Potential Truck Art

Let's Fight AIDS with Baseball (And Money)

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO FIGHTING HIV/AIDS.

1.  Oh… hi there…  I’m Jose Melendez.  You might remember me as a whimsical blogger from such championship seasons as 2004 and 2007.  I’d like to drop the silliness, the third person and the outdated references to Cesar Crespo for a moment and focus on an issue that is really important to me.

Did you know that in Africa, every… let’s say 30 seconds, a child is born who will suffer a life of deprivation…

Yes, every day across the African continent thousands of children come into the world who will never know that there is a game called baseball, much less that the Red Sox are good and the Yankees are evil.

It’s heartbreaking isn’t it?

It makes you feel powerless? Like you wish there were something you could do?

Well now there is.  You can join me and all your SoSH friends in making a contribution to the fight against the scourge of baseball ignorance.  Also, your contribution will fight HIV/AIDS, which I understand is also a problem of some kind.  Watch this video and learn how SoSH can fightHIV/AIDS.

SoSH is partnering with Support for International Change (SIC), an internationally registered charity, to raise money for the SoSH Tags AIDS Truck Service, or STATS, a rugged vehicle that will be able to trek up the tough, muddy roads around Arusha, Tanzania and into rural villages to provide HIV testing and education and show how awesome the Red Sox are. 

All we need is to raise $40,000.  I know, I know that’s not a lot of money to Jon Lackey, but to a small charity in rural Tanzania and the people it serves it can make all the difference.  To learn the details of SIC’s work and review their annual reports and accountability ratings visit their Web site here http://sichange.org/get-involved/sosh/.

Today, SIC’s ability to work in rural villages is compromised by its reliance on vehicles that are kind of like Alex Rodriguez—old, broken down and costly to maintain.  These clunkers make it nearly impossible to get out to the villages where people need education and testing the most. 

The STATS will solve this problem instantly.  Additionally, the STATS will be tricked out by skilled local artists with scenes of Red Sox glory, bringing knowledge of baseball along with knowledge of how to prevent HIV.

But how will we choose which images from Red Sox history are truck worthy? 

Pay to play baby!!!

The top two donors will each get to choose a picture for the left and right sides of the truck.   A third image for either the hood or the trunk, will be chosen on the basis of a vote.  Just make a nomination in this thread when you donate.

Over time, the relationship between SoSH and SIC will grow.  SIC will provide video of the STATS doing its work in rural communities, of villagers, online chats with SIC staff and villagers chanting “Let’s Go Sox.”   But for this to happen we need your help.  So donate now at http://sichange.org/get-involved/sosh/

2. Now that Jose has made the “ask” up front, Jose wants to return to his customary third person and to try to educate the good people of SoSH on how one combats HIV/AIDS in Africa, the best way he knows how—through a series of inapt baseball metaphors.

HIV education—at the core of SIC’s work—is like pitching.  It is the initial step in combating HIV and relies on changing speeds and methods of delivery.  To be effective, HIV education takes a variety of forms.  Sometimes posters around town, other times direct education. Other times plays, music and dance.  The key is to keep the ball coming from all different angles and at all different speeds.

The second part is prevention, which you should think of as defense.  Remember two years ago when the Red Sox adopted a “run prevention” approach to winning games?  HIV prevention is a lot like that, except it works. 

There are three key elements to prevention.  The first is abstinence, which is like a strike out.  If the ball never gets into play, it can’t do any damage.  But we’re realistic people; we know that even Pedro at his best wasn’t striking out 27 guys.  Balls are going to get into play. 

That’s why you have an infield—in this case monogamy, being faithful.  If the ball is in play, your best chance to prevent a run is by keeping it… close to home.

Finally, there’s condom use—the outfield of HIV prevention.  Things happen.  Pitchers hang curveballs.  People have sex outside of stable relationships.  When that happens, it’s awfully good to have a… glove… in the outfield ready to catch anything that could turn into trouble.

That brings us to testing, SIC's other core mission.  Testing is like the data a manager uses to make decisions.  When people know their HIV status they can make good decisions about sexual activity and breastfeeding and doctors can make good decisions about how to treat them.  A patient or doctor without a known HIV status is like a manager without stats—he’s going by hunches, and Jose doesn’t know about you, but he would not want Joe Morgan making medical decisions for him.

Finally, offense comes into play—treatment.  Gone are the days when HIV drugs were an underwhelming crew of Mike Lansings and Dante Bichettes—ineffective and largely toxic.  Today, HIV drugs are more like David Ortiz, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Dustin Pedroia, potent, effective and strong in combination. 

Patients getting these drugs can live long productive lives and don’t have to die of HIV/AIDS.  Moreover, they’re less likely to transmit HIV to other people so fewer people get infected.  SIC doesn’t directly provide drugs, but the STATS will help connect patients with Tanzania’s Ministry of Health, which provides free antiretroviral drugs to everyone who needs them. 

Building this connection is part of what makes SIC’s model sustainable. To put up a winning record against HIV/AIDS over the long run, Tanzania needs a good farm system.  SIC isn’t like a high priced free agent that comes in for a year or two, has a few successes and then moves on leaving nothing of permanent value.  Instead, SIC is developing home grown, Tanzanian talent that can provide pitching, defense and hitting now and in the future.

3. So here’s where it gets interesting.  In order to encourage you to give, Jose is going to lay down a challenge.

Jose Melendez will start the donations with a $500 contribution.  If at least two people don’t make bigger donations, Jose will elect to have one of the images on the STATS be Carlos Quintana doing a split while making a play at first.

Do you want Tanzanians to think Carlos Quintana is the greatest Red Sox of all time?  No?  Then go to http://sichange.org/get-involved/sosh/ and donate now.

I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO FIGHTING HIV/AIDS.

What Goes Down...

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

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

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

What goes down must come up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rules Don’t Apply to Jose

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

1. They’ve driven Jose to it.

For four years or so, Jose has refused to start a game thread on the Sons of Sam Horn message board. He’s refused because of the awful burden of knowing that if he starts a thread and the Sox win, he will have to start a thread tomorrow. And if they win that game, he will have to start the thread after that, and… well… it gets to be a colossal pain in the ass. Once upon a time Jose was lean and hungry. He wanted to be there every day. He’d write KEYS on vacation, at six in the morning, whatever it took to feel like he was in the game. Not any more. Jose has long since entered the Mike Lansing phase of his career, he’s just showing up to collect a paycheck, and since Jose doesn’t collect a paycheck… well, you can follow the logic.

