It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. Jose is terrified of tonight’s game. Not a little scared. Not badly frightened.
Terrified.
Jose has never been so terrified by a game in his entire life. Not in 1986, not in 2003, not even in 2004.
Tonight. Tonight is more terrifying.
It’s not that Jose is afraid of losing. Jose knows how to handle a loss… with great bitterness and by taking it out on the people around him.
It’s not that Jose is afraid that a loss means that winter has arrived. Jose lives in the south now; winter never arrives. Not real winter anyway.
It’s not that Jose is afraid that this is the last time he’ll see Jason Bay, Jason Varitek or anyone else named Jason in a Red Sox uniform. There are plenty of other Jasons out there, and all of them except Jason Marquis are better than what’s left of Tek.
No, the reason Jose is terrified is that to survive, the Red Sox are going to have to win three straight elimination games against the Angels, and you know what that means.
Death.
When the Red Sox complete the comeback, history suggests that some poor soul on the Angels is going to die by his own hand.
It’s awful.
Say whatever you want about the Yankees, but they know how to take a bone crushing, soul-destroying defeat, by being contemptible, whiny, but decidedly non-suicidal bitches. Good for them.
But the Angles? When the Angels lose three straight elimination games to the Sox, there’s always a chance that someone is going to take the name “Angels” a little too literally and is going to go for the quick path to the halo.
Jose just hopes that they have a good psychologist on staff.
2. Friday night started with such promise. As Jose drove to Raleigh to watch the game with members of the Triangle Red Sox Nation, he got regular updates on the Yankees collapse from Granny Melendez on the phone direct from Atlanta.
While Granny Melendez doesn’t have the finer points of baseball down and can’t always explain exactly what’s happening on the field, she can convey basic information such as the score and the inning in a pleasant and listenable way. In other words, she is a vastly superior broadcaster to Suzyn Waldman.
So as Jose drove, Granny Melendez informed him that the Twins had crept to a 2-1 lead and then a 3-1 lead. Jose even got her to say “Yankees Suck.” Admittedly, he tricked her.
“How about you give Jose a Yankees suck Granny Melendez?” Jose said.
“Yankees suck?” responded Granny Melendez, not sure that she had heard correctly.
“That’s the spirit, Yankees suck!” chimed in Jose.
“Oh, Granny Melendez, doesn’t like that phrase,” she replied in the third person as is Melendez family tradition. “She prefers Yankees stink.”
“Too late, Jose gets to quote you now.”
“Don’t do that.”
And yet here it is. Jose denied a request from his own grandmother. It’s not Jose’s fault, she should have said it was off the record.
3. No more jokes.
No more puns.
No more scoring zero runs.
When the anthem’s last note sounds
Red Sox need to bat around
No more KEYS to
No more games
No more Sox fans feeling shame
Since we’ve got the wild card
Clay Buchholz is throwing hard
No more losses
Errors too
No much giving up runs to
Angles batters, not at all
Because they can’t take a ball
No more squanders
No more LOBs
No more doing crappy jobs
Of taking bases, driving runs
When something wicked this way comes.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Showing posts with label ALDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ALDS. Show all posts
Sunday, October 11
Friday, October 9
ALDS Game 2--Incompetence Rewarded
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. By the time Darren Oliver—freaking Darren Oliver—recorded the last out the bar had changed.
The night had begun as a gathering of grizzled Red Sox fans chugging Yuenglings and chomping on chicken wings cursing C.B. Bucknor, John Lackey and Torii Hunter all the while. But as the night wore on the undergrads flowed in. Young women dressed to the nines, despite being at a bar with sticky floors and sticky palmed frat boys stumbled in in packs like hyenas, cackling incomprehensible. The men in white caps, polo shirts and sweaters joined quickly enough, looking for all the world like everything wrong with America. Entitlement, arrogance, stupid looking caps.
It was, in a way, a metaphor for what had transpired in far away Anaheim that evening. A night had begun with one expectation had ended as something different, something sadder. Just as night with friends became a night surrounded by youth in the full flower of ignorance, a night to celebrate the glory of baseball and the Red Sox in particular had become a night to begrudge, to carp and to complain.
But thankfully, that is not where the metaphor ends. Come two in the morning, the undergrads are gone, and the bar has returned to its lonely natural state with naught but a urine filled trash can as a reminder of what came before. It is the same way with the ALDS. Today is not yesterday, the aggravations of Game 1 are gone, relics of history leaving behind nothing but the urine filled trashcan of a 1-0 deficit. Yesterday was bad; today will be better… It has to be.
2. Among the sub-dramas in last night’s game were the two blown calls by first base umpire C.B. Bucknor.
Bucknor is on the officiating crew for this series, despite being named in a 2006 Sports Illustrated players survey as the worst umpire in the majors, and possibly the universe. At first it might seem counterintuitive to reward massive incompetence with a prestigious job, but Jose would argue that not only is it not unprecedented, it is practically standard practice in this country. Consider the following examples:
• Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz screw up wars royally and get to run the World Bank.
• Grady Little after making one of the dumbest moves in history gets a job managing the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• After staring in Joey, Matt LeBlanc gets a new sitcom.
• Fugitive Roman Polanski wins an Oscar and gets a standing ovation.
• Approximately 10 billion CEO’s who ran their companies into the ground get golden parachutes.
• George W. Bush is reelected in 2004 after screwing up the Iraq war and seeming generally clueless.
Still for every one of these injustices there is a reason that it happened. McNamara and Wolfowitz were being rewarded for loyalty. Little was being rewarded for Frank McCourt being very, very stupid, and basically the front man for his wife. LeBlanc was being rewarded for having once been on a successful show carried by other people. Polanski was being rewarded for Hollywood being full of degenerates. CEOs were being rewarded for being smart enough to rig the game. Bush, of course, was rewarded for hating gays or possibly terrorists.
So the lesson is that people are rewarded for incompetence happens all the time but that there is always a reason for it. The question is what is the reason in the case of one C.B. Bucknor? Jose wonders if his initials, which are not even explained on wikipedia might hold the clue. Jose has come up with a few theories:
1. Cuckolding Bud: For years, Bucknor has been sexually servicing commissioner Bud Selig’s wife, which, unsurprisingly, is the sort of thing Bud digs.
2. Cortland Brotherhood: Bucknor attend SUNY Cortland, and as we all know Cortland’s secret societies run the world.
3. Crack Baby: A crack baby made the decisions on who would umpire playoff games. Literally, an infant born addicted to crack chose Bucknor to be a playoff umpire. This seems like the most sensible option.
4. Coke Bottles: He’s a perfectly good umpire when wearing his Coke bottle glasses, but he doesn’t wear them because they make him look like a nerd. This doesn’t really make any sense, but Jose is a traditionalist and he doesn’t really see how you can mock an umpire without suggesting that he is blind.
5. Crazy Bitches: Man, the people who choose umpires are some crazy bitches.
6. Corns and Bunions: A better umpire was unavailable due to foot problems.
See, there are lots of perfectly reasonable explanations for why the worst umpire in baseball would be rewarded for his poor job performance by umpiring a playoff game. But Jose is going with cuckolding Bud. The only question is whether the commissioner also turns a blind eye to the use of performance enhancing drugs in the bedroom.
