From SoSH: Re: September 4th - Wake is On

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

1. Well, well, well. The Red Sox have now won ten in a row, and you know the best way to pay tribute? Iambic pentameter baby – 10 syllables per line. Jose Melendez is proud to present a sonnet for the 2004 Boston Red Sox
KEYS TO POETRY

Lucchino, Henry, Werner, Theo too,
Gave Terry F a really primo squad,
A fielder who’s both sculpted and a Jew,
Another who looks like unto a God.

They’re pitching Pedro, Balki, Wake and Curt,
A foursome that the Yanks had best avoid,
Our fifth guy also layeth down the hurt,
An Android who’s a little paranoid.

When Manny and Ortizille knock one out,
Old Mosey cheers although his hammy’s sore,
And timely hitting from our guy umlaut,
Puts Tek in the position now to score.

And Foulke comes in and makes the bad guys tame,
I’m Jose M. with KEYS to every game.

2. An image of Kevin Brown commenting on his injury is seen.

Trevor Hoffman: Kevin Brown is injured again. I can’t say I’m surprised. When he was in San Diego he was always the sort of guy who was never really there when you need him.

Hideo Nomo: Kevin Brown? He’ll tell you he’s a premiere pitcher, but what about the injuries…the self-inflicted injuries.

Darren Dreifort: I’ve been seriously injured on any number of occasions, all the time really, and Kevin Brown’s self-inflicted injuries dishonor me, dishonor everyone who has hurt himself actually playing the game. We leave our souls on the field and this is how he repays you. (Cut to image of Brown flying on the Dodges team plane) While he jets around with sore backs and pulled this, he left us here to fight alone. To call him a clubhouse cancer is an insult to cancer.

Dodgers Team Physician: I’ve treated Kevin Brown for any number of injuries, and I can say they may have been self-inflicted. That’s why we traded him for the pothead.

Former Dodger Manager Bill Russell: He broke his hand now? No big surprise…just trying to save himself from some beatings by Boston. He’s a coward, a total coward. Don’t let him mislead you like he did to us.

(Voice over) This is what the men who served with Kevin Brown think of him. Kevin Brown….you just can’t trust him.

This KEY was paid for by Major League Veterans for Truth.

3. There is justice in baseball!!! Gabe Kapler, "The World’s Most Perfectly Sculpted Jew" and Mosey Nixon both had their suspensions and fines for retaliating against noted choke out artist Tanyon Sturze overturned by Major League Baseball’s John McHale on Friday. Jose is deeply tempted to compare this to the verdict in the Dreyfuss Affair, but only Kapler is Jewish and making jokes about the original fines and suspensions being the result of anti-Semitism are "baseless" and "blatantly offensive."

So now we like our humor to be non-libelous and not to bring up long lingering memories of generations of oppression? We prefer jokes that don’t "hurt feelings" and "trivialize massive historical suffering?" Well that’s just great. That means Jose is going to have to skip his Trail of Tears jokes when the Braves get bounced from this year’s playoffs. That is unless, of course, he can sneak it in by writing a KEY about how he’s not going to use it.

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

From SoSH: Re: September 3rd - Pedro to Roll

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

1. Jose attended last night’s game with his friend Jamie (a.k.a. SoSH legend RomeroRomine’s brother) and Jamie’s girlfriend Sara. (Note: The Red Sox are now 7-1 in games Jose attends, and he is going again tonight. Mr. Henry, take the hint already.) Sara, who is not a baseball fan, at one point referred to Bill Mueller as Bill “Myooler,” in other words pronouncing it the way it looks. This immediately led Jose, a great lover of the German language, into a tirade about how Mueller, is really Müller, the single most common last name in all the Germanic world. The letters “ue” are simply the standard substitute for a “u” with an umlaut, those two little dots. And while, Mueller does translate to Miller, it is certainly not pronounced “Miller” rather the "ue" is pronounced by rounding the lips as if to say “oo” and then attempting to say “ee.” Go on try it... Seriously give it a shot. If you make a mistake, you can try it again. Mooeeller…One more time. Mooeeller. Good.

Anyway, in reaction to the needless Anglicization of Bill Müller’s fine German name, Jose has resolved to put the “ü” back in Müller. Also, at Jamie’s suggestion, his new nickname should be “Umlaut.” As in Umlaut’s home run last night was huge, and he also made some great plays in the field.”

2. The Red Sox played “My Sharona” between the eighth and ninth innings last night? Do you know what that means? It means they’re catching on… It is time for some enterprising and musically gifted SoSHer to take the lyrics to “Why Francona?”, lovingly crafted by game thread posters, and record a version with his garage band or possibly the Boston POPS. Jose is gathering the lyrics and posting them right here. All that remains is for you, yes you, to make the recording and send it to Yawkey Way.

Why Francona
Lyrics by the Sons of Sam Horn
Music by The Knack

Never chew your players out, players out.
Though they scream for more playing time, Francona?
Though you never hit and run, hit and run.
Or go bunt it on down the line Francona!

Never gonna stop, mixing up
The bottom and the top
Always mixing up, the lineup
When you gonna bat Cabrera 9, Francona?

Bringing in the closer huh, ah will ya, huh?
Close enough, the lead's only five, Francona.
Why Foulke’s in’s a mystery, it gets to me
Are Adams and 'Doza alive, Francona?


When you gonna finally see, finally see
Left field is no place for Millar, Francona.
Theo looks at OBP, OBP
He lets you think too much for yourself, Francona.

Never gonna stop, give it up.
Such a slow hook. Always leave 'em in too long
You ain't the winning kind.
My my my i yi woo. Wh-wh-wh-why Francona?

my, my, my, my,my WHOO!Wh, wh, wh, Why Francona?(Guitar solo!)

So get cracking. Jose wants demos by Tuesday, 9 AM.

3. Tonight’s battle between President Bush’s old plaything and the team Senator Kerry described as “a breath of fresh air sweeping across the land” or something like that in his speech last night would seem to have national political implications. Though Kerry incorrectly stated that the Sox had closed to within 2.5 games of the Yankees in his address last night (Note: Wishful, or more likely, anticipatory thinking Senator), Jose does have to give him credit for touting the Red Sox while on the road. It is one thing to talk about how much one loves the Red Sox, quite another in Ohio.

Meanwhile, when NPR challenged a Republican Party spokesperson to try to spin the Yankees 22-0 loss to the Indians, he made a comment about how “We Republicans are all Yankees fans while we’re here in New York” or something to that effect and then conceded that it was impossible to spin that loss.

Jose tries to keep his personal politics out of the KEYS, but he cannot help but say that he really does feel for the Republicans of Red Sox nation. If Jose had been forced to watch Al Gore in a Yankees cap and hear Democratic officials talk about how “We are all Yankees fans” Jose may well have been a Dole voter in 1996. It is one thing to be a Yankee fan from New York; it is quite another to choose to be a Yankees fan while hailing from another state. Some would call it enthusiasm, Jose would call it evil.

So here is Jose’s proposal. Despite the fact that the Yankees have historically been affiliated with Republican high-finance New York, Jose thinks we should choose a new team to affiliate with the Republican party so as not to put the Republican members of Red Sox nation in an untenable position that they did not seek and (probably) do not deserve.

Therefore, the official baseball team of the Republican party for 2004 will be…THE CLEVELAND INDIANS!!! Why? Well, they’re in a swing state for starters. But they’re also capable of laying down blow out wins as the Yankees saw first hand. Their manager is Eric Wedge “Issue” and as one can see from their caps, they have no problem with making minorities feel uncomfortable and excluded. It’s a perfect match! The only problem might be that the Indians have that Japanese pitcher who made the gay porn video…the Republicans might not approve of that…you know… him being a foreigner.

While Jose is a Democrat, the KEYS are non-partisan, so the Democrats should have a team as well. So what squad should represent the Democrats? The lucky nine is…the PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES!!! They too are in a swing state. They spend money freely but get little in return; their fans are out of control and often counter productive. They even used to play at a Stadium called Veteran’s Stadium, which you’d think would be an advantage. For year’s Veteran’s stadium would go around talking about how it honored Veterans and boast of its military credentials, but you know what? It turned out that that stadium had never been in a was!!! Not Vietnam, not Grenada, nothing. So they blew it up. Not a bad match at all.

So who will win this cataclysmic match up between the Indians and Phillies? The answer is, Jose has no idea. They don’t play each other this year, and they sure as hell won’t meet in the World Series. They may have played in the preseason, but Jose is not going to look up preseason schedules. (Note: Damn it, Jose’s pride as a “journalist” made him look it up. They played exhibitions at Citizens Bank Ballpark on April 3 and 4, but Jose draws the line at checking the scores.) On the bright side, the outcome on November 2 should give us a good idea as to who would win a hypothetical “Dream World Series” between the Phillies and Indians.

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

From SoSH: Re: September 2nd - Lowe is Just

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

1. At about 1:20 AM last night, Jose went to bed to the mellifluous tones of the British Broadcasting Company on WBUR concluding an evening of baseball and blogging about France. At 1:30 the local news update came on including “The World’s Shortest Sports Report” (the 15 seconds BUR gives to the game). Jose was about half asleep by then, but he couldn’t help but notice that not only did the news reader have no clue about baseball, but whoever wrote the newscast (Note: Okay, it was probably the same guy.) had no idea about baseball. What gave it away was the phrase “Opening pitcher Bronson Arroyo lasted only 2 2/3 innings.” Opening pitcher? Does that make Johnny Damon our opening hitter?

Jose is sure that there are many newsreaders and writers who know nothing about sports, but most of them probably have the good sense to stick to the score. “The Red Sox beat the Anaheim Angels 12 to 7. In other news…)

Sadly, Jose doesn’t remember too much about the rest of the game report, as he was half asleep, but he imagines it went something like this:

“In sport this evening, The Boston Red Sox… wait ‘Sox?’ Shouldn’t that be ‘Socks?’ The Red Socks defeated the Anaheim Angles by the score of 12 points to 7 points. While opening pitcher Bronson Arroyo lasted only 2 2/3 innings, second pitcher Mike Myers, tertiary pitcher Terrence Adams, quaternary pitcher Mike Timlin and two other pitchers held the Angles to only two more points. A man with a beard had four hits for the Red Sox, and that gentleman who is always eating fried chicken on the television had four RsBI. The Red Sox conclude their tet a tet with the Angles tomorrow followed by a jostle with the Texas Saxons.”

Jose has written quite a bit this year about DLowe the Paranoid Android’s various robotic problems, from violating the three laws of robotics, to blisters in his metallic skin to his desperate desire to feel more human, to understand our hopes and aspirations, our mortality. But Jose may have overlooked something.

