From SoSH: Re: 9/18 - Sox vs. Yanks -- Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

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

1. Sadly, Jose missed the thrilling conclusion to last night's game. He had budgeted 3.5 hours for the game before going off to a party, and he had assumed that it would be plenty of time, that the game would be over then either due to rain or by natural causes. But it wasn't over, so when Jose left at 10:30 with the Sox down 2-1, even with Tanyon Sturze on the mound, he did not see good things on the horizon.

At about midnight, Jose learned the result thanks to the Melendezette's Internet phone, and yet even then he wasn't relieved. Indeed, Jose went home and fell into a drunken, tormented sleep, still worrying in his dreams that the Yankees had won and were poised to capture the next two. But remember this, Jose's sports dreams are the anti-Doppler radar of prognostication. If Jose's dreams it, it's not certainly false, but it probably is...and you know what that means? Sox sweep.

2. Jose Melendez has just received this special report from the Bronx -- Miguel Cairo is still running around the bases at Yankee Stadium muttering to himself, "It must have been a homer, it must have been a homer."

Jose knows that the Yankees are desperate and hear the hungry wolves out of Boston at their door, but he had never thought that they were delusional until he saw Cairo high fiving in celebration of his long, hard out. Frankly, Jose is worried about Cairo's mental health. He is even more worried, because he has heard that the Yankee health plan does not cover Lithium.

3. At about 2AM last night, Jose found himself standing at the drive through window of a McDonald's in East Cambridge trying to get a little bit of late night gnosh. Jose discovered that when you are not in a car the sensors will not pick you up and they will not ask to take your order; it is as though you do not even exist. In other words, if things are not as they are "supposed to be," as they normally are, the system cannot recognize that circumstances have changed and cannot adapt. This is what is happening in this division race.

The Yankees are McDonald's, rich, fat and greasy, and the Red Sox are walking through the drive through. Every year before, the Red Sox showed up atthe drive through window in a car, and the Yankees saw them coming and got ready to serve them. This year the Red Sox are walking through undetected, it dosen't fit the old patterns of behavior, and the Yankees are structurally incapable of adapting on the fly. They keep expecting the fold that will never come.

This year, when the Red Sox arrive at the pick up window, they won't get "served;" the Yankees won't hand them their Big Macs and fries, take their money and send them away. This year, the Red Sox will reach through the pick up window, grab the Big Macs, grab the fries and empty the register while their at it, and the Yankees will never have seen it coming. (Note: Just to be clear, Jose did not rob a McDonald's last night, it is a metaphor. He just had a quarter-pounder and fries.

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