3. The big news this morning was that Victor Martinez will indeed catch St. Josh a Beckett in tonight’s critical second game of the ALDS. There had been speculation that Sox manager Tito Eurona might go with the corpse of Jason Vartiek in deference to Beckett’s preference for having base runners steal at every opportunity and having balls sneak by the catcher in critical situations.
The question of course, is whether Beckett will be comfortable with Martinez behind the plate. On the face of it, “Are you comfortable?” is an absurd question to ask in this situation. Maybe it’s appropriate to ask when you’ve invited a friend to take a seat or if you’re a doctor performing a colonoscopy, but to ask a pitcher? It’s kind of weird. Nevertheless, the issue seems to be there, so Jose wants to offer a few things for Beckett to remember if he starts feeling uncomfortable.
• Victor means “one who wins.” Jason means guy who ran all of Greece looking for wool made out of gold—not that bright.
• Heidi Whatney ditched Tek, who left his wife for her, to be with Nick Green. You’ll never see Chris Woodward taking Victor Martinez’ girl.
• The C on Varitek’s jersey does not stand for comfortable. Try to remember that.
• Victor Martinez isn’t great at blocking balls or throwing people out, but he can hit. Jason Vartiek… well, he punched A-Rod in the face once. We all enjoyed that.
So relax Josh. Get comfortable, and remember, it’s not like you’ve never thrown to another catcher in the post season. You threw to Ivan Rodriguez in 2003, and as Jose recalls, that worked out pretty well.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. By the time Darren Oliver—freaking Darren Oliver—recorded the last out the bar had changed.
The night had begun as a gathering of grizzled Red Sox fans chugging Yuenglings and chomping on chicken wings cursing C.B. Bucknor, John Lackey and Torii Hunter all the while. But as the night wore on the undergrads flowed in. Young women dressed to the nines, despite being at a bar with sticky floors and sticky palmed frat boys stumbled in in packs like hyenas, cackling incomprehensible. The men in white caps, polo shirts and sweaters joined quickly enough, looking for all the world like everything wrong with America. Entitlement, arrogance, stupid looking caps.
It was, in a way, a metaphor for what had transpired in far away Anaheim that evening. A night had begun with one expectation had ended as something different, something sadder. Just as night with friends became a night surrounded by youth in the full flower of ignorance, a night to celebrate the glory of baseball and the Red Sox in particular had become a night to begrudge, to carp and to complain.
But thankfully, that is not where the metaphor ends. Come two in the morning, the undergrads are gone, and the bar has returned to its lonely natural state with naught but a urine filled trash can as a reminder of what came before. It is the same way with the ALDS. Today is not yesterday, the aggravations of Game 1 are gone, relics of history leaving behind nothing but the urine filled trashcan of a 1-0 deficit. Yesterday was bad; today will be better… It has to be.
2. Among the sub-dramas in last night’s game were the two blown calls by first base umpire C.B. Bucknor.
Bucknor is on the officiating crew for this series, despite being named in a 2006 Sports Illustrated players survey as the worst umpire in the majors, and possibly the universe. At first it might seem counterintuitive to reward massive incompetence with a prestigious job, but Jose would argue that not only is it not unprecedented, it is practically standard practice in this country. Consider the following examples:
• Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz screw up wars royally and get to run the World Bank.
• Grady Little after making one of the dumbest moves in history gets a job managing the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• After staring in Joey, Matt LeBlanc gets a new sitcom.
• Fugitive Roman Polanski wins an Oscar and gets a standing ovation.
• Approximately 10 billion CEO’s who ran their companies into the ground get golden parachutes.
• George W. Bush is reelected in 2004 after screwing up the Iraq war and seeming generally clueless.
Still for every one of these injustices there is a reason that it happened. McNamara and Wolfowitz were being rewarded for loyalty. Little was being rewarded for Frank McCourt being very, very stupid, and basically the front man for his wife. LeBlanc was being rewarded for having once been on a successful show carried by other people. Polanski was being rewarded for Hollywood being full of degenerates. CEOs were being rewarded for being smart enough to rig the game. Bush, of course, was rewarded for hating gays or possibly terrorists.
So the lesson is that people are rewarded for incompetence happens all the time but that there is always a reason for it. The question is what is the reason in the case of one C.B. Bucknor? Jose wonders if his initials, which are not even explained on wikipedia might hold the clue. Jose has come up with a few theories:
1. Cuckolding Bud: For years, Bucknor has been sexually servicing commissioner Bud Selig’s wife, which, unsurprisingly, is the sort of thing Bud digs.
2. Cortland Brotherhood: Bucknor attend SUNY Cortland, and as we all know Cortland’s secret societies run the world.
3. Crack Baby: A crack baby made the decisions on who would umpire playoff games. Literally, an infant born addicted to crack chose Bucknor to be a playoff umpire. This seems like the most sensible option.
4. Coke Bottles: He’s a perfectly good umpire when wearing his Coke bottle glasses, but he doesn’t wear them because they make him look like a nerd. This doesn’t really make any sense, but Jose is a traditionalist and he doesn’t really see how you can mock an umpire without suggesting that he is blind.
5. Crazy Bitches: Man, the people who choose umpires are some crazy bitches.
6. Corns and Bunions: A better umpire was unavailable due to foot problems.
See, there are lots of perfectly reasonable explanations for why the worst umpire in baseball would be rewarded for his poor job performance by umpiring a playoff game. But Jose is going with cuckolding Bud. The only question is whether the commissioner also turns a blind eye to the use of performance enhancing drugs in the bedroom.
3. The big news this morning was that Victor Martinez will indeed catch St. Josh a Beckett in tonight’s critical second game of the ALDS. There had been speculation that Sox manager Tito Eurona might go with the corpse of Jason Vartiek in deference to Beckett’s preference for having base runners steal at every opportunity and having balls sneak by the catcher in critical situations.
The question of course, is whether Beckett will be comfortable with Martinez behind the plate. On the face of it, “Are you comfortable?” is an absurd question to ask in this situation. Maybe it’s appropriate to ask when you’ve invited a friend to take a seat or if you’re a doctor performing a colonoscopy, but to ask a pitcher? It’s kind of weird. Nevertheless, the issue seems to be there, so Jose wants to offer a few things for Beckett to remember if he starts feeling uncomfortable.
• Victor means “one who wins.” Jason means guy who ran all of Greece looking for wool made out of gold—not that bright.
• Heidi Whatney ditched Tek, who left his wife for her, to be with Nick Green. You’ll never see Chris Woodward taking Victor Martinez’ girl.
• The C on Varitek’s jersey does not stand for comfortable. Try to remember that.
• Victor Martinez isn’t great at blocking balls or throwing people out, but he can hit. Jason Vartiek… well, he punched A-Rod in the face once. We all enjoyed that.
So relax Josh. Get comfortable, and remember, it’s not like you’ve never thrown to another catcher in the post season. You threw to Ivan Rodriguez in 2003, and as Jose recalls, that worked out pretty well.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Thursday, October 8
ALDS GAME 1--No More Playing the Angles
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS to the ALDS.