2. For so much of the season, DLowe was so bad, and yet now he has turned the corner (Note: Turned the corner? Apparently Jose’s brain is cross wired with the Republican party talking points) and transformed himself into almost an entirely different pitcher. How can this be? What has Jose missed until today? Jose has reached the conclusion that DLowe the Paranoid Android is no mere robot. He is a Transformer, or possibly a Gobot. But unlike most Transformers, he does not transform from a robot into a car, a plane, a gun or even a boom box. He transforms from the worst starting pitchers in baseball to one of the better ones. So if DLowe gets in trouble early tonight, listen for that distinctive transforming sound (Note: It’s ee-ee-aa-aa-rrrr) and watch him transform and roll out!!!

3. In their last two games, the Sox have scored an impressive 22 runs against one of the American League’s elite squads. How is this possible? As always, Jose has a theory.

On the old Bullwinkle show, there were a number of episodes that revolved around upsidasium, the anti-gravity metal. There has been a long running debate in the Melendez family about where upsidasium would fall on the periodic table of elements. Of course, this assumes, upsidasium is an element and not a compound like adamantium.

Jose’s father Dick Melendez, who knows nothing about chemistry, argues that it should come in at number 0, because it would have to be lighter than Hydrogen, in order to have its anti-gravity properties. Jose, who knows maybe a little more about chemistry, thinks that’s total BS. First of all, upsidasium isn’t just really light, it actually creates a force that is not only equal and opposite gravity, but is greater and opposite gravity. (Note: Take that Sir Isaac Newton!) Second, as best Jose understands, as one moves from left to right across the periodic table, each element has one electron/proton more than it’s predecessor. Jose doesn’t think there could be an element with 0 electrons and protons. What are a bunch of neutrons gonna do all alone? Nothin’.

As of today, elements with 1 to 116 electrons have been discovered. An element with 118 electrons also appeared to have been discovered in 1999, but the results have not been successfully reproduced. Moreover, upsidasium cold not be 117 because 117 falls in the halogen period or 118 because 118 should be a noble gas, while upsidasium is a metal Therefore, Jose would say upsidasium must be number 119 on the periodic table or higher. It could really fall in any metallic period after 116 ununhexium. (Note: Jose’s favorite element is 48, cadmium.)

But what does this have to do with baseball? Oh yes, Jose is pretty sure that the Angels are throwing balls laced with upsidasium, because once they go up, they don’t come down.

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

September 1 - KEYS TO FRANCE

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO FRANCE.

In his ongoing quest to search his personal history for blog material, Jose reaches his third foreign country, France, one of our most maligned and mocked allies. Whether its body odor, or rudeness or military incompetence, France has something for everyone!!! (Note: Or so the joke goes. Jose does not indulge in stereotypes, except of Samoans). Jose has been to France two to three times. First at the tender age of sixteen with his family on is first trip to the European continent, second for a single day while living in Germany’s Black Forest and third (if one wishes to count it) on a plane layover on the way from Boston to Vienna.

Jose does not think of himself as a Francophile. He speaks no French, dislikes much of French literature and finds Gerard Depardieu to be a complete bore (Note: Though "The Return of Martin Gere" was good), yet he would desperately like to live in France. Is it the famed French cuisine? No. The fine French wines? Tempting but not enough. The prospect of love in "The French Style?" Not even that. Jose would like to live in France because of the remarkable extent to which they have institutionalized laziness. Jose enjoys relaxing as much as the next man, probably more…the next American man that is…but he has much to learn from the French. As best Jose understands, the French, as a matter of law, limit most workers to a 35 hour work week. Compared to the ever expanding American work week, which seems to be a minimum of 40 hours these days and rapidly stretching towards 45, this is profoundly appealing.

Jose’s parents know a fellow who was a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, working nearly 100 hours a week. After a while, he left to make money, like all good ADAs and went to work for Microsoft for comparably absurd hours. With time, Microsoft transferred him to Paris along with is wife and baby so he could work on their European operations. He dove into his new work with his typical zest. But one day, he received a visit from the French labor police who promptly demanded to see his time cards.

"No, no monsieur," they exclaimed. "Zis weell not doo. In France, zer ees a law zat says, you may not work more zan zee thirty five hours."

"There must be a misunderstanding, you see," he replied. "I can’t get everything done in thirty five hours. What is my employer supposed to do?"

"Zey weell hire more people," the officer explained. "You can not doo eet all." Also, you must take zee six weeks vacation."

So the lawyer went to his superiors and explained that they were being monitored for compliance with French labor laws and that further violations would be taken quite seriously. This left him with weeks more leisure time then he’d ever had before and more time to spend with his wife and child. He spends much of his free time thinking about how to avoid getting transferred to a country with more relaxed labor laws.

The funny thing is that while Americans would view this as a recipe for unemployment and economic disaster, which it probably is, the French view it as a solution to unemployment. If one does not allow people to work longer hours, they reason, companies will simply have to hire more people.

Jose knows of only one occasion when this was seriously advocated by an American politician and this stretches the definition of "seriously." In 1996 and 1998, the Republicans ran a candidate for Massachusetts’ famously liberal eighth congressional district named Phil Hyde. Hyde was something of a socialist Republican, to the extent that such things exist. (Note: He used the pink elephant as his campaign symbol. Really.) Hyde’s one and only issue was timesizing, in other words the French labor system. He was a native Canadian, which Jose figures is the only way he could have come up with the idea. Jose thinks he eventually founded the "Massachusetts Timesizing Not Downsizing Party."

So until Phil Hyde is elected President, which since he is a native Canadian won’t be until after the Constitution is amended to allow Shwarzenagger to run, Jose will have to hold on to is fantasy of a leisurely life in France.

2. Next Jose must address the issue of the famous French rudeness. To be honest, Jose has never really experienced it, save for one McDonald’s cashier who was furious that young Jose couldn’t figure out how to order. (Note: Pulp Fiction was still two years away so how was Jose to know that a Quarter Pounder with cheese is a "Royale with Cheese"). But aside from that, Jose didn’t experience a single incident of rudeness in the total eight days he has spent in Paris, Normandy and Strasbourg. (Note: Though Jose has a sneaking suspicion that Napoleon inside his tomb was flipping Jose off. Jose just can’t prove it. Yet.) Certainly, he experienced less rudeness that one typically sees in say, 90 seconds on the Green Line. Jose is open to the possibility, just the possibility that people may have been taking advantage of the fact that he does not speak a single word of French (Note: Excluding sacre bleu) to mock him behind his back, but the French wouldn’t do that to Jose. Would they?

3. Jose would like to take a rare moment to be serious. Jose’s favorite place in France was Normandy. The people are nice, the food is drenched in cream sauce, the prices are lower and it is a history lover’s dream. Jose does not tell people what to do too often, but in this instance he will make an exception. Every American, every free European, should visit Normandy if only to reflect on the magnitude of the sacrifices made for our freedom.

Jose has visited battlefields at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Bull Run and not only are they dwarfed in magnitude of combat by the beaches of Normandy, bit in symbolic impact as well. Even Gettysburg, the site of the most devastating battle in our history, christened in the blood of two armies of Americans, does not convey the enormity and tragedy of war and the nobility of sacrifice like the beaches of Normandy. To stare down at the brown sandy beaches from the ruins of a German machine gun nest, to imagine crossing the rain soaked sand through storms of bullets, fences of razor wire and the chaos of battle, is to forever change ones conception of "just a few hundred yards."

And then there are the cemeteries, green French fields dotted with small white crosses for mile after mile, each representing a young life, an American life, not so different from mine, stopped in midstream, ended in violence. But each of those crosses symbolizes more than a lost life, it symbolizes the willingness of human beings to protect each other from torment and terror and tyranny, the willingness of regular people to stand up for what is right and good and make sacrifices to protect it. This is, of course, only one part of the story of Europe and indeed the world. While the cemeteries of Normandy are a monument to the willingness of normal men to fight evil, the concentration camps elsewhere in Europe are monuments to the willingness of normal men to perpetrate it.

For all of the rhetoric and, perhaps, reality of French dislike and resentment of Americans, Jose could not perceive it in Normandy. While no one ever said thank you (though it was almost 50 years after, thanks enough had been said) the warmth towards Americans was palpable. The Normans, reminded every day of the sacrifices of our country by those rows of little white crosses, by those little symbols of compassion and honor, seemed to send the message "We were happy to see you Americans then, and we are happy to see you now."

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

From SoSH: Re: September 1st - Bronson either Or

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

1. Poor Mosey Nixon. The Sox right fielder has spent so much time on the disabled list this year that he has not only had time to get a terrible haircut, but to come up with the idea of referring to it as a “Bosworth” after the rare athlete who was both a spectacular bust as a football player and an actor (and maybe as an XFL sideline reporter if Jose recalls correctly.)

Jose imagines Mosey sitting around day after day watching NFL Films and Bosworth’s film Stone Cold, desperately hoping for his leg to heal so he can return to action. (Note: Do you think if you mention “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to Nixon, he goes on a rant about how Austin is ripping off Bosworth? God, Jose hopes so.) Still, Jose supposes that we should be happy that Nixon didn’t fixate on an even bigger NFL Flop. Can you imagine if Nixon had returned to the team sporting a Mandarich, a Schuller or, at the risk of hitting to close to home, a Ken Simms?

2. Ahhh…The Sox are on fire, the Yankees are deteriorating and there is much rejoicing in Melendezville. Much has already been said about the Yankees humiliating 22-0 loss, particularly that it looks like a football score. (Note: So let Jose get out his calculator. That would be three touchdowns with one missed PAT; or five field goals a touchdown and a PAT; or maybe just 11 safeties.)

But as Jose watched the score scroll across the bottom of his TV screen last night, he thought it could easily be confused with a few other numbers.

• The Electoral College battle in Illinois in 2000 (Gore 22, Bush 0) (Note: Now Illinois has only 21.)
• The Olympic Medal race between the Netherlands and Turkmenistan. (Netherlands 22, Turkmenistan 0)
• The exchange rate between Azerbaijani Manats and U.S. dollars. (22 Manats buys 0 dollars. This may not technically be true, but it’s close enough.)
  
  All of these things ran through Jose’s mind when he first saw the score 22-0, but then he realized the Yankees just suck.

3. After the game, Jose did catch a little bit of the Republican convention. He was particularly struck by the annoying and silly address of the Bush twins, who were clearly not ready for prime time. When they made a crack about “Who is this Dick Cheney guy,” or something to that effect, the camera panned to the Vice President who was quietly seething and appeared to be thinking “When I am President, people like you will be lined up and shot.”