But this afternoon something just snapped.

The finale of the TV show Newhart is best remembered for Bob Newhart waking up next to Suzanne Plechette, who played his wife on his previous sitcom, and discovering his whacky adventures in Vermont were just a dream. What goes forgotten is that the episode also featured Darryl and Darryl, the two woodsmen who remained mute while their brother Larry spoke for them throughout the series, saying their first word.

In a flash forward sequence, the three brothers are married to a group of shrill New York harpies. After the wives have taken their annoying jabber to Suzyn Waldmanesque height, the two Darryls look at each other, then look at their wives and scream “QUIET!!!!!” When a stunned cast questions why they had never spoken before Larry answers “apparently they’ve never been this p.o.’d before.”

Jose too, has never been this p.o’d before.

At least not since 2004.

He’s p.o.’d and he wants to scream at the world.

So here’s the deal, Jose is going to start the game thread and write a full on three part KEYS for Friday’s Yankees game and every other game until the Red Sox lose again.

If they keep losing, he’s also going to keep starting threads until they win. There are the game thread rules, but Jose doesn’t care. He is too p.o.’d
And if you don’t like it QUIET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Jose did have other options to try to break the drought. Specifically, he may have received a message from God saying that the Red Sox will not win until Jose receives $50,000. Don’t laugh. When Orel Hersheiser’s said he needed to raise $8 million or God would “take him home,” he raised $9.1 million.

You see, Jose’s a federal employee and if there’s a prolonged shutdown, he might need some of that sweet, sweet blood money to tide him over (Note: Jose worked an alternative schedule starting at 5:30 this morning, so don’t go calling your Congressman and complaining that he is writing on someone else’s dime. Jose does not get paid to sit on his porch and drink beer. He’s not a farmer, a banker or Curt Euro in 2008.)

But truth be told, things have lined up kind of perfectly for him to go on a writing binge. He may well be unemployed while the government works out a budget deal, his significant other is leaving the country for two weeks and his cousin recently had an inspiring conversation with the drummer in his band Superpill that included the sentence “Holy Shit! Your cousin is Jose Melendez!”

Yeah, Jose still has what the people want.

Besides, being 0-6 is awful. There’s almost nothing worse than being 0-6 if you exclude being 0-7 etc. Jose thought about it on his commute home today, and tried to come up with all things that are worse than being 0-6 and here’s what he came up with: genocide, the musical Rent. That is all. Genocide is obvious and Rent? Why do those dead beats think they should live rent-free? Their friend who bought some property is the bad guy for wanting them to pay to live there instead of spending all of their money on heroin and… well, not condoms.

La Boheme could get away with such an obnoxious plot because the music was so good. Rent? Not so much. Rent is the Eric Gagne of musicals. You hear good things, but when you see it up close you can’t believe how bad it is. Jose would much rather watch musicals based on the lives of David Murphy and Kasson Gabbard then ever see Rent again.

Now some of you are going to be surprised. You’re probably saying, “Come on Jose. Sure an 0-6 start is bad, but do you really think that the only things worse are genocide and Rent?”

Yes. Yes Jose does. Please allow Jose to explain how the following awful things are still better than an 0-6 start.

Lice: With both lice and an 0-6 start one loses his dignity, but at least lice can be killed by putting them in a plastic bag for two weeks. If we put the Red Sox in a plastic bag for two weeks, there would be literally no decrease in their performance.

War: Have you ever heard of the military industrial complex? That thing creates jobs. Losing baseball games does not contribute to the economy in any way. Except possibly by increasing alcohol sales and the sales of lengths of rope.

Fever Pitch: Yes, Fever Pitch was horrendous, but at least it was over in two hours.

Trans fats: Can the FDA or an act of the state legislature ban 0-6 starts from Massachusetts? Didn’t think so.

Dogfighting: Dogfighting might be evil and vile, but it is probably at least more competitive than the baseball we’ve seen thus far.

Jose could go on, but you get the point, and if you don’t Jose suggests you watch Rent, it might be for you.

3. But Jose doesn’t want to be completely nonconstructive. The point of this exercise is not just to rant; it’s also to help. So Jose has compiled a list of possible explanations for the Red Sox awful start.

Once we know the problem, perhaps we can figure out a solution.

· Perhaps the Red Sox thought they were federal employees and the shutdown started last week.

· Are astronomical sticklers and refuse to start playing like spring training is over until the summer solstice.

· Have river blindness.

· Are on strike in solidarity with state employees in Wisconsin.

· Felt really bad for Cleveland fans after the LeBron debacle and wanted to cheer them up.

· Miss Bill Hall’s soothing voice.

· Are building their new spring training stadium on an ancient Indian burial ground.

· Can only play good baseball when new episodes of Lost are coming out.

· Are lacking adequately creative handshakes. (Note: Hi Bill Simmons!)

· Are playing cruel April Fool’s joke that lasted the entire first week of April.

· Are ust making it more dramatic before they start “hulking up.”

It’s not a comprehensive list, but it’s close. Anyway, get used to it. If the Red Sox keep losing, Jose will keep writing in a blind rage. If they start winning, he will be writing in a farsighted less rage.

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

Happy New Year--Let's Get Some Revenge

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

1. For three long years Jose has been in exile. Whether one spends it in the warm heart of Africa or the steamy thigh of the American South, exile is awful. No place is Boston but Boston. The worst part of loneliness is being alone. And starting today, the fourth year of exile begins, this year from our nation's capital, from the arrogant id of our national consciousness. There will be baseball played in Boston this year—good baseball—and once again Jose will not be there to see it, to smell it, to savor it, and possibly, just possibly to throw up in it.

But while Jose needs baseball, it does not follow that baseball needs Jose. The work of bat and ball, of pitch and catch, of sign and trade continues. It continues today. It continues better.

2. One year ago today, Jose fell victim to the most ingenious, vicious, dangerous April Fool’s joke he’s ever been a party to.

It was a big day for Jose—he had a bunch of job interviews lined up in Washington—so he woke up at the impossibly early hour of six in the morning. As is his custom, he started the day by checking his email. Prominent among the normal assortment of spam for dog-training products and federally subsidized scam universities was a message from his friend Jared reading:

“Major News…Please don’t freak.”

