
But for Christ, his failure to save himself begat the greatest miracle of all, his stunning, history-changing resurrection. Do we, can we, except to see anything less than the resurrection Jonathan Papelbon three days hence? Amen
3. According to Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, a new study by a UPenn professor and Cornell grad student says that white NBA referees call fouls on black players at a much greater rate than on white players. If one puts aside the possible conflict of interest of having a race story written by a man whose name, Schwartz means “black” in German and is sort of a slur in Yiddish, (note: this story should only be reported by a South Asian or Eskimo, as neither are currently represented in the NBA) the story is pretty interesting. Moreover, it makes Jose wonder if a similar study of some kind could be done for baseball. Jose suspects that if one was done, it would find that umpire discrimination is rampant. While race isn’t an issue, Jose’s theory is that tall players are almost universally discriminated against with a larger strike zone then their shorter teammates and opponents.
Jose doesn’t have data to back up the theory yet, but if he’s right than MLB is wrong. Tall people should never be discriminated against, except in Fenway Park seating, where they need to be corralled in a special section just for them so Jose doesn’t get knees hitting him in the back of the neck.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, May 1
Like Triangle
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Lots of observers have commented on the curious fondness of Julienned Tavarez for Mr. Matsu. It’s funny and kind of endearing to see the effusive (note: read insane) Tavarez fawn over the Japanese pitcher, who while he seems to be touchy feely by Japanese standards, is still unsure what to make of his Dominican non-so-secret-admirer.
Still, today’s Globe Red Sox Notebook wherein Tavarez says “I told [Matsuzaka] I think you’re one of the greatest pitchers I’ve ever seen,” is embarrassing in its mushiness. It reads like a sixth grade mash note. But it gets worse. Jose recently uncovered this transcript of a locker room conversation between the unlikely friends.
JULIAN: Hi Daisuke.
DAISUKE: Oh hi Julian.
JULIAN: How’s it going?
DAISUKE: Umm… okay. Still getting used to life here. How about for you?
JULIAN. (Slyly) Good… Hey, I really liked watching you pitch the other day.
DAISUKE: Oh thanks.
JULIAN: It was just so exciting, the way you exercised such, such command over all of your pitches.
DAISUKE: (looking uncomfortable) Uh… yeah, I had my good stuff.
JULIAN: You sure did, and you knew exactly when to use it. You knew right when to use the hard stuff, and the perfect time to go with something a little more… subtle.
DAISUKE: I… I guess I try to mix it up.
JULIAN: I guess it’s just your grip. You’ve just got these amazing hands. Strong, supple.
DAISUKE: I’m feeling really uncomfortable.
JULIAN: Do you mind if I touch your hands? I want to feel where the magic comes from?
DAISUKE: Uhhh…(looking for a way out) I not speak Engrish.
JULIAN: Los manos, los manos lucido.
DAISUKE: Umm… I also not speak Spanish?
JULIAN: Just let me touch them. Please?
DAISUKE: Julian you’re cool and all, but I don’t want you coming on to me. I don’t like you that way.
JULIAN (Punches him in the face) What?!? What the hell is wrong with you all I say is I want to feel your rugged manly, magical hands and you make it all dirty?
DAISUKE: (On the floor clenching his jaw) Ughh…Crap… Sorry, must be a cultural misinterpretation. Would it help if I taught you the cutter to make it up to you?
JULIAN: Teaching me the cutter is a start, that and some sex. Lots and lots of sex.
DAISUKE: But I thought—
JULIAN: Cultural differences!
See, incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Jose even felt uncomfortable transcribing it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with a pock marked Dominican lunatic prone to violent outbursts falling in love with a Japanese colleague, and making awkward, clumsy passes at him. Not at all. It’s just that Tavarez seems to be aiming a little too high. Let’s be honest, Daisuke is out of his league. If he’s got an Asian thing, he should focus on Okajima. Though he might be getting out of Tavarez’s league too. Maybe we could get Wendell Kim to hang out with him.
2. Speaking of Okajima, when he was originally brought to the Red Sox, there was rampant speculation that he was signed as much to provide friendship and companionship to Mr. Matsu as to pitch. Of course, little did the Red Sox know that Julienned Tavarez would be providing Mr. Matsu with all the friendship he could stand. Thus, with his primary purpose gone, Okajima has been forced to focus on his lesser role of pitching brilliantly.