In this age when being on TV is the true American dream, it is rare to see someone so patently unhappy with being in the spotlight. In fact, Jose doesn’t thin he’s seen anyone that unhappy to be in the spotlight since Wade Boggs faced Randy Johnson in game 5 of the 1995 Division Series, with a look that said “Please let him walk me” all over his face. And Jose doesn’t imagine he’ll see a look like that again until the first time A-Rod faces Keith Foulke in the 9th inning of a playoff game.

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

From SosH: Re: August 31st - Curt on home Land

It's time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. (WITH BONUS BLOG ONLY FEATURE AT THE BOTTOM)

Today is the day. Tonight is the night. And yesterday, thankfully is yesterday. Jose hates off days. For one thing, Jose has a terrible time writing KEYS after an off day. He has to spend twice as long getting his fingers loose, and the KEYS never seem to have the same pop as on his regular zero days rest. He started the blog partly to give him a place to “throw on the side” on off days, but we’ll see if it makes a difference.

After an off day, Jose also has to hold on to the paper from the previous day lest he forget about some important nugget from yesterday’s news. As a result, Jose carries around two to four newspapers in his courier bag. The only way he could be a bigger fire hazard is if he carried around some oily rags and Heathcliff Slocumb too. (Note: Jose originally used Bob Stanley in this joke. Which is funnier? What about Jeff Russell? Or Ken Ryan?)

The other reason Jose hates off days is the same reason as everyone else. What the hell is he going to do with himself if there’s no game to watch? Last night Jose got stuck flipping between World Series of Poker reruns, WWF RAW, the Republican Convention, and Adlai Stevenson’s Democratic Convention acceptance speech from either 1952 or 1956. And you know what? So that’s a choice between old cards, a wrestling card, Andy Card and…crap, Jose can’t think of anything having to do with a card for Adlai. But all Jose really wanted was to focus on the wild card. Tonight that can happen. (Note: Adlai had them all beat. When Adlai Stevenson is the most dynamic, interesting thing one can find for amusement, that, friends, is a reason to hate off days.)

2. Thankfully, Jose has a Tony Castrati column to grease the skids on this particular off day.

Castrati Uncharacteristically Optimistic

What TC says: “Looking back, they almost always have had a true ace.”

What TC means: I spent last night watching the World Series of Poker too.

What TC says: “The Red Sox always have had someone at the front of their pitching rotation on whom they could pin their perennial championship hopes.”

What TC means: Perennial championship hopes, goat horns, whatever.

What TC says: “’It's up there,' said knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, the senior statesman of the Red Sox”

What TC means: Senior statesman…yup, I watched Adlai Stevenson too.

What TC says: “Now the Sox are routinely getting six, seven and even eight innings from each of their five starters, which allows everyone to rest a little.”

What TC means: What is the bullpen doing resting in the middle of the season? Where is the hunger, the fire? I want my relievers calling the manager in the fourth and saying “Put me in NOW Skip. I demand to help.”

3. According to the Globe, the Sox thought Curtis Leskanic might be injured on Sunday when he began rubbing his arm while pitching in the ninth. It turns out that Leskanic had just applied icy-hot to his arm and it was burning him. This makes Jose wonder if perhaps some of the Sox other injuries might have simpler explanations.

Could BK Kim’s sore arm, in fact be caused by a fire ants nesting in his arm pit?

Could Scott Williamson’s elbow problems be the result of lifting a pint glass too often (Note: Switch to cans, they’re lighter.) (Additional Note: Jose has no idea if Williamson drinks.)

Could Trot (sic) Moesy Nixon’s bad hamstring be nothing more than the result of a chainsaw accident? By special request, a link to the origin of Mosey. (Note: Not only did Jose screw up Nixon's name, he then misread the comment. Yikes)

Is it possible that Ellis Burks’ knee injury is simply a byproduct of the fact that he is incredibly old?

Could Kevin Youkilis simply have a hangover from too much partying with Dionysis on Mt. Olympus at the Olympics?

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


BONUS BlOG FEATURE: Occasionally, Jose writes a KEY and then decides that it sucks and discards it. Historically, these were lost to the world, but no more. Now, you, as a KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!) reader, can read the worst of Jose's content! Check back in often. There may be some additional, poor efforts to see, in addition to your regular KEYS.

3b. When Jose opened the paper this morning, he immediately turned to Red Sox Notebook, as he always does. Instantly the headline “Another Setback” jumped out at him. What was it? Did Mosey Nixon reinjure his leg? Was BK Kim done for the year? Nope…but Lenny DiNardo is hurting. Setback? This is great. Now we can keep him without having to put him on the actual team. Running that tidbit under the heading “Another Setback” is a little bit like running a headline “Sox Get Bullpen Help” when they’ve picked up Terry Adams. It’s just silly and misleading.

August 30 - KEYS TO THE OLYMPICS

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

Jose knows what you’re thinking. You’re thinking "Damn it Jose, the Olympics are over. We just endured two weeks of archery, shot put and gymnastics judging controversies, and NOW your’re writing about it?"

Yes, yes Jose is. Because Jose has thoughts that need to be shared, shared with everyone who comes here for average to below average non-baseball content even though they get plenty of slightly above average baseball content from Jose on SoSH game threads.

What Jose probably likes the best about the summer Olympics is that they remind him of the carefree field days in elementary school. (Note: Jose actually prefers the Winter Olympics. He finds that because the sports are lower profile, it has a greater sense of purity than the over-hyped and over-commercialized Summer Olympics.) Once a year, Jose’s elementary school would have a field day for each grade over at the high school track with events like high jump and the 50 yard dash. Winners would receive colorful ribbons and the pride that comes from knowing that you can out run or out jump your fellow eight year olds. What Jose doesn’t like about the Olympics is where they differ from the field days of yore. With the goal of making the Olympics more like Field Day, Jose suggests they add the following events: (Note: Jose knows that lots of people do columns suggesting the addition of comical Olympic events. The difference here is that Jose is serious. He really would like to see these events in the Olympics.)

1. Three legged race -- Jose hates seeing those fast people run around the drag like they’re so
much better than us. You know what would slow them down? If they were tied to someone else. Also, it could provide an opportunity for ex-cons who did time on chain gangs to rejoin society and contribute.

2. Crazy sneaker race -- Do you remember this one? Participants take off their sneakers and place them in a jumbled pile 40 yards away from the starting line. Then, when the gun sounds, they race from the starting line down to the pile of sneakers, find their sneakers, put their sneakers on and then race back. Maybe this wouldn’t actual appeal to Jose so much, but Jose bets the International Olympic Committee would love it. Think of the marketing dollars they could get from the sneaker companies!

(Note: Jose used to make sure that he owned at least one pair of Velcro shoes so he could have a leg up in the crazy sneaker race. This is the elementary school equivalent of doping isn’t it? Good think they didn’t test for Velcro.)

3. Tug of war – This actually used to be an Olympic sport, right down to the controversy (according to ESPN Page 2 there was some sort of scandal involving weighted shoes.) Jose doesn’t think they should actually have an Olympic Tug of War team. That would just be silly. Jose simply thinks they should have a tug of war as the last event of the Olympics with each country submitting a team of five men and five women who are Olympians in other sports. Wouldn’t this be a much more entertaining way to end the Olympics then with Greek pop stars?

(Note in lieu of a forbidden fourth KEY: In 1960, Jose’s father, aunt and Grandmother presented Jose’s grandfather with a gold medal for his performance as a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic Sleeping Team. Jose would like to see competitive sleeping added to the Olympics if for no other reason than saying "German Olympic Sleeping Team" in German "Deutsche Olympische Schlafmanschaft" sounds freaking great.)

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

From SoSH: Re: August 29th - Wake like an Oak

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

1. Last Friday on ESPN.com Page 2 John Kruk argued that if he was starting a Major league team. Derek Jeter is the player he would take with his first pick. There has been a fair amount of discussion about how completely absurd and ignorant this is. There’s been quite a bit of "Kruk’s a fat moron," but also a lot of "Kruk should shut the hell up and have another cheeseburger." These are both good points, but as you know, Jose is an empiricist, he wants solid evidence that Kruk is a fat moron, rather than one piece of anecdotal evidence, however strong. So let’s look at the record.

January 2004 – Kruk said "If I’m starting a Democratic presidential ticket right now the guy I want heading it is Rev. Al Sharpton. I know that all of your fancy polls say he doesn’t have a chance, but when I look at him, all I see is man who keeps winning debates. Debate, after debate, after debate he wins, and you just can’t quantify something like that. There was a debate last week, and there was a question addressed to John Edwards. Edwards starts to answer and then all of a sudden Sharpton comes out of nowhere and swipes the question and gives an answer about how President Bush is "Putting our nation in a situation of frustration." And I said, what is that guy doing in on that question. He was all the way on the other side of the room from Edwards. You just don’t expect him to be in on that question ever, but the guy has such great instincts, he can get there. Wow!"

April 2004 – Kruk said "If I’m putting together a pop group right now, you know who I want for my lead singer? Ricky Martin. That’s right. I know, there are a lot of folks out there who might say Brittney Spears or Christina Aguillera or Justin Timberlake, and they’re all fine pop stars, but look at Martin’s career. All he does is put out gold records, from Menudo to La Vida Loca. The guy is a winner, and I don't care what the statistics say."

October 2003 – Kruk said, "If I ever get to write my own Spiderman title, you know who the number one arch nemesis is going to be? Kraven the Hunter. Yes, I know all of the arguments that he’s not really a top tier villain and that issues featuring him sell well below normal, but you know what he has that the Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus or Electro don’t have? Intangibles.
Look, the idea that he’s a big game hunter from Russia who uses jungle herbs to gain super strength may seem sort of silly, but the bottom line is that the guy actually killed Spiderman in a crossover series in the late 1980s. Okay, he really just shot Spiderman with some drugs that put him in a coma and then buried him alive, but he could have killed him, if that had been his plan. Who else has done that? At the end of the day, the guy just knows how to beat super heroes.

Well, that’s the evidence, and it’s pretty damning. It may not prove that Kruk is fat, but it sure does prove that he is a moron. So let Jose make an open invitation to the Krukster. If you’d like to, Jose would love to have you in his fantasy league.

2. Tony Castrati wrote again today, and that means that Jose needs to hook him right on in to Babelfish and see what comes out. You can't have a pahti witout Tony Castrati.

"Martinez, Sox keep good times rolling: Top Tigers to run win streak to five"

What TC says: "Lately, it seems, the Red Sox starting lineup has been a game of musical chairs."
What TC means: No wait, it was more like dominoes. One person gets injured then the next, then the next. I’ll call it my domino theory!