When someone advises you not to freak before telling you something, it is never a good sign. “Please don’t freak” has never been followed by “I won the lottery” or “ The Red Sox got bullpen help.” It is usually followed by a phrase like “I lost all our money at the track” or “I’m carrying Alex Rodriguez’s baby.” This case was no different.

Dear Jose,

First off, let me say that I know I’ve been distant and kind of an asshole this semester. I’m sorry; I’ve had a lot of things going on.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve come to the difficult realization that I am wicked in love with you. I think I’ve picked up something from you to, and it’s time one of us is man enough to admit it.

Sorry to do this by email… but I don’t think I could get it out in person…

Jose’s initial, stunned reaction was “WHAT THE FUCK?”

But after a moment’s consideration, he was able to calm himself and develop a more measured reaction of “WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK?”

He then repeated the sentence to himself for another 10 minutes while in the shower.

Finally, his careful reasoning led to a decision: The most likely explanation is that Jared is playing some sick joke. In which case the correct response is “Go fuck yourself.” If this interpretation and response is correct, Jose looks smart. The less likely, but still plausible, explanation was that Jared was crying out in pain, in which case “Go fuck yourself” would be a cruel taunt.

Jose decided to err on the side of caution, and assume it was true. He did not want his friend’s pain or worse on his hands. He wrote:

Jared,

Not really sure what to make of this. Jose is 100% straight, so this is never going to happen, but Jose doesn’t see any reason why we can’t still be friends if you can handle it.”

Jose

Later that morning, Jose received a revelatory message:

“Ha! I got the same email from you. Someone must have hacked us! Check out the date.”

Jose was indeed the April fool. But that didn’t mean Jose’s decision was wrong. Yes, he looked like a fool, but he did the right thing—he believed what he was told, thereby ensuring that he avoided the worst-case scenario. There is a lesson there for Red Sox fans today.

We have been told by national media, local pundits and our own lyin’ mouths that the Red Sox are the best team in baseball this year, that they are the team to beat. That may be true, it may not, but Jose suggests we act like it is. If we assume it’s a lie and indeed it is, will we gain any satisfaction? No. We’ll be miserable the entire year. If we assume it’s true and it turns out to be a lie, at least we have today. At least we have opening day, when we can believe, hell when Nationals fans can believe, that we have the best team in baseball.

3. Of course, the story doesn’t end there. There is another lesson still to be learned.

Over the course of the morning, Jose told friends the story of his humiliation as he attempted to identify the perpetrator. One friend he called with vengeance in his heart responded, “I didn’t do it, but I wish I had. You know who that sounds like? Martha.”

Of course! Martha was a theatrical classmate of Jose’s who took comedy seriously. The previous year for April fools she had told her best friends that she was pregnant and didn’t know who the father was. Try doing that Chris Rock!

Jose waited for her inevitable taunting phone call, and he plotted. He seethed.

It came at 3PM, just minutes before he had a job interview.

“Hi Jose!” came her saccharine voice.

“Hey Martha” Jose responded coolly.

“How’s it going?”

“Lot of weird stuff going on,” Jose set the trap. “It’s chaotic here, and Jose got some really weird emails.”

“What kind of emails?”

“Ah Jose doesn’t want to talk about it,”

“Ooohhh…. Okay, well if you need to talk, you know you can trust me.”

“Well, Jose got this really strange email from Jared saying… well, saying that he’s”

“APRIL FOOLS!” she shrieked. “APRIL FOOLS!!!! I GOT YOU SO BAD!”

“Oh… Martha… you shouldn’t have done that,” Jose muttered.

“Whatever,” she responded. “I burned you.”

“You really, really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah right, Jared’s not gay.”

“ Jose isn’t saying he is, but… well… you struck some kind of nerve. He’s really freaking out… and… well… Jose doesn’t know what’s going on, but this is going to take a long time to fix.”

“But… but it was just an April Fool’s joke,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean—“

“Well you did,” Jose snapped back.

“God, it was just supposed to be an April Fool’s joke. I didn’t think that—”

“APRIL FOOLS!!!” Jose snapped back. “You got Jose and Jose got you back.”

The lesson for the Red Sox here is, of course, as always, that revenge is immensely satisfying. And we have a lot of revenge to take this year.

Manny and Damon? Definitely need revenge.

The rest of that Tampa team? 2008 ALCS—revenge required.

The Angels? 2009 ALDS—you know what would help with that? Some vengeance.

The Yankees? They exist. That’s as good a reason for revenge as any.

So learn the lesson well men of Boston, and have a vengeful, vengeful New Year!!!

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

No More Perks

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

In the 2010 election campaign, Republicans around the country called for reductions in public spending and deep cuts in public wages, benefits and Perk. Yeah, Jose thought that they said “perks” too, but apparently they said “Perk,” and now he’s gone. All hail Congress in its infinite wisdom. (Note: Presumably Jose is correct when he assume the word “infinite” is an adjective that means “like an infant.”

Funny though, Jose doesn’t recall the Republicans insisting in reductions in Nate, Harengody or Erden, and all of those guys got dumped too. Perhaps, Turkish center Semih Erden fell under the anti-immigration or anti-Muslim parts of the platform? Jose will say this, he is curious to see how Sharia Law at the Garden would work when Kobe comes to town. Still, Luke Harengody? Jose thought the Republican Party was all about supporting goofy white guys from the mid-West.

The even more perplexing part is that part of the return was Jeff Green. And Jose has yet to see the Republican since Teddy Roosevelt who would characterize himself as “Green.” Also aren’t they the least bit concerned that the power forward will bring his house gases to Boston?

Yes, it’s silly and kind of stupid, for Jose to attribute Celtics GM Danny Ainge’s decision to deal the center from the championship team’s lineup while the Celtics have the best record in the East to a the act of a spiteful Congress, but it makes about as much sense as any other theory Jose’s heard. (Note: Jose doesn’t hear a lot of theories.) Just months ago we were talking about how if Perkins had been healthy for Game 7, the Celtics would be world champions, and now they’ve dealt him? On a crazy scale of one to 10, that rates a Charlie Sheen. (Note: Jose has no idea what that means, but he’s heard lots of jokes along those lines lately.)