But don’t be fooled. No, don’t be tricked into thinking that Okajima’s original role was to be a lights out set up man. He and Mr. Matsu are, as some SoSHers have suggested, BFFs, best friends forever, and not even Tavarez can tear them apart. You want proof? You say it’s kind of BS to assume that just because two guys come from the same country and work at the same place they’re BFFs? Well, the proof is in the necklace. You know that necklace that Okajima wears to every game. With Jose’s years of training in the arts (note: and crafts) he can tell, with 95 percent confidence, that that is an authentic gimp friendship necklace made at a summer camp sometime between 1983 and 1989. And Jose has every reason to believe that necklace came from Mr. Matsu. Of course, there is one other possibility. Jose has been hearing rumors that Tavarez has been making friendship necklaces for everyone, just so he can tease J.C. Romero, saying “I have 23 best friends on this team, and you have none. Loser.”
3. But you don’t want to hear any more about Julienned Tavarez’ creepy Japanese fetish. No, you don’t come here for that, you come hear for insight on tonight’s match up with the Oakland Athletics and the return of Lenny DiNardo. Jose hopes that the fans treat him right. Jose has heard that the Red Sox are preparing a video tribute of Lenny’s greatest moments to play pregame, you know, like they did with Pedro last year. Jose thinks it will include that one pitch where his fastball hit 86 mph, and maybe that time when he didn’t get shelled. Hopefully they’ll also do a retrospective on his Rule V induced trip to the disabled list in 2004.
But let’s not get lost in the drama. This Oakland As team is far more than just Lenny DiNardo. It is the retirement home for formerly great hitting, badly broken down catchers with both Mike Piazza and Jason Kendall on the roster. And Jose is holding out that they may sign Todd Hundley before game time.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Lots of observers have commented on the curious fondness of Julienned Tavarez for Mr. Matsu. It’s funny and kind of endearing to see the effusive (note: read insane) Tavarez fawn over the Japanese pitcher, who while he seems to be touchy feely by Japanese standards, is still unsure what to make of his Dominican non-so-secret-admirer.
Still, today’s Globe Red Sox Notebook wherein Tavarez says “I told [Matsuzaka] I think you’re one of the greatest pitchers I’ve ever seen,” is embarrassing in its mushiness. It reads like a sixth grade mash note. But it gets worse. Jose recently uncovered this transcript of a locker room conversation between the unlikely friends.
JULIAN: Hi Daisuke.
DAISUKE: Oh hi Julian.
JULIAN: How’s it going?
DAISUKE: Umm… okay. Still getting used to life here. How about for you?
JULIAN. (Slyly) Good… Hey, I really liked watching you pitch the other day.
DAISUKE: Oh thanks.
JULIAN: It was just so exciting, the way you exercised such, such command over all of your pitches.
DAISUKE: (looking uncomfortable) Uh… yeah, I had my good stuff.
JULIAN: You sure did, and you knew exactly when to use it. You knew right when to use the hard stuff, and the perfect time to go with something a little more… subtle.
DAISUKE: I… I guess I try to mix it up.
JULIAN: I guess it’s just your grip. You’ve just got these amazing hands. Strong, supple.
DAISUKE: I’m feeling really uncomfortable.
JULIAN: Do you mind if I touch your hands? I want to feel where the magic comes from?
DAISUKE: Uhhh…(looking for a way out) I not speak Engrish.
JULIAN: Los manos, los manos lucido.
DAISUKE: Umm… I also not speak Spanish?
JULIAN: Just let me touch them. Please?
DAISUKE: Julian you’re cool and all, but I don’t want you coming on to me. I don’t like you that way.
JULIAN (Punches him in the face) What?!? What the hell is wrong with you all I say is I want to feel your rugged manly, magical hands and you make it all dirty?
DAISUKE: (On the floor clenching his jaw) Ughh…Crap… Sorry, must be a cultural misinterpretation. Would it help if I taught you the cutter to make it up to you?
JULIAN: Teaching me the cutter is a start, that and some sex. Lots and lots of sex.