1. Well, this feels kind of familiar doesn’t it?
Jose, who let’s be honest, is aging worse than the bastard child of Curt Euro and Jim Rice, doesn’t have the fastball anymore, so he figured he could rely on trickery to fight his way through the playoffs this year.
The trickery he had in mind was going back to the ALDS KEYS from 2004, 2007 and 2008 to see if there was anything he could just recycle from past ALDS KEYS about the Angels.
No, is the answer. No there is not.
Jose has nothing that he hasn’t regurgitated at least once already. Basically, it’s all about Angles and Normans, Harold and William the Conqueror, and frankly its tired, somnolent even. One can only reference wrestling legend Norman the Lunatic in the context of the Norman invasion of the British Isles so many times (note: once) before it stops being funny or even mildly ironic.
So that’s it. No more. Jose will no longer pretend that the name of the team that our beloved Red Sox are playing this week is the Angles rather than the Angels. Nor will he claim that we are playing the Gleans, the Slag En or any other anagram you can come up with.
No, Jose will actually accept that we are playing a team of creatures that are small enough to dance on the head of a pin and look remarkably like John Travolta circa 1996 or so.
This does raise some serious questions for the series, however. For instance, if a whole bunch of angels can dance on the head of a pin, doesn’t this mean that they will have very small strike zones? How will this affect Dice-K’s ability to throw strikes? Is Michael Napoli the archangel Michael? You know, the warrior guy? Jose is just saying that he doesn’t look so tough.
The challenges run deeper than that though. When Jose thought they were Angles, the key to victory was simple, conquer their island and intermarry with them. But now? Angels don’t live on an island, and as best Jose knows, they don’t marry, so what do we do?
The best Jose can come up with is… bear with Jose… driving a stake through their hearts. Jose is pretty sure he saw a TV show once, Buffy something, where there was a guy named Angel, who Jose figures must be an angel, you know because of his name, who got killed when a blonde chick shoved a stake through his heart.
Jose knows it doesn’t sound quite right, more vampire than angel, but even when this guy Angel got killed or vanquished, which seemed like it happened about a million times, he always seemed to come back a year or so later, just like the Los Anaheim Angels, so Jose thinks he’s on to something.
So Jose says we should go with the stakes, either that or pitching, timely hitting and not playing Tek.
2. In Siren of the Titans Kurt Vonnegut wrote of Angels
It is a fair point. As Jose contemplates the Los Anaheim Angels’ legacy of postseason defeat at the hands of the Red Sox, a string of futility that has seen them win only one of their last 12 postseason meetings, he begins to wonder if Vonnegut isn’t right. Perhaps the Angels’ struggles are a function of organization as much as anything else. Certainly this was the case with the Red Sox in the era that ended in 2004. No matter how gifted the team was it was never well organized. The owner, the rock upon which an organization rests, was always either a drunk, or a racist, or the widow of a drunk or a racist, or the accountant of the widow of a drunk or a racist. And this disorganization flowed downward into managers who were drunks or racists, or who managed like the widow of a drunk or a racist or occasionally were neither drunks nor racists, but did enjoy the burning high of the coca leaf milled powder fine. (Note: Sorry Butch.) The base coaches were probably mostly assholes too, but who can remember?
The results of the disorganization were predictable—failure after failure, loss after loss, heartbreak after heartbreak. But when ownership changed, then management changed (note: after 2003) and then outcomes changed. The Red Sox became the sorts of cold blooded assassins who could let an aging Pedro Martinez walk away or cast DLowe the Paranoid Android into the icy void. And three years later, they won it all again.
But the Angles? The Angles do not appear to be organized like the mafia. For instance, imagine the classic opening scene from The Godfather if Mike Scioscia replaced Vito Corelone.
BONASERA: I -- I went to the police, like a good American... And those two bastards
they smiled at me. Then I said to my wife, "for justice, we must go to Don Scioscia."
MIKE SCIOSCIA (sitting behind his desk, petting a cat): Why did you go to the police? I wouldn’t have gone to the police. What you should have done was first gone to the pawnshop and gotten a pair of brass knuckles for your left hand. Then you should have traded them in for a pair of brass knuckles for your right hand. Then you should have traded those back for a different left-handed pair. Why didn't you come to me first, I could have told you how to do things much better than you did them.
BONASERA: What do you want of me? Tell me anything. But do what I beg you to do.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: What is that?
[Bonasera gets up to whisper his request into Don Scioscia’s ear]
That I cannot do. But I have a better way to do it. It doesn’t involve so much… force… but it involves a lot of running. Running this way, then the other way. Maybe some hit and running even.
BONASERA: I'll give you anything you ask.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you came to me for counsel, for help, for assistance, for advice, for ideas…But let's be frank here: you never wanted my friendship. And uh, you were afraid to be in my debt. And that’s really too bad because I have a lot of really good ideas. I’m incredibly smart. Smarter than you. So smart that I won the 2002 World Series.
BONASERA: I didn't want to get into trouble.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I understand. That’s why I like the hit and run. Keeps you out of double plays… or sometimes it gets you into double plays, which I like to call double trouble. But uh, now you come to me and you say -- "Don Scioscia give me justice." -- But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Manager. Instead, you come into my house on the day of ALDS game 1, and you uh ask me to do murder, for money.
BONASERA: I ask you for justice.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Technically, that is not justice; your daughter is still alive. Also do you really want David Justice, he only stole 53 bases in his entire career? That’s pathetic, stolen bases are so important.
BONASERA: Then they can suffer then, as she suffers. How much shall I pay you?
MIKE SCIOSCIA (stands, turning his back toward Bonasera): Bonasera... Bonasera... What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?
BONASERA: Be my friend -- (then, after bowing and the Don shrugs) -- Manager?
MIKE SCIOSCIA (after Bonasera kisses his hand): Good. Some day, and that day may never come, but it probably will. I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But uh,
until that day -- accept this justice as a gift on the day of the ALDS Game 1.
BONASERA (as he leaves the room): Grazie, Manager.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Prego.
(then, to Tom Hagen, after Bonasera leaves the room)
Ah, give this to ah, Clemenza. I want reliable people. But then if he doesn’t get it done give it to Tessio, but if Tessio doesn’t look so good, go out and visit him, and then if he still doesn’t look so good visit him again and then take him off the and give it to Luca Brasi. And make sure they bring a baseball bat, but I don’t want them to swing the bat… too risky. Instead have them play it safe and just sort of tap these guys with bat, softly. Maybe our guy will get arrested, but it will be a productive arrest. I just want to make sure that we run a mafia the right way. Like the old time mafia. You know, maybe I’ll go and supervise, offer some pointers. Could David Eckstein do the job?
You can begin to see the contours of the problem now can’t you? This sort of organizational structure is too top down and too micromanaged to successfully rough up anybody, much less run rackets.
The flip side, of course, is that if Don Corleone or any other really top flight Mafiosi had been managing the angels for the last five years, the Angels would have absolutely beaten the Red Sox after Manny Ramirez freaked out when he found the carburetor from his prized Cadillac in his bed.