What TC says: "So continued the symphony that has been playing at Fenway Park."

What TC means: I know, I’ll use a metaphor that makes no sense whatsoever.

What TC says: "And, for the third straight game, the once go-for-broke Red Sox executed a sacrifice bunt, suggesting that their recent change in fortunes might be partly due to a change in philosophy."

What TC means: When I talked to Terry Francona earlier in the season, he was always like "Hegel says this, Hegel says that…Do you know what Hegel would do in a tie game with a runner on first and no outs in the bottom of the eighth?" But now he can’t stop talking about Durkheim. And I’m like "Durkheim isn’t even really a philosopher he’s more of a sociologist." And Terry’s like, "He is so a philosopher." You just can’t reason with the guy.

What TC says: All of it was part of yet another sound, fundamental victory for a Sox club that will be looking for a four-game series sweep today.

What TC means: Durkheim is a philosopher? That’s such bullsh*t.

(Note: This piece was so loaded up with player quotes that there was barely anything to mock. Tough times in Melendezville.)

3. So the Red Sox are now launching attacks against official scorers. According to the Boston Globe, Red Sox officials have recently gone after both Charles Scoggins and Joe Giulotti. To Jose it just seems like a bad idea to go after the official scorers. If you piss them off they might "accidentally" zone out for a minute or two and miss noting a couple runs in a big game. Then in the ninth you think you’re up 5-4 but officially you’re down 4-3.

Think it can’t happen? Oh, it can, it can indeed. Jose is pretty sure that while keeping score for Jose’s brother’s basketball game, Jose’s father got distracted and forgot to count a basket for his own son’s team. (Note: Jose’s father is not a sports guy.)

Now Jose isn’t accusing is father of deliberately screwing the team, (in fact there is some debate about whether this even really happened), but if we added the information that Jose’s brother had failed to clean his room that morning (which may or may not be true) one has the beginnings of a case. The lesson: Leave the official scorers alone. It’s like being mean to the secretaries in high school. It may not seem like a big deal at the time, but it will come back to haunt you.

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

August 29 - KEYS TO INTROSPECTION

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO INTROSPECTION.

Never let it be said that Jose isn’t a flawed human being. He can be petty, he can be mean, he can be arrogant, and, worst of all, he can be unfunny. But also never let it be said that Jose lacks knowledge of self. Jose is quite aware of his flaws and is always working to minimize them. He can do this because unlike (presumably) most of the Boston media, Jose is willing to take a hard look at himself, a hard look at his motives and say "Jose, you can do better."

Can you imagine Tony Castrati doing that? Can you imagine him looking in the mirror and saying "Tony, you are a talented baseball writer, with a good knowledge of the game. In fact, you may have more potential than any baseball writer in Boston today, but you can also be incredibly petty. You let insecurity and territoriality lead you into a vendetta against Curt Euro for his interaction with Sons of Sam Horn. Moreover, you are falling into the Boston sports media trap of making your name on creating controversies. You could be the next Peter Gammons or the next Dan Shaughnessey and right now you’re heading towards Shaughnessey, hating sports and everyone in it. Also, your a total pantywaist for taking three weeks off in the middle of the season. You know what? Jose Melendez is right about you."

It is in this spirit of introspection and with the intention of encouraging Boston sports media members to take a serious look at themselves that Jose will apply the "translator" concept, which he stole from Wonkette and typically applies to Tony Castrati, to himself. It may be ugly, but it will be honest. Let’s see if Jose can withstand is own withering sarcasm.

We now go way back to a distinctly mediocre KEYS (the weekend KEYS always are) from

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

1. What Jose says: "It’s time for Jose to address the Roger Clemens story. Jose considered discussing it yesterday, but frankly he needed more time to think about it."

What Jose means: Jose already had three KEYS in mind for yesterday when the Clemens story broke. He is sufficiently forgetful that if he didn’t use one of them in order to accommodate the Clemens story, he might lose it all together. Today, he had nothing, so he might as well rage about Roger.

What Jose says: "After all, one can not take something of this magnitude too lightly. How would one address the possibility of Hitler returning to the Germans? (Note: Don’t blame Jose for insensitivity; Debbie Clemens made the initial comparison.) How would one address the possibility of Lucifer rejoining the choir of Angels? How would one address the possibility of the Doctor Octopus returning to lead the Sinister Six?"

What Jose means: Is there anything easier to do when writing about the Sox than to rip Roger Clemens? (Note: Aside from ripping Grady or McNamara.) It’s sort of like eating sugar. Yes, it gets you fired up, but after a few minutes you start to drag. (Note: Jose first heard this analogy for the music of John Williams from a friend. If he stole it from someone else, Jose is stealing too. Sorry about that.)

What Jose says: "You oppose it damn it. You take a stand a go into the streets with pitchforks and placards and yell from the ramparts "THIS MAN IS EVIL, THIS TRADE IS WRONG, AND THIS WILL NOT STAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

What Jose means: Demagogue, demagogue, demagogue.

What Jose says: "Have we forgotten what this man did to us? Have we forgotten his expulsion from game four against the As? Has the shame of his sloth diminished with time? Is the contempt he showed upon his departure less painful? He lied and said he would only leave to play closer to home. He engineered an illegal trade to the Yankees. He considers George Steinbrenner a personal friend. To borrow a line from, of all people, Dan Shaughnessy, if you are a Red Sox fan, Roger Clemens is not your friend."

What Jose means: Let’s see how many example of Rogers malfeasance it takes to get Jose to 300 words. 1…2…3…4…5…6. Six examples. Super good.

What Jose says: "But the deal fell through. There is some small justice in the world. Now we will not have to watch as Roger bows to the As in the playoffs yet again. Be it Dave Stewart or Barry Zito, he cannot beat them. The As could start Steve Ontiveros in a playoff game against Roger tomorrow and still win."

What Jose means: When in doubt, throw out some old player that almost everyone has forgotten about. Steve Ontiveros, Nate Minchey…someone like that.

What Jose says: "And then we will be spared watching Roger imploding against the Yankees in the ALCS. You have hurt Red Sox nation too many times Roger Clemens, we will not take you back so you can hurt us again. Rot in Houston with your geriatric team, this time your lies have caught up with you. This time your manipulation will not be rewarded. So, take a long ride in your Steinbrenner funded Hummer and think about what you’ve done, you said spiteful man."

What Jose means: Is this KEY almost over? Jose is dying here.

2. What Jose says: "According to the Globe, DLowe the Paranoid Android has been receiving ideas on how to protect his blistered thumb from dermatologists from around the country."

What Jose means: Jose doesn’t have press access, and he won’t buy the Herald, so he has to rely on the Globe for KEYS ideas. That explains his great creativity and how he finds those unique angles.

What Jose says: "Unfortunately, it is completely useless. Why hasn’t a single mechanic sent a suggestion. Here is Jose’s idea. Why doesn’t DLowe call into Car Talk to ask for some advice? Those guys seem to know a lot about mechanical contraptions. Jose bets it’s a problem with DLowe’s catalytic converter."

What Jose means: Jose has gotten more mileage out of the Lowe is a robot bit than he ever expected. Does anyone even remember how it started? Lowe said he was having mechanical problems. Mechanical… robot… mechanical… robot…get it? Jose, bets that a good 45 percent of all KEYS are about DLowe’s robotic issues.

3. What Jose says: "So long to third basemen Earl Snyder, and we hope to see you again in September."

What Jose means: Thank God for September call ups. Writing about the same guys over and over again, Jose runs out of ideas for stupid jokes about their names and mannerisms.

What Jose says: "Snyder is what is often referred to as a AAAA player, a player who is good enough to dominate in AAA, but not good enough to stick in the majors."

What Jose means: Would some sort of joke about the 4-H Club worked better here? Now Jose wonders.

What Jose says: "Jose applauded him enthusiastically on Wednesday night and would like to give the utmost plaudits to Earl Snyder now. Very few members of the nobility would be willing to toil for years in the minor leagues. So congratulations, Earl Snyder, you are a credit to the first estate."

What Jose means: Jose is now on cruise control. It is warm and sunny outside, and Jose cannot possibly justify sitting around the house writing jokes that are clearly going to bomb on a day like this.

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

So that is how Jose stands up to his own scathing methods. Did Jose come off as a bored, arrogant callous eccentric? Or did he merely come of as a spoiled, insensitive oddball? Either way, Jose still thinks he came out looking better than Tony Castrati. So Castrati, Jose has taken a look at himself. Now it’s your turn. Jose challenges you to write a column ripping yourself for taking three weeks of the season off. Be a man. Show that you can take your own medicine.

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

From SoSH: Re: August 28th - Pedro has To

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

1. According to the Boston Globe, Red Sox closer Keith Foulke has launched a new salvo in his ongoing war against Major League Baseball’s dictatorial uniform policies. Foulke has been accosted by MLB before for being so unpatriotic as to wear an American Flag on his cap. Who are these "Americans" Foulke supports? Some kind of street gang?

Major League Baseball, which sees no problem with 45 minutes renditions of "God Bless America" in the seventh inning stretch of playoff games, apparently has major issues with small shows of personal patriotism that depart from corporate norms. Foulke’s latest riposte cam in response to MLB’s insistence that he remove a Lance Armstrong/Nike "Live Strong" wristband that promotes the fight against cancer. What better way to celebrate the Jimmy Fund radiothon then by attacking other cancer charities! Foulke responded. "They want us to be robots. They’re trying but they’re going to fail."

In a related story, MLB announced that DLowe the Paranoid Android won its man…errr…robot of the year award.

2. Jose has been thinking about the twin six shooter/finger pointing gesture that the Red Sox have adopted as their salute to good play lately. What it really is, is a modest adaptation of former WWF Champion/ best selling author Mick Foley/Cactus Jack/Mankind/Dude Love’s famed six shooter sign that he flashes on his way to the ring or after hitting someone with a barbed wire bat. In his first book, "Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweat Socks" Foley says that he developed the sign while listening to "Love Shack" by the B-52s, specifically the "Bang, bang, on the door" part. Jose thinks we should take a cue from this, and start playing Love Shack after great plays so the players and fans can all do six shooters in unison. Jose knows its a cheesy song, he knows its not a manly song, but they already play "YMCA" at baseball games, so the bar has been set pretty low.

