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.