3. In his column yesterday in the Orange County Register, Bill Plunkett asked a provocative question: “Are the Red Sox inside the Angels’ heads?” At first it seems stupid, idiotic really. How could an entire baseball team fit inside a man’s head? But then you realize that it’s a metaphor and you always take things way too literally after 12 beers.
Which leaves the question, well it leaves the question the next morning anyway: Are the Red Sox figuratively inside the Angels heads?
And the answer is yes. Yes they are. After perusing the DSM-IV, Jose has concluded that the Angels collectively are suffering from hydrophobia. Wait, never mind, that’s rabies. The Angels don’t have rabies, that’s the Yankees, well Joba anyway, drooling idiot.
What the Angels have is aquaphobia, a fear of water—dirty water in particular.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. Well, this feels kind of familiar doesn’t it?
Jose, who let’s be honest, is aging worse than the bastard child of Curt Euro and Jim Rice, doesn’t have the fastball anymore, so he figured he could rely on trickery to fight his way through the playoffs this year.
The trickery he had in mind was going back to the ALDS KEYS from 2004, 2007 and 2008 to see if there was anything he could just recycle from past ALDS KEYS about the Angels.
No, is the answer. No there is not.
Jose has nothing that he hasn’t regurgitated at least once already. Basically, it’s all about Angles and Normans, Harold and William the Conqueror, and frankly its tired, somnolent even. One can only reference wrestling legend Norman the Lunatic in the context of the Norman invasion of the British Isles so many times (note: once) before it stops being funny or even mildly ironic.
So that’s it. No more. Jose will no longer pretend that the name of the team that our beloved Red Sox are playing this week is the Angles rather than the Angels. Nor will he claim that we are playing the Gleans, the Slag En or any other anagram you can come up with.
No, Jose will actually accept that we are playing a team of creatures that are small enough to dance on the head of a pin and look remarkably like John Travolta circa 1996 or so.
This does raise some serious questions for the series, however. For instance, if a whole bunch of angels can dance on the head of a pin, doesn’t this mean that they will have very small strike zones? How will this affect Dice-K’s ability to throw strikes? Is Michael Napoli the archangel Michael? You know, the warrior guy? Jose is just saying that he doesn’t look so tough.
The challenges run deeper than that though. When Jose thought they were Angles, the key to victory was simple, conquer their island and intermarry with them. But now? Angels don’t live on an island, and as best Jose knows, they don’t marry, so what do we do?
The best Jose can come up with is… bear with Jose… driving a stake through their hearts. Jose is pretty sure he saw a TV show once, Buffy something, where there was a guy named Angel, who Jose figures must be an angel, you know because of his name, who got killed when a blonde chick shoved a stake through his heart.
Jose knows it doesn’t sound quite right, more vampire than angel, but even when this guy Angel got killed or vanquished, which seemed like it happened about a million times, he always seemed to come back a year or so later, just like the Los Anaheim Angels, so Jose thinks he’s on to something.
So Jose says we should go with the stakes, either that or pitching, timely hitting and not playing Tek.
2. In Siren of the Titans Kurt Vonnegut wrote of Angels
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
It is a fair point. As Jose contemplates the Los Anaheim Angels’ legacy of postseason defeat at the hands of the Red Sox, a string of futility that has seen them win only one of their last 12 postseason meetings, he begins to wonder if Vonnegut isn’t right. Perhaps the Angels’ struggles are a function of organization as much as anything else. Certainly this was the case with the Red Sox in the era that ended in 2004. No matter how gifted the team was it was never well organized. The owner, the rock upon which an organization rests, was always either a drunk, or a racist, or the widow of a drunk or a racist, or the accountant of the widow of a drunk or a racist. And this disorganization flowed downward into managers who were drunks or racists, or who managed like the widow of a drunk or a racist or occasionally were neither drunks nor racists, but did enjoy the burning high of the coca leaf milled powder fine. (Note: Sorry Butch.) The base coaches were probably mostly assholes too, but who can remember?
The results of the disorganization were predictable—failure after failure, loss after loss, heartbreak after heartbreak. But when ownership changed, then management changed (note: after 2003) and then outcomes changed. The Red Sox became the sorts of cold blooded assassins who could let an aging Pedro Martinez walk away or cast DLowe the Paranoid Android into the icy void. And three years later, they won it all again.
But the Angles? The Angles do not appear to be organized like the mafia. For instance, imagine the classic opening scene from The Godfather if Mike Scioscia replaced Vito Corelone.
BONASERA: I -- I went to the police, like a good American... And those two bastards
they smiled at me. Then I said to my wife, "for justice, we must go to Don Scioscia."
MIKE SCIOSCIA (sitting behind his desk, petting a cat): Why did you go to the police? I wouldn’t have gone to the police. What you should have done was first gone to the pawnshop and gotten a pair of brass knuckles for your left hand. Then you should have traded them in for a pair of brass knuckles for your right hand. Then you should have traded those back for a different left-handed pair. Why didn't you come to me first, I could have told you how to do things much better than you did them.
BONASERA: What do you want of me? Tell me anything. But do what I beg you to do.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: What is that?
[Bonasera gets up to whisper his request into Don Scioscia’s ear]
That I cannot do. But I have a better way to do it. It doesn’t involve so much… force… but it involves a lot of running. Running this way, then the other way. Maybe some hit and running even.
BONASERA: I'll give you anything you ask.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you came to me for counsel, for help, for assistance, for advice, for ideas…But let's be frank here: you never wanted my friendship. And uh, you were afraid to be in my debt. And that’s really too bad because I have a lot of really good ideas. I’m incredibly smart. Smarter than you. So smart that I won the 2002 World Series.
BONASERA: I didn't want to get into trouble.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I understand. That’s why I like the hit and run. Keeps you out of double plays… or sometimes it gets you into double plays, which I like to call double trouble. But uh, now you come to me and you say -- "Don Scioscia give me justice." -- But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Manager. Instead, you come into my house on the day of ALDS game 1, and you uh ask me to do murder, for money.
BONASERA: I ask you for justice.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Technically, that is not justice; your daughter is still alive. Also do you really want David Justice, he only stole 53 bases in his entire career? That’s pathetic, stolen bases are so important.
BONASERA: Then they can suffer then, as she suffers. How much shall I pay you?
MIKE SCIOSCIA (stands, turning his back toward Bonasera): Bonasera... Bonasera... What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?
BONASERA: Be my friend -- (then, after bowing and the Don shrugs) -- Manager?
MIKE SCIOSCIA (after Bonasera kisses his hand): Good. Some day, and that day may never come, but it probably will. I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But uh,
until that day -- accept this justice as a gift on the day of the ALDS Game 1.
BONASERA (as he leaves the room): Grazie, Manager.
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Prego.