3. Let’s see. We can now add Manny Ramirez, Keith Foulke and Bill Mueller to the legions of injured Red Sox. A few days ago, Jose wrote about how even retired Red Sox are getting hurt. Well now it’s even worse. Jose is sad to report that he has just learned that Red Sox outfielders Tris Speaker and Harry Hooper have died. We must turn the tide against injuries now before it takes the lives of more players from the 1910s and 20s. You know, who have already been dead for decades.

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

From SoSH: Re: August 27th - Lowe keeps the Streak

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

1. At a little after 11 last night, as Jose wrote precious non-SoSH content for KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!), he saw something deeply disturbing on NBC. (Note: Wow, this blog turned Jose into a shill in what, two days? What’s the record for fastest sell out? Should Jose call Guinness? ) Bob Costas was interviewing the U.S. gold medal winning Women’s soccer team. As the interview moved towards an end, Costas asked Mia Hamm Garciaparra, (Jose knows she didn’t take Nomar’s name but it just sounds more evil that way, like Stephanie McMahon Helmsley)how Nomar liked Chicago. She replied that he liked it, it is a great city and she is looking forward to getting back to root him on. Fine, no problem there. It is good to support your loved ones and Chicago is indeed a great city. That’s when the trouble began. All of a sudden, her teammates start whooping and yelling “Let’s go Cubs.”

None of these women was a Cubs fan before Nomar got traded, as best Jose knows, and certainly not all of them were Cubs fans. Now suddenly they love the Cubs. Is this the kind of loyalty they look for from their fans? Should Jose have switched his allegiance from USA Soccer to Brazilian soccer because of a few personnel moves? (Note: More importantly should Jose care about women’s soccer in the first place?) Either you’re with a team or your not is Jose’s approach. It is a team’s creed, it’s ethos that matters, not who is on it at any given time.

For instance, a guy Jose went to high school with and with whom he played 4th grade basketball ended up playing for Duke. This guy was the nicest guy in the world and Jose wanted him to succeed in basketball and in life. But Jose had always loathed the despicable and arrogant Duke team. So what did he do? He went right on booing the Blue Devils. It’s not about the people, it’s about who they represent.

2. After 26 days of inactivity, Tony Castrati has finally returned to the Herald and saved Jose the inconvenience of having to think up a KEY number two today. Thank God. With that, Jose proudly announces the return of the Tony Castrati translator.

Balancing act on the beam: Tigers latest to fall victim to new style
Tony Castrati: Back to Work, Back to Jerk

What TC says: “They are winning via blowouts and in close ones, following offensive explosions on the road with pitching masterpieces at home.”

What TC means: They would win, could win in a boat. They would win, could win with a goat. They will not lose not here, or there. They will not lose, not anywhere.

What TC says: “The Red Sox shook up their roster and reversed their fortunes, and they are now doing their darned-est (sic)to make a return trip to the heart of October.”

What TC means: The three books I read on my vacation were “Reversal of Fortune,” “Heart of Darkness” and “The Hunt for Red October.”

What TC says: “Who are these guys?”

What TC means: No, really who are they? I’ve been away from so long, that I’ve forgotten.

What TC says: “A role this time filled by Bronson Arroyo the human string cheese.”

What TC means: Remember that ad for Polly-O String Cheese? The one in the mid-1980s You know, “Hey Jimmy, give me a pizza with extra cheese, and hold the tomato sauce, and the crust.” I loved that commercial.

What TC says: “The Red Sox' plastic man lasted 7 1/3 innings.”

What TC means: While I was deserting my co-workers in the middle of baseball season, I did still mange to read KEYS TO THE GAME and caught the bit about the birthday cake and the little plastic Red Sox. That was a good bit, I think I should steal it.

What TC says: “The latter after a sacrifice bunt (the Sox' ninth this season) by firefly Dave Roberts.”

What TC means: Let’s see, if Arroyo is made out of both cheese and plastic then Roberts is what? A grasshopper? No…wait…a ladybug? No that’s awful…a…firefly? Yeah, firefly. But he’s also giraffe.

What TC says: “The beefy Mirabelli”

What TC means: String cheese and beef, now that’s a battery of deliciousness.

What TC says: “Right now, they're doing just fine by themselves.”

What TC means: Unlike those b*tches at the Inside Track. I can’t believe they agreed to do that Herald Veterans for Truth commercial.

3. We learned in today’s Globe that Doug Mientkiewicz (Note: Jose can now spell Mientkiewicz without looking. God he hopes it’s on the GRE) hears the theme to “Chariots of Fire” in his head every time he thinks he can beat out a ball. Needless to say, this got Jose thinking about what other players hear while running the bases.

Trot/Mosey Nixon: Trot, trot to Boston, trot, trot to Lynn

Manny Ramirez:The 59th Street bridge song by Simon and Garfunkel “Slow down, you move to fast, got to make this morning last, Just kicking down the cobble stones. Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.”

Mark Bellhorn: I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash

Kevin Millar: The Chicken Dance

Kevin Youkilis: What if (Greek) God Was One of Us by Joan Osbourne

Dave Roberts: I Think We’re Alone now “Running just as fast as we can, holding on to one another’s hands.”

Johnny Damon: A Mighty Fortress is Our God, by Martin Luther

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

AUGUST 26 - KEYS TO JAPAN

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO JAPAN.

1. Jose knows what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Is Jose just going to bore us all by going county by country until no one cares? Well, yes, that was sort of Jose’s plan, but he’ll mix it up a little bit. Jose promises that he will try to write on a variety of subjects that he doesn’t have to think too hard about, rather than simply making his next 26 non-SoSH entries about strange and foreign lands. That said, onto Japan a strange and foreign land.

Japan!!! The Land of the Rising Sun!!! (Note: The song "House of the Rising Sun is NOT, and never will be about Japan no matter how much Jose wants it to be. Here’s your proof point Line 1, Verse 1 "There is a house in New Orleans, they call the rising sun." Jose is not great at geography, but he’s pretty sure Japan is not in New Orleans. As best he recalls, it’s much closer to Baton Rouge.)

Japan is one of those countries that people get nutty about. Jose has known many, many people who have at some point decided they would be interested in Japan and then immersed themselves completely in the country, its ancient culture and its animation with the big eyes. One would expect Jose to be one of these people. First of all, he is one-eighth Japanese and has a badass Japanese last name, so there is a natural affinity. Second, when Jose was a kid, there was a house one block over that would always be rented to a Japanese family where the father had a one-year fellowship at Harvard. Jose assumes the landlord was either Japanese or found the Japanese to be particularly good tenants. Each family would have a child who Jose would befriend. Then, at the end of the year, the family and Jose’s friend would be gone, never to be seen again. (Note: The exception to this was a Japanese family who lived in a different house on the same street. Jose is still in touch with them. Once you’ve played street hockey with a kid and pretended to be Terry O’Reilly and he pretended to be Rick Middleton, that’s a bond for life.) Jose had such a big problem with his friends moving to Japan, that even one of his white boy American friends ditched him to go to Japan. After that, Jose just assumed everyone would eventually abandon him for the lure of the East. Yes, Jose should have been one of those Japan obsessed people; yet he is not.

The Melendezette is, however, sort of. She lived and went to college in Japan for 18 months or so, and speaks the beautiful and difficult Japanese language. But she has had enough of Japan and the Japanese (Note: Pseudo Japanese-American white boys like Jose apparently excluded.) Perhaps she just got too close to the culture, too immersed in its peculiarities. Regardless, Jose suspects that if she was writing the KEYS TO JAPAN, they would read:

1. The Japanese are freaky.
2. No, really, they’re freaky.
3. Seriously, the Japanese are freaky.

But the Melendezette is not writing these KEYS, so there will be no mention of the Japanese reputation for freakiness, or the fact that they have vending machines that sell used underwear on the streets. As far as Jose is concerned, these are subtle quirks, not evidence of widespread cultural strangeness. Certainly it is not greater evidence of freakiness or cultural decay than America’s obsession with the worthless Paris Hilton or low carb diets.

Digressions aside, Jose has never been one of the hordes of young Americans who infest Japan like cicadas chirping their English lessons as loudly and as irritatingly as the cicadas chirp their mating songs. (Note: When Jose was in Japan, the cicadas, called "semi" in Japanese, were out in force. Jose suspects that the Japanese call them semi because they are about as loud as the horn of a Mack truck. It was almost impossible to sleep, they were so loud. Those of you who had to deal with them this summer in the mid-Atlantic have Jose’s greatest sympathies.)

2. Despite the fact that Jose is not a Japan nut, he has visited the country. He traveled there in August of 1990 to visit his friend form around the corner and travel with his family. It was Jose’s first time overseas and his first long plane trip alone. Jose prepared by taking a Berlitz Japanese class where he learned useful expressions like "Sumimassen" (Excuse me) and "Watashi wa wiski o nomemasu" (I drink whiskey) (Note: this expression also works with Beeru, Sake and Vodka.) Pretty much all Jose can do in Japanese today is proclaim his fondness for alcoholic beverages. He doesn’t even know how to order them, he can just say that he likes them. Still, it is a useful phrase.)

On the second leg of his flight from San Jose to Tokyo, Narita airport, Jose suffered what remains his greatest travel horror story of all time. (Note: And hopefully, it will remain his greatest travel horror story.) Jose had a five hour layover in San Jose and nothing, NOTHING to do, so being a good American, he decided to eat a great deal of McDonald’s food. One item Jose ordered was the new McLean Deluxe sandwich. (Note: Shouldn’t the world famous McLean psychiatric hospital, the model for the hospital in Girl, Interrupted sue them about this name? That has top be a trademark violation. Plus, this burger had no therapeutic or psychoactive properties as best Jose knows.) The McLean Deluxe was a low cal burger that mixed kelp with beef or some such nonsense. Jose got a small piece of burger stuck between two of his molars and that’s when he learned the horrifying truth – there is no place to buy dental floss in the San Jose airport. Jose flew 11 hours over the Pacific with that damn burger in his teeth, and then suffered through an additional two hours on the train from the airport to Tokyo. Eventually Jose got some dental floss, but it was too late, the damage was done.

What does this have to do with Japan? Ummm…Jose thinks that the first thing to learn in and Japanese class should be, "Pardon, me, do you have any floss, I have beef and kelp between my teeth."