DAISUKE: But I thought—
JULIAN: Cultural differences!
See, incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Jose even felt uncomfortable transcribing it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with a pock marked Dominican lunatic prone to violent outbursts falling in love with a Japanese colleague, and making awkward, clumsy passes at him. Not at all. It’s just that Tavarez seems to be aiming a little too high. Let’s be honest, Daisuke is out of his league. If he’s got an Asian thing, he should focus on Okajima. Though he might be getting out of Tavarez’s league too. Maybe we could get Wendell Kim to hang out with him.
2. Speaking of Okajima, when he was originally brought to the Red Sox, there was rampant speculation that he was signed as much to provide friendship and companionship to Mr. Matsu as to pitch. Of course, little did the Red Sox know that Julienned Tavarez would be providing Mr. Matsu with all the friendship he could stand. Thus, with his primary purpose gone, Okajima has been forced to focus on his lesser role of pitching brilliantly.
But don’t be fooled. No, don’t be tricked into thinking that Okajima’s original role was to be a lights out set up man. He and Mr. Matsu are, as some SoSHers have suggested, BFFs, best friends forever, and not even Tavarez can tear them apart. You want proof? You say it’s kind of BS to assume that just because two guys come from the same country and work at the same place they’re BFFs? Well, the proof is in the necklace. You know that necklace that Okajima wears to every game. With Jose’s years of training in the arts (note: and crafts) he can tell, with 95 percent confidence, that that is an authentic gimp friendship necklace made at a summer camp sometime between 1983 and 1989. And Jose has every reason to believe that necklace came from Mr. Matsu. Of course, there is one other possibility. Jose has been hearing rumors that Tavarez has been making friendship necklaces for everyone, just so he can tease J.C. Romero, saying “I have 23 best friends on this team, and you have none. Loser.”
3. But you don’t want to hear any more about Julienned Tavarez’ creepy Japanese fetish. No, you don’t come here for that, you come hear for insight on tonight’s match up with the Oakland Athletics and the return of Lenny DiNardo. Jose hopes that the fans treat him right. Jose has heard that the Red Sox are preparing a video tribute of Lenny’s greatest moments to play pregame, you know, like they did with Pedro last year. Jose thinks it will include that one pitch where his fastball hit 86 mph, and maybe that time when he didn’t get shelled. Hopefully they’ll also do a retrospective on his Rule V induced trip to the disabled list in 2004.
But let’s not get lost in the drama. This Oakland As team is far more than just Lenny DiNardo. It is the retirement home for formerly great hitting, badly broken down catchers with both Mike Piazza and Jason Kendall on the roster. And Jose is holding out that they may sign Todd Hundley before game time.
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.
Thursday, April 26
FRAUD?!? A Play in One Act
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. October, Hours before Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS
(Curt Euro sits alone in the visiting locker room and Yankee Stadium. Doug Mirabelli enters.)
DOUGIE: Hey Curt, how’s it going? Ready for the game tonight?
CURT: Jeez… Doug I don’t know. I was so awful in Game 1, and now I’ve got to got out there again, in front of all of those angry Yankees fans? It’s kind of scary.
DOUGIE: Come on, there shouldn’t be that much pressure on you. After all, everyone knows you’re injured, so if you have a rough night, no one should be too surprised.
CURT: (looking sheepish) Umm… Doug. You know I made that up right?
DOUGIE: What?
CURT: I was so bad the other night. All I was brought here to do was to beat the Yankees and I couldn’t do it, because I’m just not man enough. Or Jesus doesn’t love me enough or something. I needed some sort of excuse, some sort of out to takes the heat off so I said I was hurt.
DOUGIE: Jeez…
CURT: Yeah, I know. I faked tweaking the ankle in Game One against the Angles just so I would have an excuse if things didn’t work against the Yankees.
DOUGIE: That’s diabolical.
CURT: Don’t use big words Doug, it’s not you.
DOUGIE: Sorry, it was my word of the day. Yesterday was “salient.”
CURT: No problem. So what I can’t figure out is what to do now. I know I still have the injury excuse, but I feel like it’s not enough. I mean, lot’s of guys play through injuries and do fine.