(then, to Tom Hagen, after Bonasera leaves the room)
Ah, give this to ah, Clemenza. I want reliable people. But then if he doesn’t get it done give it to Tessio, but if Tessio doesn’t look so good, go out and visit him, and then if he still doesn’t look so good visit him again and then take him off the and give it to Luca Brasi. And make sure they bring a baseball bat, but I don’t want them to swing the bat… too risky. Instead have them play it safe and just sort of tap these guys with bat, softly. Maybe our guy will get arrested, but it will be a productive arrest. I just want to make sure that we run a mafia the right way. Like the old time mafia. You know, maybe I’ll go and supervise, offer some pointers. Could David Eckstein do the job?
You can begin to see the contours of the problem now can’t you? This sort of organizational structure is too top down and too micromanaged to successfully rough up anybody, much less run rackets.
The flip side, of course, is that if Don Corleone or any other really top flight Mafiosi had been managing the angels for the last five years, the Angels would have absolutely beaten the Red Sox after Manny Ramirez freaked out when he found the carburetor from his prized Cadillac in his bed.
3. In his column yesterday in the Orange County Register, Bill Plunkett asked a provocative question: “Are the Red Sox inside the Angels’ heads?” At first it seems stupid, idiotic really. How could an entire baseball team fit inside a man’s head? But then you realize that it’s a metaphor and you always take things way too literally after 12 beers.
Which leaves the question, well it leaves the question the next morning anyway: Are the Red Sox figuratively inside the Angels heads?
And the answer is yes. Yes they are. After perusing the DSM-IV, Jose has concluded that the Angels collectively are suffering from hydrophobia. Wait, never mind, that’s rabies. The Angels don’t have rabies, that’s the Yankees, well Joba anyway, drooling idiot.
What the Angels have is aquaphobia, a fear of water—dirty water in particular.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Monday, October 6
ALDS Game 4--Must Win Game
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. The Sox may be up 2 games to 1, but let’s not kid ourselves, tonight is a must win game.
There are plenty of reasons it’s a must win. Jose doesn’t want to go back to Anaheim, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to see Dice pitch another winner take all game. Dice in a decisive game is like having ulcer surgery. It will probably work out but there will be a lot of nausea and discomfort. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that if there is a game on Wednesday night, Jose is almost definitely going to fail his microeconomics exam at 8:30 Thursday morning.
Think of Jose as the Mark Kotsay of microeconomics. You look at Jose’s resume, his background and his skills and you think, “Hey, Jose should be a pretty nice fit here. He’s the sort of guy I might like to have doing microeconomics for me. I wouldn’t want him to be the first guy I go to when I need to do a utility maximization problem, but having him as a second or third option might be pretty good.”
So you trade some junk to another team to acquire Jose as a backup economics student, and you have him do a problem when one of your economists goes down with, social anxiety disorder probably. So far so good. But then you see him work. Awful. Abysmal. Just flailing at the problems really.
Jose’s approach to economics is a lot like Kotsay’s approach to a critical at bat. He gets in there, guesses a few times and then ends up looking foolish.
On the other hand, no one has ever asked why Sean Casey isn’t doing Jose’s microeconomics problem sets.
2. One of the headlines in an Orange County Register blog this morning was “Hunter Escapes Ridicule.” The entry points out how unspeakably awful the Angles centerfielder was last night; he allowed a ball to drop for a three run single and was thrown out trying to stretch a single by what the Register calls the “length of a bowling ally” and Jose calls the length of a candlepin bowling alley. They are right, he was awful, but they go on to suggest that because the Angles won he will escape ridicule.
Wrong. Maybe he’s escaped ridicule so far but that ends now.
Torii, sure Jose could pick on you for the things that happened last night, or for hurting your knee jumping up and down in protest of a call. Jose could do that… and he will. You suck. Your judgment is poor at best! Snap.
But that’s not really what Jose wants to talk about. What he wants to talk about is your parentage. Torii Hunter? That’s really your name? You sound like singer/songwriter Torii Amos and Spider Man villain Kraven the Hunter had a baby.
Wait... did Jose hurt your feelings? Does the ridicule sting?
Jose is just saying he could see you sitting there at the piano singing weepy songs and breathing audibly, all while wearing a vest made from the head of a lion. And you know what? That would still be less humiliating than your performance in last night’s game.
These are your parents Torii Hunter. Feel the shame.
3. As Jose did his research for tonight’s game, he discovered that there was once a dot com called mylackey.com, which Jose can only assume, is affiliated with tonight’s Angels starter John Lackey. The idea behind mylackey was that busy professionals could use it to schedule services like dry cleaning and dog grooming. True to its namesake, mylackey guaranteed excellent service in non-essential situations. If you needed your dry cleaning done in two days but four days would be fine, no problem. However, in a really important situation, say if you needed a suit cleaned for a big meeting, mylackey would almost definitely come up short. Not only would it not get you your suit on time, it might set it on fire.
For example, let’s say you needed some flowers for your girlfriend’s birthday. With mylackey you could order them sent to her no problem, but there was a good chance that she would end up getting a bouquet of poison ivy with a wasps nest in it.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. The Sox may be up 2 games to 1, but let’s not kid ourselves, tonight is a must win game.
There are plenty of reasons it’s a must win. Jose doesn’t want to go back to Anaheim, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to see Dice pitch another winner take all game. Dice in a decisive game is like having ulcer surgery. It will probably work out but there will be a lot of nausea and discomfort. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that if there is a game on Wednesday night, Jose is almost definitely going to fail his microeconomics exam at 8:30 Thursday morning.
Think of Jose as the Mark Kotsay of microeconomics. You look at Jose’s resume, his background and his skills and you think, “Hey, Jose should be a pretty nice fit here. He’s the sort of guy I might like to have doing microeconomics for me. I wouldn’t want him to be the first guy I go to when I need to do a utility maximization problem, but having him as a second or third option might be pretty good.”
So you trade some junk to another team to acquire Jose as a backup economics student, and you have him do a problem when one of your economists goes down with, social anxiety disorder probably. So far so good. But then you see him work. Awful. Abysmal. Just flailing at the problems really.
Jose’s approach to economics is a lot like Kotsay’s approach to a critical at bat. He gets in there, guesses a few times and then ends up looking foolish.
On the other hand, no one has ever asked why Sean Casey isn’t doing Jose’s microeconomics problem sets.
2. One of the headlines in an Orange County Register blog this morning was “Hunter Escapes Ridicule.” The entry points out how unspeakably awful the Angles centerfielder was last night; he allowed a ball to drop for a three run single and was thrown out trying to stretch a single by what the Register calls the “length of a bowling ally” and Jose calls the length of a candlepin bowling alley. They are right, he was awful, but they go on to suggest that because the Angles won he will escape ridicule.
Wrong. Maybe he’s escaped ridicule so far but that ends now.
Torii, sure Jose could pick on you for the things that happened last night, or for hurting your knee jumping up and down in protest of a call. Jose could do that… and he will. You suck. Your judgment is poor at best! Snap.
But that’s not really what Jose wants to talk about. What he wants to talk about is your parentage. Torii Hunter? That’s really your name? You sound like singer/songwriter Torii Amos and Spider Man villain Kraven the Hunter had a baby.
Wait... did Jose hurt your feelings? Does the ridicule sting?
Jose is just saying he could see you sitting there at the piano singing weepy songs and breathing audibly, all while wearing a vest made from the head of a lion. And you know what? That would still be less humiliating than your performance in last night’s game.