As long as Jose is on the theme of food, he should say that the Japanese, despite having excellent food and a fine attention to freshness and flavor, make the worst pizza on Earth. His first day in Tokyo, Jose was sleeping off his jet lag and awoke in the evening to the comforting smell of pizza. Jose is not typically the sort of person who looks for American food in a foreign land, but he was only 13 then and needed a familiar comfort as he acclimated. When the box opened he was horrified to see that the pizza was slathered in turkey, onion and pineapple, a disgusting combination. (Note: If one judges Japanese cuisine form Iron Chef, one would expect the pizza to be covered in truffles, foie gras and caviar. Isn’t that the key to everything on Iron Chef? They take the ingredient, grouper, Kale, margarine, whatever and smother it in truffles, foie gras and caviar, the three most expensive ingredients on earth. Very creative.) What’s worse is that even without the vile mixture of toppings, it still would have been the worst pizza Jose had ever eaten. So when visiting Japan east sushi, eat sukiyaki, eat corn (Note: The Japanese love corn, Jose has no idea why, as he thinks of is as a very western crop), but for the love of God, or Buddha or whoever, stay away from the pizza.

3. Let’s see we’re now two KEYS deep on one of the great powers and Jose has talked about how they are or are not freaky and about having food stuck in his teeth. Yup, it sounds like Jose is right where he ought to be. Now Jose cold write about the rituals ad pageantry of Japanese baseball, or about how his friend’s grandfather remembered seeing Ruth and Gehrig when they toured Japan before the war. He could recall the subtle beauty of Kyoto’s Gold and Silver Pavilions or the excitement of Pachinko. He could recount his trip to Mt. Fuji or his chance encounter with Mr. Fuji. (Note: Okay, Jose didn’t really meet Mr. Fuji. And if he had you all would have heard about it long before now.) But instead Jose will either write about his first experience with karaoke (Note: Japanese for please insert ear plugs) or sumo wrestling. Let’s go with sumo.

Jose actually knows very little about sumo wrestling, and he didn’t see any in person during his Japanese tour, but he does have a theory he’d like to float. Jose thinks that sumo wrestlers, really good ones, would make the best football offensive linemen in the world. Think about it. O-lineman are basically incredibly strong, really quick, unbelievably fat guys. Sumo wrestlers are incredibly strong, really, really quick, even more unbelievably fat guys. Shouldn’t this be a natural fit? Moreover, sumo wrestling consists of pushing people around, which seems to be the essence of run blocking.

The Melendezette says that many Hawaiians and Samoans who try sumo but can’t cut it go into football, so this is probably not a revolutionary idea. Still, given the Patriots’ uncertain offensive line situation, shouldn’t they be trying out Akebono or something? (Note: Akebono, a native of Hawaii, was the first foreigner to receive the rank of Yokozuna or high champion. Interestingly former WWF champion, the late "Yokozuna" was certainly not a Yokozuna and probably was not a sumo wrestler. Akebono’s appearance as a judge on Iron Chef in the second battle between an iron chef an Bobby Flay was fantastic. His reaction to every dish was, "This is really good, I could eat 400 of these.")

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

Re: August 26th - Bronson get a Win

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

1. As best Jose understands, Tony Castrati has not written for the Herald for pretty much the entire month of August due to the birth of his son. (Note: Is it a coincidence that the Sox have been on fire in August?) The birth of child is as joyous an event as there is in this world, and Jose has nothing mean or snide to say about it. In fact, Jose would like to congratulate Tony and express his wish that Tony’s son bring him much pride and joy.

Now that that is over with, let the vicious ad hominum attacks resume! Castrati you took a month of paternity leave? Are you serious? Jose doesn’t know which shocks him more, that a Neanderthal rag like the Herald would allow paternity leave (Note: Jose suspects it was vacation time) or that a baseball columnist would take it in the middle of the season. Jose has said it before, he’ll say it again: if a Red Sox player skipped a month of the season for an injury, much less the birth of a child, Castrati would be all over him. We’d spend days reading about how he doesn’t really want to play here and is insulting his teammates, yet Castrati disappears for a full month of the season and we’re supposed to be okay with it? You know what? Jose thinks that maybe Castrati doesn’t really want to work for the Herald. Jose knows this will be a tough decision for Pat Purcell to make, but it’s time to send Castrati to the Chicago Sun-Times for Jay Mariotti and a barrel of ink. (Note: Is there a worse sports columnist on Earth than Mariotti? (Note: No.)

Listen to this recent advertisement about Castrati’s absence. (Note: The below are lies, you know, fiction, so no one sue.)

Narrator: Tony Castrati would like you to think he’s a veteran reporter and a team player, but the men who served with him have a different story.

Jeff Horrigan: (Over images of Horrigan typing furiously…then fade to an image of Castrati at the beach) It was awful. When Tony left, they upped my quota from four stories a day to eight. My typing fingers bleed now. When we needed him, he wasn’t there.

Michael Silverman: (Over images of Castrati sitting in a lawn chair sipping a strawberry daiquiri.) Tony Castrati says he’s a baseball writer, but what kind of baseball writer takes August off?

Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa: (Over images of Castrati playing craps at Foxwoods) As gossip columnists, we’ve seen a lot of sick freaky things in this town from sports stars in drag, to the fact that two obnoxious biddies get paid to chase celebrities around town and write about their struggles and failures, but to abandon your colleagues at their time of need? That’s a whole different kind of wrong. There are a million stories in the naked city, and this one makes us sick.

Tony Castrati’s colleagues trusted him and he abandoned them…can you trust him?

This ad was paid for by Boston Herald Veterans for Truth.

2. Now Doug Mientkiewicz is hurt too. Super good. As best Jose can tell, that means that no infielder has been with the team all year except for Kevin Millar and David Ortiz. (Note: Okay, this was true before last night too, but so what.)

How bad has it gotten? It’s gotten so bad that even former Sox infielders are getting hurt. Jose has it on good authority than Spike Owen stubbed his toe the other night, Billy Joe Robideuax has hemorrhoids and Marty Barrett is facing the heartbreak of psoriasis. And future Sox infielders aren’t being spared either. Just yesterday Traverse City, Michigan ten year-old John Hume, who will play 45 games at second base for the Sox in 2018 before being released, fell off of his bicycle and scraped his knee. Yes, the injury bug continues to infect the franchise.

Moreover, with Vartiek under suspension and Mientkiewicz hurt, Jose is pretty sure that Kevin Millar becomes the back up catcher. Jose has a better idea. If, God forbid, Doug Mirabelli gets hurt tonight, the Sox should do what Jose did when he wanted to practice pitching as a child and no one was around, set up a lawn chair behind home plate and use it to block throws. (Note: Jose would only throw 25 mph knuckleballs, they were very effective against invisible men.) Jose, figures the lawn chair would stop at least as many balls as Millar, and it would show great patience in the batter’s box as well.

3. Jose was deeply disappointed by Gordon Edes’ story today entitled “Damon Deals With Demons.” Since, Damon has emerged as a Christ figure, Jose assumed that the story would be about him dispensing with Lucifer’s minions, but it turns out that it’s just about his concussion.

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

August 25 - KEYS TO CANADA

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO CANADA.

As part of Jose’s recently begun yet never ending campaign to provide non-baseball content to KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!), Jose has decided that he will try to put together KEYS on all 27 of the countries in which he has set foot. That’s 71 individual KEYS!!! (Note: As aposter pointed out, no it's not its 81. This does not bode well for Jose's GRE scores.) That should take up some time. Jose will work through each of the countries from the first he visited to the one he visited most recently, and will conclude with the United States of America even though it was the first country he visited. Jose figures he’ll have it right by then and will be able to properly honor America.

1. Canada? What is there to say about Canada that hasn’t already been written? The second largest area of any country. Cold. Hockey.

Jose is far from an expert on Canada. He’s only been to two cities that he can remember anything about (Montreal and Quebec City). Moreover, Canada is only first on the list because the Melendez family was vacationing in the Adirondacks’ one rainy summer day when Jose was a small child and crossed the border into Canada because the thrill of a new, yet remarkably similar country was probably the easiest way to keep Jose and his brother quiet. Pretty much all Jose remembers from this, his sole trip to Ontario is that he felt a deep sense of sadness for and empathy with Canadian children. Was it for the fact that their country must constantly live in the shadow of it’s gigantic southern neighbor? No. Perhaps it was that Jose could already see that the National Hockey League would rapidly begin to move franchises out of frigid little Canadian burgs to soulless sunbelt sprawl towns? No. Jose felt for Canadian children because He-Man action figures, which then cost a mere $7 in the U.S., cost $11 just over the border.

Jose doesn’t think that he had too great a sense of what the value of a dollar was at that point in his life, but he certainly new that 11 was a hell of a lot more than seven, and seven dollars already seemed like an unreachable price. Remarkably, at this point in his life Jose did not think constantly about monetary conversion, so he had no idea that the cost of a Ram-Man in Ottawa was the same as the cost in Utica. (Note: Jose’s Ontario geography and New York state geography are both terrible, so please excuse. It will be better when Jose gets to central Europe.) Of course, Jose was shocked when he visited Canada years later to learn that if one has U.S. dollars, Canada is much, much cheaper than the U.S.

The Canadian National Anthem sings "God keep our land, prosperous and free." And that’s almost right. Canada isn’t free but it sure is cheap. (Edit: Okay, okay so it's "glorious and free" Jose thought placing so much focus on prosperity a.k.a. money in a patriotic hymn seemed a bit too American.)

2. The rest of Jose’s Canadian experience is in Quebec, (Note: Sorry to everyone hoping for KEYS to Saskatchewan), Canada’s predominantly Francophone province. Jose actually loves, Quebec. He finds the people friendly, the culture refined and their baseball team charmingly inept. (Note: The Expos are Jose’s number two baseball team after the Red Sox and his number one National League Team. He loves their ineptness and that they have always, always been the underdog, even when they were the best team in baseball in 1994. Jose doesn’t know what he’ll do when they eventually move and Jose has to pick a new National League Team. Jose will probably need to find another group of perpetual losers. This may warrant a full KEYS some day.)

Sadly, many Americans adopt an anti-French Canadian posture, associating them with French snootiness and God knows what else. For instance, they have long served as pro wrestling villains, from Pat Patterson, to the Rousseau brothers, to the Mountie (OK he was a Rousseau brother) to Las Resistance today. (Note: The Fabulous Rousseau brothers were named Jacques and Raymond. Jose doesn’t know if these were their real names, but he hopes not, because it would raise the possibility that Jacques took his wrestling name from French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If this is true, it would open the tantalizing possibility that we might someday have a wrestling tag team of Confucius and Thomas Hobbes. It could be called the New East-West Connection, with apologies to Jessie Ventura and the late Adrian Adonis.)

But Jose has found this dislike is completely unwarranted. In his experience, French Canadians are more pro-American than Anglophone Canadians (perhaps because their language leaves them comfortably different from us) and are excellent neighbors for New England. Jose likes knowing that in just a few hours drive he can be in a genuinely foreign culture complete with European language.