DOUGIE: So you need something more?
CURT: Yeah like a splint, or a special shoe, but something that won’t keep from pitching on the off chance that I do have good stuff tonight.
DOUGIE: What about, like, attaching a bear trap to your leg?
CURT: Come on Dougie.
DOUGIE: You know I don’t think so good. Wait… I got it.
CURT: Yeah?
DOUGIE: I’ll shoot you in the ankle.
CURT: Doug that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
DOUGIE: Sorry. I’m trying it’s just that when I was a kid I got dropped on my head… and it screwed up my brain. There was blood everywhere and—
CURT: Blood? (Thinks) Dougie you’re a genius!!! Well, no, actually you’re pretty dim, but that’s a hell of an idea.
DOUGIE: Thanks Curt… I think.
CURT: Do you have a red marker on you?
DOUGIE: Yeah of course, I always keep one on me in case I need to fake bloody panties. That’s how I convince groupies that I knock up that they’re having their periods after all. Then we get drunk together and do some blow, since they don’t figure there’s any baby to harm. Then, they lose the baby. Smart right? Grenadine mixed with chocolate syrup works too.
CURT: Sweet… (Takes the marker) So a little color here, and presto, I’m fighting heroically through a bleeding ankle. We can even make up a back story about Doc Morgan sewing me up in some crazy new procedure.
DOUGIE: Awesome.
CURT: It sure is Dougie. It sure is. Of course, after the season I’ll have to have a massive surgery and basically pitch terribly in 2005 as a cover up, but I think it will be worth it, right?
DOUGIE: Yeah. But after the surgery we should make sure Doc Morgan gets fired, you know so if he says anything, everyone will just assume he has an axe to grind.
CURT: Perfect. Well, I think we’ve got all of the loose ends tied up.
DOUGIE: Uh huh… It’s the perfect plan. If you pitch well, you’re a legend, if you don’t you battled through a real bad injury but just couldn’t pull it off.
CURT: There’s just one more thing.
DOUGIE: Yeah, what’s that?
CURT: What ever you do don’t tell Gary Thorne. If that intrepid journalist, that latter day muckraker found out, it would blow the lid off the whole scam.
DOUGIE: Don’t worry. I’ll never tell, and even if I do get drunk and tell him about it, you and I could denounce him. Theo, Lucchino and Tito would all say how pissed they are and he’ll look like a fool. He’ll look even dumber than me.
CURT: Perfect. Defraud the public and then humiliate Gary Thorne if he gets in our way.
Blackout.
The bloody sock is fraud like the moon landing and dinosaurs.
If it's real than why is there no bloody sock in the Bible?
I couldn't agree more, Carl.
2. According to the Globe, the Red Sox’s many Latin players were surprised when they learned recently that hitting coach Dave Magadan, is the child of two Spaniards and speaks fluent Spanish. While fellow Spanish speakers J.C. Romero and Julio Lugo expressed surprise and delight at the news, one Red Sox seemed absolutely stunned and shaken.
“I knew his parents were from Spain man,” said left fielder Manny Ramirez, shaking his head. “But this is a big surprise. I had no idea, they spoke Spanish there. That’s crazy. Are they all Dominicans over there or something? Or are they, like, Mexicans?”
3. A Handy jingle for the Red Sox to remember as they face Orioles Lefty Adam Loewen tonight. (Note: To the tune of the legendary Loewnbrau jingle.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. October, Hours before Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS
(Curt Euro sits alone in the visiting locker room and Yankee Stadium. Doug Mirabelli enters.)
DOUGIE: Hey Curt, how’s it going? Ready for the game tonight?
CURT: Jeez… Doug I don’t know. I was so awful in Game 1, and now I’ve got to got out there again, in front of all of those angry Yankees fans? It’s kind of scary.
DOUGIE: Come on, there shouldn’t be that much pressure on you. After all, everyone knows you’re injured, so if you have a rough night, no one should be too surprised.
CURT: (looking sheepish) Umm… Doug. You know I made that up right?
DOUGIE: What?
CURT: I was so bad the other night. All I was brought here to do was to beat the Yankees and I couldn’t do it, because I’m just not man enough. Or Jesus doesn’t love me enough or something. I needed some sort of excuse, some sort of out to takes the heat off so I said I was hurt.