These are your parents Torii Hunter. Feel the shame.
3. As Jose did his research for tonight’s game, he discovered that there was once a dot com called mylackey.com, which Jose can only assume, is affiliated with tonight’s Angels starter John Lackey. The idea behind mylackey was that busy professionals could use it to schedule services like dry cleaning and dog grooming. True to its namesake, mylackey guaranteed excellent service in non-essential situations. If you needed your dry cleaning done in two days but four days would be fine, no problem. However, in a really important situation, say if you needed a suit cleaned for a big meeting, mylackey would almost definitely come up short. Not only would it not get you your suit on time, it might set it on fire.
For example, let’s say you needed some flowers for your girlfriend’s birthday. With mylackey you could order them sent to her no problem, but there was a good chance that she would end up getting a bouquet of poison ivy with a wasps nest in it.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Sunday, October 5
ALDS Game 3--Jose Ain't Got His Taco
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. Jose was hungry.
Not hungry like the Yankees after an impossibly long eight years without a championship, but still pretty hungry. He wanted something salty, something savory.
“Tacos!” he thought to himself. “Tacos would be fantastic.” To his great good fortune he no longer lived in the Mexican food wasteland known as Boston, so there was an actual chance of getting some decent Mexican food.
An authentic dive taqueria emerged from the glare of the noontime sun to his left, and Jose lopped a lazy left into the parking lot. Excited, obsessed even, he scampered out of the car and stomped towards the impending deliciousness.
Something wasn’t right. Jose felt too light, empty almost. At first he thought it was only his ravenous hunger but then he realized that he was literally too light. His keys were missing.
Now at first this might not sound too bad. So what if Jose didn’t have his KEYS. Why would he need KEYS for a taco stand? That was not the problem. Even if Jose doesn’t have KEYS, he always has KEYS. Right up here. (Note: Jose is pointing at his head.) Jose had his KEYS, what he didn’t have was his keys. Those were dangling from the ignition of his still running car.
Realizing his mistake, Jose yanked at the door of his Carolina blue Corolla. No luck. The door was locked tighter than an Angels team down two games.
Desperate, Jose turned to the middle aged Latino fellow one spot over.
“Hi, sorry to bother you, but you don’t know how to pop a car door do you?”
The man flashed a sheepish, embarrassed grin. “ No, I don’t know how to. Sorry.”
What he meant, Jose is pretty sure, is “You think that because I’m Latino I know how to pop open a locked car door? That’s racist.”
This would be a reasonable assumption, but Jose isn’t racist, he just really needed to get into his car, and this guy was the closest possible person. Also, how could this guy have though Jose was racist against Latinos? He must somehow not have known that Jose pretends to be a Latino on the Internet.
As panic gave way to calm, Jose noticed that across the street there was a garage. He walked over and approached the two mechanics as they took a break from working on an elevated automobile.
They were two black guys. “Great,” thought Jose to himself. “They will think Jose is racist too. And maybe they will be right. It’s not like Jose pretends to be a black guy on the Internet.”
“Sorry to bother you guys,” Jose began. “But do either of you know how to pop a locked car door?”
“Sure,” chirped the taller one, his short dreadlocks framing a gleaming grin. “He used to steal cars!” He pointed at his colleague, a round-faced fellow with cherub cheeks.
“He’s joking,” the cherub cheeked mechanic added, after allowing enough to for it to be awkward.
These two fellows, Kenyans it turned out, were decidedly not car thieves. They spent ten minutes reading an instruction booklet on how to break into a car, and shoving wooden wedges into Jose’ door before finally managing to wriggle a tool in and depress the window switch. It was not quick work with a slim Jim, but it did the job.
Jose thanked them profusely, gave them $10, all the cash he had on him, and they returned to work, and Jose returned to…. Shit. Jose had given all of his cash to the friendly Kenyans who had earned it. This left him unable to purchase even a single taco.
This brings us to the point, which as you recall, is that this is a Red Sox blog. As Royce Clayton might put it, “Jose ain’t got his taco.” Therefore, the Red Sox absolutely must make the World Series. As Jose recalls, when you get to the World Series, if someone steal a base, you get a free taco, and Jose still really wants a taco.
2. St. Josh a Beckett will pitch tonight despite a strained oblique, which is pretty amazing given that we were all concerned that his season might be over a week ago. What Jose wonders is whether the Catholic Church has started the process of certifying that this is indeed a miracle. Obviously, St. Beckett doesn’t need it to be a miracle. He’s already got the two required for sainthood, the 2003 and 2007 postseasons, still, it seems important that these things be properly documented.
As Jose understands it, the first step of the process takes place within the diocese, so presumably Cardinal O’Malley has sent a team to Fenway tonight to interview the witnesses to this miracle.
Jose feels pretty good about the chances that this will be certified. It’s probably not a first-degree miracle such as resurrection from the dead, we haven’t seen that here since October 2004, but it seems like it could absolutely be a third degree miracle, recovery from an illness in a remarkably short period of time.
Either way, it puts Josh Beckett way above that other St. Beckett, who couldn’t even keep England Catholic four hundred years after his death.
3. In tonight’s do or die game, the Angels throw Joe Saunders against St. Josh a Beckett. Jose is not worried. He has seen the show French and Saunders a few times on Comedy Central, so he knows that Saunders is a slightly overweight British woman. Jose has seen weirder things in the playoffs (note: see Eric “I don’t need to touch home plate, home plate needs to touch me” Byrnes.) but he just doesn’t see the Red Sox being shut down by an aging comedienne.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. Jose was hungry.
Not hungry like the Yankees after an impossibly long eight years without a championship, but still pretty hungry. He wanted something salty, something savory.
“Tacos!” he thought to himself. “Tacos would be fantastic.” To his great good fortune he no longer lived in the Mexican food wasteland known as Boston, so there was an actual chance of getting some decent Mexican food.
An authentic dive taqueria emerged from the glare of the noontime sun to his left, and Jose lopped a lazy left into the parking lot. Excited, obsessed even, he scampered out of the car and stomped towards the impending deliciousness.
Something wasn’t right. Jose felt too light, empty almost. At first he thought it was only his ravenous hunger but then he realized that he was literally too light. His keys were missing.
Now at first this might not sound too bad. So what if Jose didn’t have his KEYS. Why would he need KEYS for a taco stand? That was not the problem. Even if Jose doesn’t have KEYS, he always has KEYS. Right up here. (Note: Jose is pointing at his head.) Jose had his KEYS, what he didn’t have was his keys. Those were dangling from the ignition of his still running car.
Realizing his mistake, Jose yanked at the door of his Carolina blue Corolla. No luck. The door was locked tighter than an Angels team down two games.
Desperate, Jose turned to the middle aged Latino fellow one spot over.
“Hi, sorry to bother you, but you don’t know how to pop a car door do you?”
The man flashed a sheepish, embarrassed grin. “ No, I don’t know how to. Sorry.”
What he meant, Jose is pretty sure, is “You think that because I’m Latino I know how to pop open a locked car door? That’s racist.”