Of course, there is one possibility that involves neither Congressional overreach or mental illness and that is that Perk, for the rest of this year at least, was not going to be Perk. As hard as he worked to hurry back, and as trim as he looked in his return, Perk’s sore left knee was a troubling sign of things to come. If Perk was going to be well-below 100% for the remainder of the season, suddenly trading him for a forward who can score points, play decent defense, and give Paul Pierce some rest makes a lot of sense.

So in the spirit of cooperation and lethargy, here are the things Jose likes about the deadline trades:

1. The Celtics acquired Jeff Green, who is an athletic, versatile forward, not Jeff Greene, Larry David’s manager on Curb Your Enthusiasm, who, while replacing Perk’s sheer mass on the basketball court, would have provided little additional value.

2. With Turkish Center Semih Erden gone, Boston’s large Armenian community need no longer feel ambiguous about rooting for the Celtics.

3. With Nate Robinson gone and Delonte West, Shrek and Donkey (note: Glen Davis and Robinson) have been replaced by Shrek and the guy who did LeBron’s mom.

4. Jose is now marginally less afraid to meet the Celtics in a dark alley.

5. Perk’s reported tears at hearing he had been traded suggest he is equipped to be Speaker of the House.

6. There will be an exciting race to see who leads the team in technical fouls.

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

Not Crazy Carl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Christ!

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Remember Clifford

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

1. It is almost universally regarded as humiliating when a man in pursuit of a woman is defeated in his quest for her favor, and perhaps her bed, by a richer man who swoops in at the last moment in his fancy, jewel-encrusted car. The reason this is seen as a humiliation is obvious; the woman’s choice has revealed that the rich man is, at least in her eyes, superior to the poor man. This is not a surprise. It reaffirms what we all already know, what the poor man himself knows, that everything being equal a rich man is more desirable than a poor man.

Of course, all things are rarely equal. The rich man may be nicer, smarter, funnier or more charming than the poor man, but as casual observers, we can’t tell, so we make the most obvious assumption—she likes the rich man more because he is rich. In other words, the interaction tells us nothing that we didn’t already know. We jump to our conclusions and we are on our merry way.

What raises far more questions, however, is when the woman in the story is being courted by a rich man and yet leaves him when the poor man rolls up in his AMC Gremlin. An observer watching this transpire still knows that the rich man is wealthier than the poor man, however in this case, he also knows something else, that in some critical characteristic the poor man is the rich man’s superior. Either there is something very good about the poor man, very bad about the rich man, or both.

So what then, is the massive deficiency of baseball’s richest man, the New York Yankees? Why did Cliff Lee choose the certainly not poor, but far less wealthy Philadelphia Phillies over them? Sure, we could imagine that the Phillies have some tremendous advantage, but let’s be serious; we’re talking about Philadelphia. Unless Cliff Lee is a fan of cheesesteak, revolutionary history or being a dick, it’s hard to figure out what the draw would be.

So again, what is the massive deficiency of the Yankees?

If we were to go back to the example of the woman and the man, we might assume that the rich man is cruel, stupid, obnoxious, foul-smelling or sexually inadequate, and while we can safely assume all of these about the New York Yankees, it still fails to explain Lee’s choice because, let’s be honest, the Phillies aren’t great shakes in any of these categories either (note: except for Chase Utley, who, as any fan of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” knows, is dreamy). Thus, the only thing Jose can come up with is that the Yankees have some deficiency so vile, so perverse that it makes even the Phillies seem like a preferable partner for Lee.

Here’s what Jose’s come up with—the Yankees are in the mafia. Think about it. It makes so much sense. They act with impunity, they reside in the Bronx, they wear athletic garb to work, they cheat on their wives, they associate with a “Boss” who while clearly evil is treated as though he were a good man after his death, it all adds up.

Of course, the sexual inadequacy thing seems pretty plausible too.


2. When the Clifford Lee signing was announced yesterday and they started showing highlights on TV, was Jose the only one who as surprised to learn that he was neither a big red dog nor a Chinese man?

3. Now that the Yankees have failed horrifically in the marketplace, Jose keeps wondering if they will get a government bailout. Oh, that’s right they already got one, its called Yankee Stadium.

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

Remembering the Lesson of '04

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

As fall begins to easy into frigid winter, Jose ought to take a break from his busy schedule of sitting on the stoop and watching the world go buy to give thanks to the San Francisco Giants.

“But why, thank the Giants?” you may be asking. “You’re not a fan, supporter or even a well-wisher Jose.”

True enough. Nevertheless, Jose owes the Giants a heartfelt thanks, a big hug that includes backrubbing that goes on long enough that it gets a bit awkward. For you see, the Giants have reminded Jose of the greatest lesson of all—that God loves us.

Wait, that doesn’t sound like Jose.

Ah, here it is, the Giants have reminded Jose of the greatest lesson of all—the lesson of 2004.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

You’d think the lesson of 2004 would have stuck with Jose this long, that such a profound and valuable educational experience would have lasted far more than the six years it took to escape from Jose’s mind like so many facts about the periodic table of elements. And yet there, it went. All off to naught.

Some of you may be in the same predicament as Jose, struggling to remember exactly what was the lesson of that magical October. There are so many profound insights, that it is hard to remember what was the overriding lesson. Was it not to let us win tonight? Was it not to slap the ball out of a first baseman’s mitt? Or was it to never use Javier Vasquez in a seventh game? These are all good lessons, but none of them is THE lesson.

The lesson of 2004 is that the only way to break the cold chains of history is with focused will and brutal force. The Red Sox did it in 2004, and the Giants did it again in 2010. History repeats itself the first time as comedy, the second time also as comedy.

When the Red Sox won in 2004, Dan Shaughnessy, among others, suggested that at long last Lucy had let Charlie Brown kick the football, that finally, instead of yanking the football away and leaving old Chuck angry, distrustful and flat on his back, the bitch in the blue dress had left her finger on the ball, and let Charlie kick it swift and strong.

It’s a nice metaphor is some ways. The idea of the cycle being broken is appealing. Bruce Banner has stopped becoming the Hulk forever. Gilligan gets off the island. The sins of the father are not visited upon the son. But that’s not what happened.

Lucy did not let Charlie Brown kick the football. She wouldn’t. She can’t. Such an act of kindness would render her utterly un-Lucy. History is not made when the villains suddenly discover their kinder side.