DOUGIE: Jeez…
CURT: Yeah, I know. I faked tweaking the ankle in Game One against the Angles just so I would have an excuse if things didn’t work against the Yankees.
DOUGIE: That’s diabolical.
CURT: Don’t use big words Doug, it’s not you.
DOUGIE: Sorry, it was my word of the day. Yesterday was “salient.”
CURT: No problem. So what I can’t figure out is what to do now. I know I still have the injury excuse, but I feel like it’s not enough. I mean, lot’s of guys play through injuries and do fine.
DOUGIE: So you need something more?
CURT: Yeah like a splint, or a special shoe, but something that won’t keep from pitching on the off chance that I do have good stuff tonight.
DOUGIE: What about, like, attaching a bear trap to your leg?
CURT: Come on Dougie.
DOUGIE: You know I don’t think so good. Wait… I got it.
CURT: Yeah?
DOUGIE: I’ll shoot you in the ankle.
CURT: Doug that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.
DOUGIE: Sorry. I’m trying it’s just that when I was a kid I got dropped on my head… and it screwed up my brain. There was blood everywhere and—
CURT: Blood? (Thinks) Dougie you’re a genius!!! Well, no, actually you’re pretty dim, but that’s a hell of an idea.
DOUGIE: Thanks Curt… I think.
CURT: Do you have a red marker on you?
DOUGIE: Yeah of course, I always keep one on me in case I need to fake bloody panties. That’s how I convince groupies that I knock up that they’re having their periods after all. Then we get drunk together and do some blow, since they don’t figure there’s any baby to harm. Then, they lose the baby. Smart right? Grenadine mixed with chocolate syrup works too.
CURT: Sweet… (Takes the marker) So a little color here, and presto, I’m fighting heroically through a bleeding ankle. We can even make up a back story about Doc Morgan sewing me up in some crazy new procedure.
DOUGIE: Awesome.
CURT: It sure is Dougie. It sure is. Of course, after the season I’ll have to have a massive surgery and basically pitch terribly in 2005 as a cover up, but I think it will be worth it, right?
DOUGIE: Yeah. But after the surgery we should make sure Doc Morgan gets fired, you know so if he says anything, everyone will just assume he has an axe to grind.
CURT: Perfect. Well, I think we’ve got all of the loose ends tied up.
DOUGIE: Uh huh… It’s the perfect plan. If you pitch well, you’re a legend, if you don’t you battled through a real bad injury but just couldn’t pull it off.
CURT: There’s just one more thing.
DOUGIE: Yeah, what’s that?
CURT: What ever you do don’t tell Gary Thorne. If that intrepid journalist, that latter day muckraker found out, it would blow the lid off the whole scam.
DOUGIE: Don’t worry. I’ll never tell, and even if I do get drunk and tell him about it, you and I could denounce him. Theo, Lucchino and Tito would all say how pissed they are and he’ll look like a fool. He’ll look even dumber than me.
CURT: Perfect. Defraud the public and then humiliate Gary Thorne if he gets in our way.
Blackout.
The bloody sock is fraud like the moon landing and dinosaurs.
If it's real than why is there no bloody sock in the Bible?
I couldn't agree more, Carl.
2. According to the Globe, the Red Sox’s many Latin players were surprised when they learned recently that hitting coach Dave Magadan, is the child of two Spaniards and speaks fluent Spanish. While fellow Spanish speakers J.C. Romero and Julio Lugo expressed surprise and delight at the news, one Red Sox seemed absolutely stunned and shaken.
“I knew his parents were from Spain man,” said left fielder Manny Ramirez, shaking his head. “But this is a big surprise. I had no idea, they spoke Spanish there. That’s crazy. Are they all Dominicans over there or something? Or are they, like, Mexicans?”
3. A Handy jingle for the Red Sox to remember as they face Orioles Lefty Adam Loewen tonight. (Note: To the tune of the legendary Loewnbrau jingle.)