This would be a reasonable assumption, but Jose isn’t racist, he just really needed to get into his car, and this guy was the closest possible person. Also, how could this guy have though Jose was racist against Latinos? He must somehow not have known that Jose pretends to be a Latino on the Internet.
As panic gave way to calm, Jose noticed that across the street there was a garage. He walked over and approached the two mechanics as they took a break from working on an elevated automobile.
They were two black guys. “Great,” thought Jose to himself. “They will think Jose is racist too. And maybe they will be right. It’s not like Jose pretends to be a black guy on the Internet.”
“Sorry to bother you guys,” Jose began. “But do either of you know how to pop a locked car door?”
“Sure,” chirped the taller one, his short dreadlocks framing a gleaming grin. “He used to steal cars!” He pointed at his colleague, a round-faced fellow with cherub cheeks.
“He’s joking,” the cherub cheeked mechanic added, after allowing enough to for it to be awkward.
These two fellows, Kenyans it turned out, were decidedly not car thieves. They spent ten minutes reading an instruction booklet on how to break into a car, and shoving wooden wedges into Jose’ door before finally managing to wriggle a tool in and depress the window switch. It was not quick work with a slim Jim, but it did the job.
Jose thanked them profusely, gave them $10, all the cash he had on him, and they returned to work, and Jose returned to…. Shit. Jose had given all of his cash to the friendly Kenyans who had earned it. This left him unable to purchase even a single taco.
This brings us to the point, which as you recall, is that this is a Red Sox blog. As Royce Clayton might put it, “Jose ain’t got his taco.” Therefore, the Red Sox absolutely must make the World Series. As Jose recalls, when you get to the World Series, if someone steal a base, you get a free taco, and Jose still really wants a taco.
2. St. Josh a Beckett will pitch tonight despite a strained oblique, which is pretty amazing given that we were all concerned that his season might be over a week ago. What Jose wonders is whether the Catholic Church has started the process of certifying that this is indeed a miracle. Obviously, St. Beckett doesn’t need it to be a miracle. He’s already got the two required for sainthood, the 2003 and 2007 postseasons, still, it seems important that these things be properly documented.
As Jose understands it, the first step of the process takes place within the diocese, so presumably Cardinal O’Malley has sent a team to Fenway tonight to interview the witnesses to this miracle.
Jose feels pretty good about the chances that this will be certified. It’s probably not a first-degree miracle such as resurrection from the dead, we haven’t seen that here since October 2004, but it seems like it could absolutely be a third degree miracle, recovery from an illness in a remarkably short period of time.
Either way, it puts Josh Beckett way above that other St. Beckett, who couldn’t even keep England Catholic four hundred years after his death.
3. In tonight’s do or die game, the Angels throw Joe Saunders against St. Josh a Beckett. Jose is not worried. He has seen the show French and Saunders a few times on Comedy Central, so he knows that Saunders is a slightly overweight British woman. Jose has seen weirder things in the playoffs (note: see Eric “I don’t need to touch home plate, home plate needs to touch me” Byrnes.) but he just doesn’t see the Red Sox being shut down by an aging comedienne.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Friday, October 3
ALDS Game 2--SNAP!
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. George Elliott, the famous transsexual author, once wrote “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”
Jose is not sure exactly when (s)he wrote that, but he suspects it was after one of the ten consecutive post season games the Red Sox have taken from the Los Calanaheim Angles.
Unlike many moments in the history of the Boston Red Sox, these games against the Angels have been golden moments, all of them. From Hendu’s homer, to Roger Clemens inexplicably winning a Game 7 (note: thank God, Jeff Suppan wasn’t starting for the Angles that night), to Papi’s walk off, to Manny’s fly into the night last fall, the good moments against the Angels are wound together in such a smooth and subtle continuum that it is easy to miss exactly how special, how golden each of these shimmering singularities is.
This series will fade. We will not remember most of its splendid moments. The 2004 ALDS is absent from the World Series DVD collection. The same holds for 2007. These series are forgotten, picayune overtures that hint at Act I and Act II before being retired to hazy memory. Despite the dramatic walk off homers in 2004 and 2007, do we remember those moments the way we remember ALDS moments against other opponents? Will anything from this series remind us of O’Leary seven RBI’s in the 1999 ALDS finale or Pedro’s six no hit innings? Will any pitch seem as extraordinary as Derek Lowe’s back door breaking ball to strike out Terence Long in 2003?
These series against the Angels begin with haste and end as quickly and unceremoniously as a series in May. We cannot see them and savor them. We know them only as something has passed and is then forgotten.
Jose never thought he would say this after reading Silas Marner, George Elliott is making sense.
Still, the story in incomplete. There is more going on here then the abrupt evaporation of golden moments. There is something more sinister, violent even.
There is another quote about the Angels that is a partner in describing the long streak, and the short series. Jack Handy of Saturday Night Live once said over soothing music and calming images “It’s true that every time you hear a bell, an angel gets its wings. But what they don’t tell you is that every time you hear a mouse trap snap, an angel gets set on fire.”
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
Huh, that was 11. Funny.
2. In 1867, Japan began the period of transition from feudalism to industrial society and colonial power called the Meiji Restoration. The Restoration came in direct response to Commodore Matthew Perry’s success at forcing Japan to open in 1853. The superior firepower of Perry’s black ships convinced elements in Japan that the country needed to modernize rapidly or else it would succumb to Western power. In other words, the Japanese needed to learn from their enemies and make fundamental adjustments in how they organized themselves in order to compete.
Over the past year, the Angels have undergone a similar process. After being humiliated by Commodore Tito, and his black, err black, white and Dominican, fleet in 2007, the Angels realized that they needed to learn from the Red Sox if they were to compete with them. As a result, they shifted from being a team that relied entirely on speed and acquired Mark Teixera to give them the best possible (note: though still inadequate) facsimile of Boston’s 3-4 slugger combination.
It worked. Just like Japan in the Meiji period, the Angels went through a rapid and spectacular transformation.
The crowning validation of the Meiji Restoration was Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan won despite the fact that Jose’s great-grandfather had gotten the hell out of the country one-year prior, so they were at a huge disadvantage.
So the validation of the Angels Restoration should be a victory over the Boston Red Sox. But where is it? It is as though a strong and modernized Japan laid siege to Port Arthur and then gave up after three days because it was hard and kind of boring. If the Angles don’t show some spine, the Red Sox won’t even need to Teddy Roosevelt to cut us a sweetheart deal in Portsmouth, we will just dictate terms.
When all was said and done, the British presented the Japanese with a lock of admiral Nelson’s hair, to commemorate their victory in the battle of Tsushima. If the Angels keep playing like they have been, they won’t even get a lock of Jeff Nelson’s hair.
3. Orange County Register columnist Randy Youngman, which Jose assumes is his porn name, joined in the Greek chorus of columnists muttering in monotone that the Angles postseason losing streak against the Sox goes back to 1986. But Youngman breaks free from the crowd and distinguishes himself as the choragus by invoking the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in his recollection.
While he does not explicitly compare the losing streak to Chernobyl, the comparison is implicit and it is devastating.