In fact, Jose has only two complaints about Quebec. First, he despises the Montreal Canadians like all good Bostonians. Even though Jose is sort of a playoffs only NHL fan, he really hates the Habs and regards the old "Roy Eats Sh*t" shirts as one of the funniest things he’s ever seen on a T-shirt, right up there with "Posada is a Little B*tch." The second isn’t a Quebec complaint, it’s a Canada complaint. Last year, Jose and the Melendezette took a weekend trip to Montreal in early November. As soon as we crossed the border, Christmas decorations started popping up everywhere. By the time we got to the city itself, Christmas season was in full swing, with giant ribbons on skyscrapers and wrapped empty boxes sitting invitingly under a plastic tree in the lobby of our hotel. It turns out that since Canadian Thanksgiving comes a few weeks before the American Thanksgiving, they start their Christmas season earlier too, though Christmas itself still comes on December 25. That is a lot of Christmas season. Can you imagine being a Greek Orthodox Canadian with Christmas on January 6? Christmas season would be a full sixth of every year. That’s a lot of time to maintain jollyness. (Note: Jose assumes that Canadians call Canadian Thanksgiving just "Thanksgiving." Still, aren’t they sort of ripping us off? Isn’t it like calling Canada Day Canadian 4th of July even though it’s not on the 4th of July? Oh wait, there Jose goes being the big arrogant American neighbor again. Sorry about that.)

3. Jose would recommend getting out of Montreal on a visit to Quebec. Since Montreal has the province’s largest Anglophone population, it is probably the least foreign and least exotic part of Quebec to an American, even though it is beautiful and interesting. Of course, Jose has not done this since he was a child. It’s been drive to Montreal, stay there, drive back. In fact, the only time Jose went elsewhere in the province it was, again with the Melendez family, and that was after a White Mountains vacation failed to come together properly. We’d been planning on climbing Mt. Lafayette (Note: At least it was a mountain with and exotic French name), But Jose’s father booked our reservations to stay at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Greenleaf Hut for the wrong day, so we ran for the border.

Jose won’t go in to too much detail about the trip, but he will say that he was shocked to learn that there had been a war between the U.S. and Canada, and was even more shocked to learn that Canada had battled us to a time limit draw. (Note: In fairness it was really a handicapped match Canada and Great Britain versus the young United States, and they still needed to hit us with a steel chair in order to secure the draw.)

Jose also leaned on this trip the Plains of Abraham are not named after Abraham Lincoln, not are they the place where the biblical Abraham lived. So for all of you biblical tourists and pilgrims Quebec City is not the place for you!!!

Jose’s final thought on Canada is that it is worth trying to go to a curling match as part of your visit, as curling is Canada’s second national sport. Jose has never done this, but he and his roommate got completely hooked on curling during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Jose’s roommate musician even vowed to write a song called "Last Rock Advantage." If Jose had CBC television, he would watch curling all the time.

Jose supposes that what he really likes about it is that it proves that lack of conditioning is not the reason that Jose is not an Olympic athlete. Jose may not have enough hand-eye coordination or good enough motor skills for the Olympics, and God knows he doesn’t have the work ethic, but thanks to curling Jose knows without doubt that his physical conditioning is no obstacle to Olympic glory.

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

From SoSH: Re: August 25th - Curt do This

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

1. Jose apologizes for being so late with today’s KEYS. He really hopes that people weren’t’ wondering if he’d ditched SoSH based on the early success of KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!). That will never happen, and not in the "I’d never leave Boston except to player closer to home" sense of the expression.

The truth is Jose spent almost the entire day in the Berkshires, driving to the Berkshires and driving from the Berkshires. Six hours of driving for a to hour meeting, but it was Jose’s meeting, so he had to be there.

Jose typically writes the KEYS at home sometime between the end of the evening’s game and the start of the workday and then posts them during a break in the action at work, but today there was no time. Jose went to bed early and then got up at the crack of dawn to hop on the Pike. (Note: One does not hop on to the Pike, one fight’s his way on. This morning at the entrance from Storrow Drive West all traffic signals were being ignored by everyone. If there are any anarchists out there, Jose now knows what anarchy looks like, and he does not care for it.) (Additional Note: While the Mass. Pike ends on a dock in Seattle, or so Jose understands, they do not call it the Mass. Pike out there. Go figure.)

Anyway, Jose’s meeting ended at 1ish, so he figured to be back in Boston by 3:30 to 4:00 PM depending on traffic. But then Jose had his great idea. Jose had recently heard that baseball was actually invented in Pittsfield, so he figured that the Baseball Hall of Fame must have been relocated to Pittsfield. Jose was at the fake Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where baseball wasn’t invented, in 1990, and he though it would be fun to go to the real Hall of Fame where baseball was invented now and look at the hole in the wall where Pete Rose’s plaque would be if he weren’t a liar a crook and a total fraud. (Note: One of Jose’s all-time favorite wrestling moments was when Kane gave Rose a tombstone piledriver at Wrestlemania XVI at the New Boston Garden. Actually it may be the only moment Jose has ever enjoyed Kane’s work in the ring, well that and the other times he beat up Pete Rose.) If Rose really wants to be in the Hall, maybe they should stamp his face on the urinal pucks; that would be an appropriate homage to his impact on the game.

Anyway, Jose drove around for about 90 minutes looking and as best he can tell there is no baseball Hall of Fame in Pittsfield. Jose knows that’s hard to believe, but it appears to be the case. Jose stopped at the tourist center (Note: Yes, Pittsfield has a tourist center) and a few gas stations, but no one had heard of the baseball Hall of Fame in Pittsfield. What an outrage.
(Note: The good folks of Western Massachusetts may just be the most inventive sportsmen in the world. Jose knows baseball was invented there, and basketball too (though Jose believes Dr. Naismith was a Canadian). Even volleyball was invented in Holyoke. http://www.volleyhall.org/
So keep an eye out for the next big thing being invented today in some gym nestled in Berkshire, Franklin Hampden or Hamsphire county. Jose is betting it’s a mix of bocce and biathlon.

2. Jose just learned today that there is a town called Sheffield in Berkshire County. Jose knew about Peru, Massachusetts and Florida Massachusetts, but not Sheffield. In light of baseball developments, Jose would like to propose a bill in the Legislature by free petition (the right of any Massachusetts citizen to file a bill) to have it renamed Kapler, Massachusetts at least until Mosey Nixon is healthy enough for us to have it named Nixon, Massachusetts. Jose doesn’t see why we couldn’t do this. After all, we had the town of Mussina, Massachusetts renamed Wakefield.

Alternatively, we could just cede it to New York since it’s on the border. Actually, screw that second idea. Jose isn’t ceding anything to New York this year!!!

3. Jose can’t believe it, Tony Castrati is finally back. Well, not writing for the Herald, you know, doing his job. (Note: Unless he’s been covering the shocking scandal that Boston was prepared for violence at the Democratic Convention. What a stupid idea, to prepare for anything other than the best case scenario.) But Jose heard him on EEI this afternoon. Jose figures he can’t go back to writing because it makes Jose’s life too easy with the Tony Castrati translator. Jose could hypothetically listen to him on EEI and write it down and translate it be an awful lot of effort to rip a non-writer. (Note: Next time he writes a story shouldn’t the byline read "Tony Castrati is an occasional contributor?)

Jose’s idea is that they should get one of those professional simultaneous translators, like they have at the UN but one who can translate Castratese to English. So when Castrati says something on the radio like "Glenn, I’m just saying that it’s a two way street. If Curt Schilling (sic) isn’t willing to work with the media we have no obligation to help publicize his charity events," it will be instantly translate from high pitched gibberish to a soothing baritone saying "My name is Tony Castrati and I hate sick children."

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

KEYS TO THE KEYS

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

1. Jose came to the realization today that with his new blog, it is completely possible that there could be five or perhaps even six people reading the KEYS who are not SoSH members, SoSH lurkers or members of Jose’s small circle of family and friends. Perhaps even seven. With this in mind, Jose thought that it might be worthwhile to explain a little bit about what the KEYS are and why they are the way they are.

The first thing to explain is probably why the KEYS always travel in threes.

The answer is not a simple as it may seem. It relates to the mystical power of the number three that has been known for generations and held secret by ancient orders in London , Jerusalem and the deepest, darkest part of the Amazon jungle. Did you know the awful secret that 3 is the only integer between 2 and 4? Did you dare guess the terrible truth that 3 is the absolute value of not only 3 but –3 as well? Could you have imagined in even your darkest fears that 3 is the square root of 9 and the cube root of 27? There were 3 stooges (sort of), 3 Marx brothers (sort of), 3 nephews of Donald Duck. (Note: More on the ducks in a future entry.) There are 3 outs in an inning, 3 strikes in an out, 3 balls in a frame of candle pin bowling. There are 3 electoral votes in both Wyoming and Vermont and 3 fingers in both the Boy Scout salute and the Serbian hand signal. On television Three’s Company, but later Three’s a crowd. The Riddle of the Sphinx involved "Answer me these questions 3." There were 3 wise men in Bethlehem and Rub a Dub Dub there were 3 men in the tub. (Note: Presumably the three men were in the tub as pat of the Abu Gharib prison scandal.) We wear glasses to see movies in 3-D, possibly about the 3 Musketeers or 3 Amigos (which we can watch while eating 3 Musketeers candy bars – A low fat candy!)

In short, Jose did not choose the 3 KEYS, the 3 KEYS chose him. Alternatively, there are 3 KEYS because two seemed like too few and four seemed like too many. Either way is good.
The next question is why Jose (almost) always refers to himself in the third person. Jose didn’t always do this, nor does he do it in his personal life, he is not a respected ex-Senator from Kansas or stolen base king who can get away with such things. In the earliest KEYS, Jose used the first person singular like everyone else and things seemed fine, but gradually he slipped into a pattern of third person usage. Oddly, Jose has no problem using the first person plural. "We," "us," "ours," they don’t phase Jose a bit.

2. In the pre-KEYS era, Jose did not particularly like writing about himself, it always seemed boastful and arrogant, and Jose supposes that this is because writing about "I" IS boastful and arrogant. Writing about Jose, however is humble and whimsical. Seriously, when Jose wrote college application essays many years ago, he struggled mightily to write about himself. Now, as Jose prepares to write essays for grad school (Note: This is provided he ever gets his act together), he hopes that all of his experience writing KEYS will help him. Jose’s only fear is that he will be unable to resist the temptation to refer to himself as Jose in his essay and will therefore help someone who’s name actually is Jose get admitted rather than himself.