No, what the Red Sox did it 2004 was seize their destiny by force. Charlie Brown ran to kick the football, and when Lucy yanked it back, instead of following through to the predictable, tragic confusion, Charlie floored her with a roundhouse kick. Then Charlie picked up the ball, as Lucy lay stunned, and drop kicked it through the uprights straight and true. 2004 was an act of defiance, not a concession.

The Giants in 2010 were a bit different. There was no clear Lucy, no Yankees to knock to the turf. But there is always a nemesis, whether tangible or implicit, and the Giants conquered theirs.

The lesson, to Jose, to all of us, is not to be a passive player in history, to allow one’s fate to be written by the Lucys of this world. Rather, we must realize that we have agency. The future is not written. The die is not cast.

Like the Red Sox, like the Giants, we can break the cycle if only we have the will, the strength and the flexibility to deliver that roundhouse kick.

I’m Jose Melendez, and that is my KEY TO THE GAME.

What Jose Is

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

Some months ago Jose started a new job, a job he shall henceforth refer to as…

Wait…

No…

He’s never going to refer to it.

Never.

Anyway, Jose was at an event in his new home city of Washington, DC where there was an icebreaker. You know, it was one of those events where either a) boring people offer the one interesting detail in their pathetic little lives or b) interesting people try to one up each other. In this case the instruction was “Tell us something interesting about yourself that we don’t already know.”

Jose had precious few options, either he could reveal he was a Red Sox blogger, declare that he once did pushups and sit ups every day for four years without a single missed day, or he could talk about that time with the Olympic swimmer on top of Mt. Washington, and that’s neither appropriate nor true. So, Jose being Jose, he went with the blogging.

“Jose is a Red Sox blogger,” Jose pointed out. “His blog was named Boston’s best by the Boston Phoenix in 2005.”

And then the baton passed to the guy who went to Space Camp, to the woman who wrote the score to The King and I, and so on. But Jose felt no relief. Taking his turn had not proven to be the Alka Seltzer of self-revelation to the burning indigestion of his anxiety at revealing something interesting. No the anxiety had only increased as acid and base combined to a bubbling froth. But Jose had revealed something about himself, hadn’t he?

Yes.

He had revealed that he is a liar.

Where does Jose get off saying that he is a Red Sox blogger?

Jose could say he WAS a Red Sox blogger. That would be true. But IS? Jose hasn’t blogged seriously about the Red Sox since 2007. Sure he’s written the occasional piece, but he’s written far more about Africa in the last three years than he has about baseball, and he doesn’t even do that much anymore.

Jose doesn’t want to think of himself as a liar. It’s not a nice thing to be. A liar is someone like Rick Pitino, which would implies that lying is only a step or two away from having 35 seconds of sex with a woman at a seedy Louisville restaurant after closing time, and while calling Pitino “Quick Rick” is hysterical, Jose has no interest in being called “No Foreplay Jose.” Thus, Jose got quickly down to the business of self-delusion and rationalization, which, as Jose has pointed out before, are the Shinotism and Buddhism to his Japan. He would also point out that they are Objectivism and Aqua Buddhism to Jose’s Rand Paul.

So let’s wade into Jose’s case that he is a Red Sox blogger. First, Red Sox blogging is not something one does, it’s something one is. For example, if someone asked Jason Varitek if he is a major league catcher, he would answer yes, even though he clearly hasn’t done the work of a major league catcher for years. It doesn’t matter—it’s just part of his being. By contrast, if you asked Alex Rodriguez if he is a Yankee, if he were being honest, he’d have to answer no, because, as we all know, Yankees are not centaurs—they are more like pigdogs.

Second… Actually, that’s all Jose’s got.

But it’s something he can work with. For four years Jose wrote on damn near every game occurring on a weekday and not when he was tired, bored, antsy or otherwise uninterested in writing. That makes him something—a basement dwelling dork with way too much time on his hands. But it also makes him a Red Sox blogger, and nothing can take that away, not even never writing about the Red Sox, living far away from Boston, and having no idea prior to their Red Sox debut who Daniel Nava or Darnell McDonald were prior to their Red Sox debuts.

Now Jose is not going to make some Bill Simmons style declaration that he is back. Jose is categorically not back. 2004 is not walking through that door; 2005 is not walking through that door 2007 is not walking through that door. (Note: Jose is not even going to talk about 2006. Never.) And if they do… well, it would be awesome. But it’s not going to happen so who cares?

All Jose is going to say is that he needs this and he will try to do this from time to time. It’s who he is and he refuses to change. Jose needs a place where he can write flabby prose, where he can occasionally use the passive voice, and yes, where he can make completely unsupported statements without fear of consequence, and Jose thinks that maybe, just a little bit, you need it too.

I’m Jose Melendez, and that is my KEY TO THE GAME.

In Kristof Too Popular to Be a Good Reporter?

My friend and fellow BU alumnus Jina Moore, who unlike me, is an actual Africa reporter rather than a dilettante who writes on Africa with an almost excruciating self awareness wrote a thoughtful piece in response to the recent exchange between the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof and Africa blogger texasinafrica.

For those of you who come to this space for my infrequent baseball posts rather than commentary on Africa, here’s the background.

Texasinafrica submitted the following question to Kristof “Your columns about Africa almost always feature black Africans as victims, and white foreigners as their saviors.” Yes, that is a statement and not a question, but forgive me, it’s a paraphrase of Texasinafrica’s paraphrase of the original question.

Kristof, to his credit, took the questions and the nut of his answer, as transcribed by NYTpick was

The problem that I face -- my challenge as a writer -- in trying to get readers to care about something like Eastern Congo, is that frankly, the moment a reader sees that I'm writing about Central Africa, for an awful lot of them, that's the moment to turn the page. It's very hard to get people to care about distant crises like that.

One way of getting people to read at least a few grafs in is to have some kind of a foreign protagonist, some American who they can identify with as a bridge character.

And so if this is a way I can get people to care about foreign countries, to read about them, ideally, to get a little bit more involved, then I plead guilty.

It’s also clear to any journalist that it’s very difficult to engage readers and viewers in distant crises. That’s why television has pretty much stopped covering public health and global poverty. Some years ago, Anderson Cooper went out to eastern Congo to report on the crisis there. It was expensive and risky for CNN — and his ratings for those shows fell. The lesson for any television executive producer is not to cover such crises, but to throw a Democrat and a Republican in a room together and have them yell at each other. It will be less expensive, more entertaining and will get ratings up.