Here’s to offense,
His fastball’s, nothing special,
His curveball’s poor,
I thing we’re gonna score some now,
So tonight…
Let’s slap around Loewenbrau
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Wednesday, April 25
Memory Loss
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Every once in a while, there emerges a new medical technology, an innovative surgical technique that radically alters the game of baseball. Once it was arthroscopic surgery, converting season ending procedures to mere weeks on the shelf. Then came Lasik eye surgery giving players formerly constrained by contact lenses, the vision of a young Ted Williams. And then, of course, there was hysterectomy, which allowed Alex Rodriguez to stop becoming hysterical every time something went wrong and settle into perhaps the greatest month in baseball history.
So what’s next for sports medicine? Can we identify the trend now, before it blossoms in full and get the Red Sox an edge? Jose believes he has seen the future of sports and the future looks like lobotomy.
Well, perhaps Jose is being a bit melodramatic. Jose is not suggesting that Red Sox players have full frontal lobotomies. That would be silly, and as the old song reminds us, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, then have to have a frontal lobotomy.” No, he is just suggesting that it might be a huge advantage to a Red Sox player if he had his hippocampus removed, or at least badly damaged.
Jose got the idea while reading Eric Hinskie’s comments on last night’s 10-3, four error debacle.
“You’ve got to have a short memory,” Hinskie told the Globe’s Nancy Marrapese-Burrell. “We’ve got to try to forget about these two games and move on.”
The hippocampus, as even the dimmest of neuroscientists knows, is the portion of the brain that converts short term memory in to long term memory. By removing it, a player would be assured that rather than lingering on the shame and humiliation of dropping two at home to the Blue Jays, he could give complete focus to tonight’s game in Baltimore.
Jose knows it sounds a little risky for players to remove parts of their brain in order to increase their performance, but Manny seems completely incapable of forming long term memories about things like trade request’s he’s made, times he’s used the death of his grandmother as an excuse and the number of balls in the count, and he hits just fine.
Look Jose is not saying this is a cure all. All he is saying is that his late maternal grandmother, who he loved dearly, had a stroke that damaged her hippocampus and you know what? She didn’t have a single throwing error after it. Not one. (Note: Jose’s Grandma Martha had a wonderful sense of humor and sense of baseball, so he is pretty sure that wherever she is, she is not offended. But if she is, she can send Jose a sign by striking down Vernon Wells.)
2. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Alex Rodriquez shared his thoughts on his red hot start, his potential opt out and the Yankees 0-5 road trip.
Among the revelations in the story was that the difference between this year and last is that A-Rod now loses himself in the resonant sounds of his iPod shortly after arriving at the ballpark.
KEYS’ has obtained A-Rod’s iPod and is pleased to offer you, as a KEYS exclusive, the deepest psychological analysis possible in this modern age, the first ten songs that come up on Rodriguez’s iPod.
1. Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)—Traditional
2. Blues Lips—Regina Spektor
3. Slap—Ludacris
4. So Lonely—The Police
5. Loser—Beck
6. I Can’t Win—The Strokes
7. Money –Pink Floyd
8. Thrown Away—Papa Roach
9. April Lady—Queen
10. I Want You to Want Me—Cheap Trick
In addition to discussing his iPod, Rodriguez also answered a question about whether he was a better pilot than departed Yankees Thurman Munson and Corey Lidle, saying "Let's see how far we can fly, then I can tell you. I'm in the middle of flight right now, so I don't want to talk about it.”
3. In perhaps the most shocking news of the young season, three weeks in a Red Sox is tied for the lead league in stolen bases with six, as Jose Lugo’s two steals last night tied him with Kenny Lofton, Gary Matthews Jr. and Brian Roberts.
In fact, the last time any Red Sox player had this much stealing so early in the season was 1992, when Jack Clark had, as of April 25, already effectively stolen the $3 million the Red Sox were ostensibly paying him to hit home runs.