3. Finally, there is this question of who is Jose Melendez? Well, it depends on your perspective. Either Jose is a mediocre to terrible relief pitcher the Red Sox acquired from the San Diego Padres for underachieving slugger Phil Plantier in 1994 and released in 1995 or he is Boston native in his mid-20s of Japanese, German and Jewish heritage who enjoys baseball, politics and wasting ridiculous amounts of time writing on the Internet, time that would be much better spent learning a trade, maybe carpentry, or applying for National Endowment for the Arts grants. Again, either way is good.

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

From SoSH: August 24th - Wake on the Take

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

1. Jose has been inspired by the Red Sox. Since the Henry/Werner/Lucchino team took over, they have been relentless in their pursuit of “alternative revenue streams.” From monster seats to right field roof seats to the Yawkey Way turnstiles to Fan Foto or whatever that ghastly thing is called, they have pursued every opportunity to make a buck. Now, Jose has an idea as well.

From now on during each edition of KEYS TO THE GAME, Jose will have photographer wandering about the internet taking your pictures. If you like the picture, you can have it for $20. If not, Melendez Enterprises will simply keep it. However, in light of this convenient new service, Jose asks that you put on some pants for God’s sake.

Jose will also make an effort to cordon off the first few posts before and the first few posts after the KEYS to create a fun KEY-fan friendly atmosphere and to create a place where Jose can sell Jose Melendez merchandise, like Jose Melendez caps, Jose Melendez rain ponchos and Jose Melendez brand Cuban sandwiches. Jose will also be introducing an exciting new service called “KEYS TO THE GAME Replay” where you can purchase KEYS that other fans have been unable to use for a nominal convenience fee on top of the face value of the KEYS. Now this may look a little bit like profiteering, but Jose assures you that it is absolutely necessary for Jose to remain competitive with Steve Howe’s KEYS TO THE GAME down in the Bronx.

Jose is introducing one final service which is the brand new KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!) http://keystothegame.blogspot.com/

KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!) will allow Jose to bring you the latest in tripartite commentary on a wide variety of subjects ranging from bull fighting to cock fighting to shoot fighting. Jose has to accept that someday the baseball season is going to end and game threads will no longer provide an opportunity for lengthy rants about mechanical pitchers and monetary conversion, and rather than impose his non-baseball KEYS in inappropriate SoSH forums, Jose will post them on the blog.

KEYS TO THE GAME (Now in Blog!!!) will also allow Jose to do things like market handsome, bound editions of KEYS TO THE GAME complete with forward by the late George Plimpton, without dipping into such moral quagmires as trying to use SoSH to move merchandise. (Note: At least some of the previous sentence is true, but only if demand is sufficient. Order your copy today!!! Operators are standing by!!!)

The original KEYS TO THE GAME will remain in the daily game threads for as long as Jose is welcome, wanted and has too much time on his hands, or possibly longer.

2. Well Jose learned quite a bit about Manny Ramirez in today’s excellent Globe story by Stan Grossfeld.
Jose learned that Manny loves cars, the Matrix and Spanish Reggae. (Note: Do you think Manny imagines himself being in the Matrix when he’s at the plate? Complete perceptual awareness, the ball moving in slow motion?) Jose also learned that Manny didn’t see game 6 of the 1986 series (Note: This gives him yet another thing in common with many Massachusetts 10 year olds), doesn’t believe in the curse or 502 foot home runs (Note: Can we get Manny a membership in the Skeptics Society http://www.skeptic.com/ for his birthday?) and thinks Boston is “The Best City Ever” (Note: True). But there is one stark and glaring omission from this look into the great slugger’s life – what kind of rich, luxurious facial scrub does he use? Stop hiding Mr. Ramirez, the women and Metrosexuals of America demand to know!!!

3. Jose just noticed that despite his complete rejection of the first person singular (at least since the early days of the KEYS) he uses it every day. Indeed, it is in the last sentence of each and every KEYS – “I'm Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.”

How terribly odd, that Jose rejects his underlying identity in such a core way. It’s like Manny Ramirez being sure to lay down a bunt in his last at bat of each game, Pedro Martinez throwing one knuckleball to each batter or Grady Little making one good strategic decision in each game. It’s just completely contradictory.

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

Welcome to the KEYS

It's time for Jose Melendez's KEYS TO THE BLOG.

1. The KEYS TO THE GAME began on May 11th, 2004 on the Sons of Sam Horn Web site as part of Jose's effort to establish himself on the most prestigious Web site in all of Red Sox nation.

http://p086.ezboard.com/bsonsofsamhorn

Jose got the idea after attending the SoSH Bash at Fenway Park. There, a drunken SoSHer bwith the handle Dana Kiecker slurred to Jose "Yer a funny poster. Do you think of yerself as a funny poster?" That was what Jose had hoped for, as he isn't nearly the analyst then many SoSHers. And so an idea was planted. Jose would try to distinguish himself by formalizing his observations.

For a few days Jose would post observations in sets of three in random threads, but they tended to get lost in the big picture. More focus was required. So Jose decided to start posting in the daily game thread.

When he started Jose never really planned for KEYS to be anything more than three little quips about Red Sox, maybe 15o or 200 words, but it soon began to spiral out of control. All of a sudden he was writing longer and longer entries, more and more words and having a surprisingly good time doing it. Before he knew it Jose was typically writing 500 to 1,000 words per day.

2. Now on August 23, 2004 Jose has written over 49,000 words, an almost appalling waste of time and energy, and yet the writing process is typically Jose's favorite part of the day. Jose has always felt that he was a good writer and has sometimes felt that he is funny and witty, but Jose has always know that he cannot produce without a deadline. I f Jose were to write strictly for joy, he would never write word one. He needs to feel like he has to do it. Jose has written two one act plays in his life, both for classes, he has written countless op-eds, all but two were for work. Yet, with the KEYS, he has managed to internalize the deadline to the extent that he can produce day in day out at a ridiculous rate despite not having the threat of financial punishment for failure hanging over him like the Sword of Damocles. (Note: That's what's called an allusion. Good writers use them, or so Jose has been told.)

3. So now Jose has come to the horrifying realization that the Red sox season will eventually end, most likely in late October, and if he wishes to continue writing he will have to do so without the constant source of stimulation that is the proverbial day in day out grind of the baseball season. Sure, there will be some insane doings on the hot stove. The Red Sox will make blockbuster deals and not make blockbuster deals, but the offseason will simply not be the same as the onseason.

So Jose decided to start KEYS TO THE GAME ( Now in Blog!!!) to provide a format where he can write about other subjects: the symphony, kabuki and shadow puppet theater that might not be appropriate for the non-member boards at SoSH. ( Note: By symphony, kabuki and shadow puppets, Jose means other sports, wrestling and politics. Jose will probably may do some pop culture too, but only if he can stand it. After all, he's not Bill Simmons.) Jose will continue to post the Red Sox KEYS at SoSH but he will post them here as well. This site will simply cover a far broader range of material.

I'm Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE BLOG.

From SoSH: Re: August 23rd - PedroKsDelgado.....Part Deux.

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

1. We had a breakthrough this morning. Jose rolled out of bed at about 8:25, five minutes before he had to leave for work. He rushed furiously to brush his teeth comb his hair find socks that were at least reasonably close to matching, but then he was stopped dead in his tracks.

“I had a dream about the Red Sox,” said the Melendezette.

For Jose, a dream about the Red Sox is completely unremarkable. It is a regular occurrence over the course of the year, like dreams about playing craps or driving a flying car and is, as Jose has written before, an excellent predictor of what will happen in the next game. Jose’s sports dreams are also almost always wrong. But for the Melendezette this was something new and exotic.


“Did they win? Did they lose? Anything the gambling community should know?” Jose enthused. (Note: Jose is not much of a gambler. He is way too cheap to risk money on games of chance.)

“They were at my house in Hawaii,” replied the Melendezette. Clearly this was a very different sort of sports dream than Jose is accustomed too. Rather than telling of glorious wins and heartbreaking losses, the Melendezette’s account touched on the more human aspects of the team.

“Well, what were they doing?” Jose inquired.

“They were just sort of hanging around enjoying the house and chilling. Manny was there, and Ortizle and Kevin Millar, maybe a few others too. No Johnny Damon though.” She recounted with disappointment.

“And they were just hanging out?”

“Basically. Except Manny went in to the bathroom and when he came out it turned out that he’d used a lot of my really expensive facial scrub, which sort of pissed me off. It just struck me as very rude.”

“Wait…Manny used your facial scrub?”

“Well, he does have good skin,” she replied. “I bet he uses a good facial scrub.”

“So what happened next?”

“I guess then I realized it was a dream so I decided that I could fly and would fly around the island.”

So the unanswered question is whether the Melendezette’s Red Sox dreams predict the future, or predict the opposite of the future, like Jose’s. So tune in tonight to see if Manny’s skin has a lustrous glow or looks pale and wan.

2. Jose knows that a blister on his pitching hand has been a major problem for DLowe the Paranoid Android this year, but we should be thankful. He could have been Lenny DiNardo. DiNardo has been out of the big leagues with a blister for almost two months now.

Jose knows that cynics would say, DiNardo’s blister isn’t really so severe. These cynics would claim that he’s only been kept out of action for so long because the Red Sox must keep him on their major league roster or return him to the Mets under Rule V draft regulations. Shame on them for assuming the worst about people!!! Jose just has a hard time believing anyone in the Red Sox organization would be that disingenuous. After all, Jose is pretty sure that he read somewhere that blisters are like the 750th or 751st leading cause of death in the U.S., somewhere in between floor burns and poltergeist attacks. Besides, we need to hold onto this guy. He reminds Jose a lot of another Rule V guy Vaughn “Eshel K” Eshelman, and you wouldn’t want to give him away, would you?

3. Earlier in the season, Jose reflected on the Sox use of the Liiiiiilllyyyyyy chant against Ted Lilly in the playoffs last year and talked about having used it to taunt actress Lilly Tomlin. But Jose had used it at other times as well. In the early 1990s, he used to hang out at the Indianapolis research labs of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and heckle the scientists. “Liiiiiiii-llllllyyyyyyy…Liiiiiiiiii-llllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Hey Lilly you call that a carboxyl group? Hey Lilly you’re so stupid, you think a double blind study is one where Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles are your control group. Losers.”

Trust Jose, it’s awfully hard to focus on titrations with that in the background. Jose doesn’t want to take too much credit, but he does like to think that he delayed the development of a drug for gout. At the very least he gave his boys at Bristol Myers Squibb a boost. (Note: Can Toronto trade Ted Lilly to the Tigers already, so Jose can start making What’s Up Tiger Lilly Jokes?)

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