Caught up? Good.

It’s at this point in our story that Moore comes in with a 2X4, albeit a thoughtful 2X4, and proceeds to beat Kristof about the head with it. That 2X4 is the implication that Kristof’s primary interest is either getting Americans to read his columns or, more generously, getting Americans to act in support of poverty alleviation and conflict reduction rather than reporting “The Truth” about various places and people in Africa.

Moore articulates three specific criticisms of Kristof’s response. First, she attacks his focus on eyeballs arguing that doing solid reporting on a place like DRC, even if few people read, watch or hear it is “a kind of journalistic corporate social responsibility.” In other words, she argues that good Africa reporting is the moral price a media outlet must pay for throwing talking heads into a room to scream talking points at each other the rest of the time.

While Moore does add that “we used to just call it journalism, but times have changed,” this old PR flack couldn’t help but be horrified at the invocation of corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility is slight of hand. It is the conjurer drawing your eye to his waving left hand while palming a coin with his right. In the context of journalism, it evokes newspapers that run “serious” stories about Africa so they don’t have to write valuable stories about Africa. History does not require American reporters to scribble the first draft of African history. African journalists can and do perform that function far better than any American. What the American journalist can do that his African partners often cannot is get some elements of this newly minted history into the homes of other Americans. Kristof does this with a success that is unequaled among American journalists.

Moore’s second critique is to challenge Kristof’s assertion that he engages more Americans in African issues by focusing on white interlopers. He has no idea how engaged his readers are, Moore points out, a truism if ever there was one. Measuring eyeballs, clicks or impressions is easy, measuring psychological impact is hard and measuring how an impact translates into action is harder still. But the fact that her statement about engagement is true does not mean that it is useful.

I like action. I think driving action is the point of reporting on ignored tragedies. Expanding the universe of knowledge is the realm of academics. The role of reporters is to diffuse knowledge, to give people the accurate information required to undertake (or decline to undertake) action in the world. For those who want facts analyzed with academic rigor there are the journals. For those who want constant updates or detailed narrative there are books and blogs. For people who are prepared to take action, there are endless resources to enable them. They will not be relying on Nicholas Kristof to tell them what Africa is “really like.” The Americans who care a lot about Africa have arrived there through different paths based on personal experience, academic interest or perhaps even plain circumstance. Surely none of them came to their deep commitment through reading Kristof columns. Rather, Kristof’s power is to get good people who don’t care at all about Africa to care a little, and in a nation of 300 million, that is a valuable service. (Though perhaps this is self-defeating. If Kristof got more Americans highly interested in Africa, wouldn’t it give him more American saviors to write about?)

Finally, Moore argues that the measure of a journalist should not be the number of eyeballs he draws to the word, but the “kinds of stories we see and whether they reflect the place that some of us have dedicated not only our professional but our personal lives to getting to know.” Her subtext appears to be that Kristof is a bit of a dilettante, that he has not spent both his professional and personal life getting to know Africa and that this constraint is reflected in his work. But it is far from certain that experience leads to accuracy. After all, Henry Morton Stanley was more deeply immersed in Africa than perhaps any white man of his generation (and most since), and yet he consistently produced fabulism. Of course, it does not necessarily follow from the fact that lifers can write schlock that short timers can write Truth. But the logic does not exclude the possibility either. For example, Tocquville spent less than two years in the U.S. before writing Democracy in America, which makes less of a dilettante than I, but more than the average Peace Corps volunteer

This rebuttal is not intended as a defense of Kristof’s reporting. Its value and its flaws are evident and widely discussed. Rather it is intended as a defense of his intentions. While it is reasonable to question whether Kristof’s writing overemphasizes the importance of foreigners in fighting Africa’s problems, it is unreasonable to condemn him for attempting to make his stories more accessible to the average American. The record of American media on Africa is poor. They bought into a false narrative that the Rwandan Genocide was caused by state failure. They perpetuated the myth that drought, rather than war/politics was the cause of the Ethiopian famine. They told us next to nothing, right or wrong, about the Congo War. Against this track record, I will gladly settle for accurately reported, widely read columns about Africa in a major newspaper regardless of whether they too often regard the white man as the white knight.

The Man is Dead--Long Live the Joke

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

1. Jose is not sorry that George Steinbrenner is dead.

Of course, he’s not happy either.

For the most part, Jose feels what he does whenever any moderately below average human being whom he does not know personally dies—not much.

Sure it would be fun to rant and rave about how loathsome Jose finds the departed, how he was bad for baseball, a convicted felon and even, Jose has heard, a lousy shipbuilder. But that would give the man too much credit.

Instead, Jose prefers to reflect on the comments of an African man in a class for which Jose is a teaching assistant. As Jose mentioned to a friend that George Steinbrenner had died, the African interjected “He was a real guy? I only knew him from Seinfeld.”

To Jose that captures Steinbrenner perfectly. When one takes the measure of the man, sums up a lifetime of debits and credits, the sum, in this case doesn’t matter. The essence of Steinbrenner was neither philanthropist nor felon, industrialist nor instigator. He was a joke. He was a punch line ranting about eating a soup in a bread bowl for lunch every day on Seinfeld. He was the word David Letterman put before “sucks” to get a cheap laugh in the days before Joey Buttafuoco. He was someone who could be played by the tremendously unserious Oliver Platt.

Yes, Steinbrenner was bad for baseball. Yes, he did give a lot of money to the Jimmy Fund. But no, he is not deserving of much celebration or scorn as he returns to the dust. He was just a man, and today he is just a man who died. But the joke, the joke lives on.

I’m Jose Melendez, and that is my KEY TO THE ALL-STAR GAME.

Shadow Pricing

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

For the next month, Jose is working as a teaching assistant in a class designed to teach international development officials how to do cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The idea behind CBA is that in analyzing a project, one should calculate the total benefit and costs derived from the project over time, and then use a discount rate to account for the time value of money, how one values 10 dollars in a year versus 10 dollars today.

At first it seems quite simple, like all one has to do is project the revenues and expenditures calculate the net present value and rejoice.