(Note: Jose’s mother has never enjoyed herself as much at a Red Sox game as she did in 1992 when we had seats not far from home plate where she could relentlessly boo Jack Clark. This was unusual, as Jose’s mother likes baseball, but does not have particularly strong feelings about it. What she does have strong feelings about, however, are multi-millionaires whose appetites are so excessive that they file for bankruptcy. Though in fairness to Clark, he probably needed one car for each of the 16 extra base hits in 1992 plus another two just in case.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Every once in a while, there emerges a new medical technology, an innovative surgical technique that radically alters the game of baseball. Once it was arthroscopic surgery, converting season ending procedures to mere weeks on the shelf. Then came Lasik eye surgery giving players formerly constrained by contact lenses, the vision of a young Ted Williams. And then, of course, there was hysterectomy, which allowed Alex Rodriguez to stop becoming hysterical every time something went wrong and settle into perhaps the greatest month in baseball history.
So what’s next for sports medicine? Can we identify the trend now, before it blossoms in full and get the Red Sox an edge? Jose believes he has seen the future of sports and the future looks like lobotomy.
Well, perhaps Jose is being a bit melodramatic. Jose is not suggesting that Red Sox players have full frontal lobotomies. That would be silly, and as the old song reminds us, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, then have to have a frontal lobotomy.” No, he is just suggesting that it might be a huge advantage to a Red Sox player if he had his hippocampus removed, or at least badly damaged.
Jose got the idea while reading Eric Hinskie’s comments on last night’s 10-3, four error debacle.
“You’ve got to have a short memory,” Hinskie told the Globe’s Nancy Marrapese-Burrell. “We’ve got to try to forget about these two games and move on.”
The hippocampus, as even the dimmest of neuroscientists knows, is the portion of the brain that converts short term memory in to long term memory. By removing it, a player would be assured that rather than lingering on the shame and humiliation of dropping two at home to the Blue Jays, he could give complete focus to tonight’s game in Baltimore.
Jose knows it sounds a little risky for players to remove parts of their brain in order to increase their performance, but Manny seems completely incapable of forming long term memories about things like trade request’s he’s made, times he’s used the death of his grandmother as an excuse and the number of balls in the count, and he hits just fine.
Look Jose is not saying this is a cure all. All he is saying is that his late maternal grandmother, who he loved dearly, had a stroke that damaged her hippocampus and you know what? She didn’t have a single throwing error after it. Not one. (Note: Jose’s Grandma Martha had a wonderful sense of humor and sense of baseball, so he is pretty sure that wherever she is, she is not offended. But if she is, she can send Jose a sign by striking down Vernon Wells.)
2. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Alex Rodriquez shared his thoughts on his red hot start, his potential opt out and the Yankees 0-5 road trip.
Among the revelations in the story was that the difference between this year and last is that A-Rod now loses himself in the resonant sounds of his iPod shortly after arriving at the ballpark.
KEYS’ has obtained A-Rod’s iPod and is pleased to offer you, as a KEYS exclusive, the deepest psychological analysis possible in this modern age, the first ten songs that come up on Rodriguez’s iPod.
1. Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)—Traditional
2. Blues Lips—Regina Spektor
3. Slap—Ludacris
4. So Lonely—The Police
5. Loser—Beck
6. I Can’t Win—The Strokes
7. Money –Pink Floyd
8. Thrown Away—Papa Roach
9. April Lady—Queen
10. I Want You to Want Me—Cheap Trick
In addition to discussing his iPod, Rodriguez also answered a question about whether he was a better pilot than departed Yankees Thurman Munson and Corey Lidle, saying "Let's see how far we can fly, then I can tell you. I'm in the middle of flight right now, so I don't want to talk about it.”
3. In perhaps the most shocking news of the young season, three weeks in a Red Sox is tied for the lead league in stolen bases with six, as Jose Lugo’s two steals last night tied him with Kenny Lofton, Gary Matthews Jr. and Brian Roberts.
In fact, the last time any Red Sox player had this much stealing so early in the season was 1992, when Jack Clark had, as of April 25, already effectively stolen the $3 million the Red Sox were ostensibly paying him to hit home runs.
(Note: Jose’s mother has never enjoyed herself as much at a Red Sox game as she did in 1992 when we had seats not far from home plate where she could relentlessly boo Jack Clark. This was unusual, as Jose’s mother likes baseball, but does not have particularly strong feelings about it. What she does have strong feelings about, however, are multi-millionaires whose appetites are so excessive that they file for bankruptcy. Though in fairness to Clark, he probably needed one car for each of the 16 extra base hits in 1992 plus another two just in case.)
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
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