But it’s not that easy. In order to do an economic analysis, not just a financial analysis, one must calculate all of the costs and benefits, not just those that are obvious. For example, in the case of a project that causes some pollution, one has to include the cost of pollution in the equation. One must also include the opportunity cost of the project. What is not getting done because this project is going forward? As Professor Robert Conrad put it, “Never let anyone tell you that sitting on a milk crate on your front porch drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, is not a socially productive activity.”

This endeavor has made Jose wonder if we are really valuing our baseball players correctly. Sure, the Sabermetrics crowd has developed lots of new statistics that measure what players are doing, but is that enough? What about what players aren’t doing? There are some statistics that have captured assess some of the things players don’t do, such as making outs, but Jose knows that isn’t enough.

For example, with Jacoby Ellsbury replaced by Daniel Nava, we know what we’re missing in terms of actions—we’re losing so many hits, so many stolen bases and so on, but what are the inactions we’re missing? What is the added value of the time in front of the mirror that is opened up because Ellsbury isn’t standing in front of it working on his puppy dog eyes?

We know that with Josh Beckett’s injury we have lost so many strikeouts, innings pitched and so on, but we have also gained valuable hours of our lives that are no longer being squandered watching Beckett wait 20 seconds between each pitch. From the perspective of the total economy, it is possible that Josh Beckett’s injury is a net positive.

CBA can be at its most useful in measuring projects where benefits are relatively clear, such as the construction of a bridge. Thus, Jose hopes that it might be useful in assessing what Jose regards as the Red Sox’s most urgent project need, constructing a bridge to the closer.

Given that Jonathan Papelbon is under contract for two years, Jose regards this as a two-year project. That is not enough. If we have to expend $X in talent and salaries this year and next to build and sustain the bridge, then we must derive enough benefit from that bridge this year and next year (note: at a discount rate of let’s say. 03 because that is the standard in health projects, and health is clearly the biggest issue here) if the project is worth doing. Jose doesn’t see this having a positive net present value. We’re going to have to invest a lot up front to get a benefit that will last a maximum of two years, and even that is speculative. Since the bridge is built to a shaky terminus (note: Papelbon) it seems completely possible that we may not even be able to enjoy the full life of the project. Therefore, if the Red Sox are to invest in a project, investing in the terminus, a closer, seems to be a wiser choice than investing in a bridge to the closer. And that’s if one doesn’t calculate a shadow price that accounts for externalities like pollution. If one includes the noise pollution from the nonsense coming out of Papelbon’s mouth, there’s absolutely no doubt that this bridge project is a dog.

I’m Jose Melendez, and that is my KEY TO THE GAME.

Tha Spanish Flu

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

1. With Victor Martinez joining Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, St. Josh Beckett, Jeremy Hermida, Mike Cameron, DJ Dru, Daisuke Matsuzaka and others among the sick and wounded, more and more people are suggesting that an epidemic comparable to the Black Plague has broken out in the Red Sox clubhouse. Jose thinks that this analogy is false, or worse, inapt. The Black Death wiped out about a third of the population of Europe and Jose is fairly confident that this particular epidemic will ultimately strike well over a third of the Red Sox clubhouse.

Jose suspects that the better analogy is the Spanish flu of 1918. There are three reasons that Jose draws this analogy. First, since a significant chunk of the injuries are caused by Hispanophone third baseman Adrian Beltre, comparing it to a Spanish germ seems appropriate. Second, in 1918, the Red Sox won the World Series, as they will this year. Finally, as Jose has sadly learned from associating with women in their 30s who are a little too in to abstinent vampires, the Spanish Flu marks the origin of America’s sexiest vampire. This current Red Sox epidemic has given us Daniel Nava who is definitely sexy and, thanks to his fixation on the unattainable Erin Andrews, possibly abstinent. Moreover, while Nava is not over 100 years old, he is, like the high school vampire, far too old to be doing what he’s doing. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that he is a vampire, as thus far he has shown no evidence of sucking.

2. Jose is really tired of economics, of the dismal science of dollars and cents, ruining sports. Jose tried to forgive Manny Ramirez. He really did. Actually, he succeeded. Jose wasn’t there for Manny’s return, but had he been, he would have stood and cheered until a mild fatigue set in and he decided to sit down and/or get another beer.

But no more.

Jose learned last night while watching ESPN News that Takeru Kobayashi has opted out of this year’s Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest due to a stall in contract negotiations. Do you remember where you were when you lost your innocence? Jose does. The Federal on Main Street in Durham, NC sucking down an Iron City Beer. It was one thing when money ruined baseball, basketball, football, hockey, billiards, bowling and scrabble. But competitive eating? It’s supposed to be about the love, man.

Kobayashi being Manny?


3. Whenever Jose’s brother Sam sees Darnell McDonald, he thinks about Darnell from My Name is Earl, aka the Crab Man. Ergo, Jose wants to call McDonald “the Crab Man.” This is not to be confused with the promiscuous Wade Boggs who was, of course, known as “The Crabs Man.”

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

WIth a Tangled Skein

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO GAME 7.


1. It is typically the purview of prophets and sages to unwind the tangled skein of destiny (note: for metaphor see Piers Anthony) and see where each thread leads. But there are times, there are moments in the endless chain of history, where mere mortals can find an unknotted thread, where mere men can rise in the morning and perceive their thread extending into the distance. Today is one of those days.

Today, men clad in green and white have risen from their beds with the knowledge, with the certainty, that the events that transpire today will be a turning point in their lives. When next close their eyes, they will be Perseus, forever immortalized in the stars themselves, or they will be Sisyphus, endlessly reaching for a glory just out of reach. Those are the only options: death or glory, mice or men, pride or prejudice, sense or sensibility, paper or plastic, T or A, rock or roll, strut or stroll, Hall or Oates, Sanford or Son. This is not a dialectic. There is a thesis and an antithesis, but there ain’t gonna be no synthesis.

Let’s put it this way. When an irresistible force meets and immovable object, F- the Lakers.


2. It should come as no surprise that the key to Game 7 is going to be rebounding. The team that has won the battle on the boards has claimed each of the first six games in the series and tonight should be no different. However, with Red Sox draftee/Celtics center Kendrick Perkins out and Lakers center Andrew Bynum hobbled, it is increasingly difficult to project which team will collect the most rebounds.

Jose’s analysis suggests that the edge lies with the Celtics. Paul Pierce rebounded from 11 stab wounds to return to NBA dominance. Kevin Garnett rebounded from a career trapped in the basketball purgatory of the twin cities to win an NBA championship. Tony Allen rebounded from near terminal stupidity to become a defensive force. Rajon Rondo rebounded from not being 100% sure how his own name is pronounced. Ray Allen, played a character named Jesus, which Jose is pretty sure means he can rebound from his own death. Big Baby Davis rebounded from a brutal time growing up and, if the latest Shrek movie can be believed, a reality in which he was never even born. Nate Robinson rebounded from playing with the New York Knicks. And last but not least, Rasheed Wallace, based on his personal grooming, rebounded from a period of homelessness.

The Lakers by contrast have Kobe Bryant, who rebounded from being accused of a horrible crime. Ron Artest, who rebounded… kind of… from one of the NBA’s most celebrated psychotic breaks, and Pau Gasol, who even now must rebound from watching his beloved Spanish floppers fall 1-0 in World Cup competition to the Swiss, a country that is literally based on the idea of having no offense.

Edge: Celtics.

3. Jose does not like sports the way he used to. Sure he still enjoys going to the games, he gets a kick out of watching his teams on television, and sports continues to play a major role in his life. Still, it’s not the same as it used to be. Jose has seen damn near everything he wanted to see in sports at a time in his life when he could a) experience it while drinking beer and b) could go out on the town to celebrate without asking for permission, and that takes the edge off of being a sports fan.

The existential angst is gone too. Without the fear of “never seeing them win it all,” the terror is gone. But when the terror departs, so does the joy at having overcome terror. In 2002, Jose would have spent all winter ruminating about Paplebon’s Game 3 collapse. This year he spent a day, maybe two. The games, all games, simply don’t mean as much as they used to.

But that changes tonight. Tonight, for the first time since at least the Patriots’ last Super Bowl, Jose feels the terror. Tonight, the game means every bit as much as it used to. If the Celtics lose, Jose fully expects to wake up tomorrow with that old familiar pain, as if someone had died and the world is now a darker, more sinister place. If the Celtics win, Jose expects to rise in the morning committed to the absurd proposition that the world is a better place thanks to a basketball game.

Jose knows why too. This is not only about the Celtics winning; it is about the Lakers losing. Jose hates the Lakers. They, like the Yankees, fill the yearning for nationalist hatred that Jose’s liberalism and compassion prevent him from expressing in his politics. They are the other, the barbarians. If one follows Clausewitz’s famous axiom and “War is politics by other means” then surely basketball is war by other means, in the sense that it is an effort to impose one’s will on the other through sheer physical and psychological domination.

Jose is not so trite as to suggest that, in this time of real war, that basketball is anything more than metaphor for war. All he is saying is that he wants to burn Los Angeles to the ground, and sow their fields with salt.


I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO GAME 7.

Whatever Happens They Have Got.

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

Jose is a little bored.

He’s done with school, hasn’t started with work and his car has a problem stopping which makes going on a long pointless drive to some place like Metropolis, Kentucky a less than great idea. He raised the issue of his ennui with Granny Melendez the other day, and she suggested that he take up a hobby. Jose wanted to respond that baseball is his hobby, but a hobby is supposed to bring some level of enjoyment and make the time pass more quickly, so baseball isn’t much of a hobby these days—it’s more of a burden really. So she suggested, that Jose go to Michael’s and take up some sort of crafts hobby.

This doesn’t seem terribly likely. First, Jose is not that crafty. He’s not Jamie Moyer. Second what exactly would Jose do? Could he make images of DJ Dru out of macaroni? Perhaps he could needlepoint inspirational messages like “Catch the bleeping ball.” Maybe he could make a scrapbook commemorating Adrian Beltre’s walks? Of course, that one isn’t going to kill much time.

Ultimately, it just doesn’t feel like the right kind of hobby for Jose. Still, Jose needed some kind of distraction, so he thought he’d return to the sort of thing he enjoyed back before his days as a scholar. Jose picked up some history books and began scanning them for historical events that he could compare inappropriately to the Red Sox. Given the current state of the club, he went directly to the tragic, and lo and behold, he found it, and fast.

Trust Jose, there is no better place to find analogies to the current state of the Red Sox than in the colonial history of Tanganyika. Immediately, the similarities were clear. Pre-colonial Tanganyika lacked broad central organization, so do the Red Sox. Colonial Tanganyikans had no idea how to play baseball, neither do the Red Sox. But the specific analogy Jose would like to draw is between the Maji Maji Rebellion and the 2010 Red Sox.

For those of you who are victims of our public schools’ tragic under-emphasis of early 20th Century East African history, the Maji Maji Rebellion was a revolt of various Tanganyikan tribes against German rule that lasted from 1905 to 1907. The maji, for which the rebellion is named, was a tribal medicine that, many believed, would turn German bullets to water. Armed with the confidence that they were impervious to the Germans’ terrifying machine guns, warriors treated with maji put up the last great resistance of the German colonial era. The problem, of course, was that the maji didn’t work. By one estimate, the final tally was 250,000-300,000 rebels dead compared with 15 Europeans, 73 askari (locals fighting for the Germans) and 316 auxiliaries (note: from John Illife’s excellent, if dense, A History of Modern Tanganyika p.200).

As miserably inappropriate as it is to compare slaughter on this scale to something as trivial as baseball, (note: not trivial), there is an analogy to be drawn.

The leaders of the Maji Maji Rebellion repeated often and loudly that the maji would work. The repeated it so often that many people, though far from all, began to believe it, despite all evidence. The Red Sox did the same thing. All summer, they told us about a charm called run prevention and how it would neutralize the maxim guns running up and down the Yankees and Rays lineups. And armed with this confidence in the magic, we the soldiers of Red Sox nation charged into the breech, and guess what? Yeah. Our stats look only marginally better than the Maji Maji.

Hillaire Beloc once wrote in his poem The Modern Traveler.

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not

Jose would suggest that when the line and verse is written for this season the most memorable line will be:

Whatever happens, they have got
Offensive teams, and we have not.

Perhaps, we don’t really need an offensive team. Perhaps if the pitchers had thrown as advertised and the fielders had picked the horsehide clean and crisp, the offensive struggles would not have been a problem. Of course, if the maji had worked, the rebels’ lack of machine guns wouldn’t have been a problem either. And so we are stuck outgunned relying on magicks both ancient and really ineffective.

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