People died as the result of both events (note: Donnie Moore and Chernobyl victims rest in piece) and the impacts of both disasters continue to this day.
But the analogy is profoundly imperfect. Whereas Chernobyl destroyed an entire city, the Angels losing streak has only destroyed Orange County. Also, the Chernobyl reactor was enclosed in a massive concrete sarcophagus in order to contain the radiation. As best Jose knows, no one has considered building a massive sarcophagus to contain the Angels, even though teammates of 1986 team member Reggie Jackson regard him as radioactive.
If one insists on comparing the Angels losing streak to a Soviet disaster in 1986, Jose would suggest that the obvious analogy is the sinking of the SS Admiral Nakhimov, a passenger boat that collided with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasyov in the Tsemes Bay, killing 423. The Pyotr Vasayov, was Japanese built, lending credence to the notion that the Angels will, this evening, be sunk by something built in Japan.
In addition, much like Angels skipper Mike Scioscia, the Admiral Nakhimov’s captain Vadim Markov seemed utterly unconcerned about the impending disaster, saying, “Don't worry. We will pass clear of each other. We will take care of everything."
There is one major difference, however, that may prove decisive. The Admiral Nakhimov did not have monkey.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. George Elliott, the famous transsexual author, once wrote “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”
Jose is not sure exactly when (s)he wrote that, but he suspects it was after one of the ten consecutive post season games the Red Sox have taken from the Los Calanaheim Angles.
Unlike many moments in the history of the Boston Red Sox, these games against the Angels have been golden moments, all of them. From Hendu’s homer, to Roger Clemens inexplicably winning a Game 7 (note: thank God, Jeff Suppan wasn’t starting for the Angles that night), to Papi’s walk off, to Manny’s fly into the night last fall, the good moments against the Angels are wound together in such a smooth and subtle continuum that it is easy to miss exactly how special, how golden each of these shimmering singularities is.
This series will fade. We will not remember most of its splendid moments. The 2004 ALDS is absent from the World Series DVD collection. The same holds for 2007. These series are forgotten, picayune overtures that hint at Act I and Act II before being retired to hazy memory. Despite the dramatic walk off homers in 2004 and 2007, do we remember those moments the way we remember ALDS moments against other opponents? Will anything from this series remind us of O’Leary seven RBI’s in the 1999 ALDS finale or Pedro’s six no hit innings? Will any pitch seem as extraordinary as Derek Lowe’s back door breaking ball to strike out Terence Long in 2003?
These series against the Angels begin with haste and end as quickly and unceremoniously as a series in May. We cannot see them and savor them. We know them only as something has passed and is then forgotten.
Jose never thought he would say this after reading Silas Marner, George Elliott is making sense.
Still, the story in incomplete. There is more going on here then the abrupt evaporation of golden moments. There is something more sinister, violent even.
There is another quote about the Angels that is a partner in describing the long streak, and the short series. Jack Handy of Saturday Night Live once said over soothing music and calming images “It’s true that every time you hear a bell, an angel gets its wings. But what they don’t tell you is that every time you hear a mouse trap snap, an angel gets set on fire.”
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
Huh, that was 11. Funny.
2. In 1867, Japan began the period of transition from feudalism to industrial society and colonial power called the Meiji Restoration. The Restoration came in direct response to Commodore Matthew Perry’s success at forcing Japan to open in 1853. The superior firepower of Perry’s black ships convinced elements in Japan that the country needed to modernize rapidly or else it would succumb to Western power. In other words, the Japanese needed to learn from their enemies and make fundamental adjustments in how they organized themselves in order to compete.
Over the past year, the Angels have undergone a similar process. After being humiliated by Commodore Tito, and his black, err black, white and Dominican, fleet in 2007, the Angels realized that they needed to learn from the Red Sox if they were to compete with them. As a result, they shifted from being a team that relied entirely on speed and acquired Mark Teixera to give them the best possible (note: though still inadequate) facsimile of Boston’s 3-4 slugger combination.
It worked. Just like Japan in the Meiji period, the Angels went through a rapid and spectacular transformation.
The crowning validation of the Meiji Restoration was Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Japan won despite the fact that Jose’s great-grandfather had gotten the hell out of the country one-year prior, so they were at a huge disadvantage.
So the validation of the Angels Restoration should be a victory over the Boston Red Sox. But where is it? It is as though a strong and modernized Japan laid siege to Port Arthur and then gave up after three days because it was hard and kind of boring. If the Angles don’t show some spine, the Red Sox won’t even need to Teddy Roosevelt to cut us a sweetheart deal in Portsmouth, we will just dictate terms.
When all was said and done, the British presented the Japanese with a lock of admiral Nelson’s hair, to commemorate their victory in the battle of Tsushima. If the Angels keep playing like they have been, they won’t even get a lock of Jeff Nelson’s hair.
3. Orange County Register columnist Randy Youngman, which Jose assumes is his porn name, joined in the Greek chorus of columnists muttering in monotone that the Angles postseason losing streak against the Sox goes back to 1986. But Youngman breaks free from the crowd and distinguishes himself as the choragus by invoking the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in his recollection.
While he does not explicitly compare the losing streak to Chernobyl, the comparison is implicit and it is devastating.
People died as the result of both events (note: Donnie Moore and Chernobyl victims rest in piece) and the impacts of both disasters continue to this day.
But the analogy is profoundly imperfect. Whereas Chernobyl destroyed an entire city, the Angels losing streak has only destroyed Orange County. Also, the Chernobyl reactor was enclosed in a massive concrete sarcophagus in order to contain the radiation. As best Jose knows, no one has considered building a massive sarcophagus to contain the Angels, even though teammates of 1986 team member Reggie Jackson regard him as radioactive.
If one insists on comparing the Angels losing streak to a Soviet disaster in 1986, Jose would suggest that the obvious analogy is the sinking of the SS Admiral Nakhimov, a passenger boat that collided with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasyov in the Tsemes Bay, killing 423. The Pyotr Vasayov, was Japanese built, lending credence to the notion that the Angels will, this evening, be sunk by something built in Japan.
In addition, much like Angels skipper Mike Scioscia, the Admiral Nakhimov’s captain Vadim Markov seemed utterly unconcerned about the impending disaster, saying, “Don't worry. We will pass clear of each other. We will take care of everything."
There is one major difference, however, that may prove decisive. The Admiral Nakhimov did not have monkey.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Wednesday, October 1
ALDS GAME 1—Why We Are Different
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. The setting is new, but the scene is the same.
It is North Carolina here, yet it is still Boston within these walls. A semi circle of cardboard is lashed to the top of the closet, a flimsy backboard to a flimsier hoop. On it is an image, frozen, eternal, perfect. Orlando Cabrera dives into a jubilant crowd, Dave Roberts edges Kevin Youkilis for position in the scrum and even Johnny Damon, the good Johnny Damon, the bearded Johnny Damon embraces a still ambulatory Mosey Nixon.
As Jose’s eyes drift to the left a poster hangs, long since denuded of the glass that once gave it sheen. Ramirez, Damon, Martinez, Foulke. They are all there, jolly specters of the best of days.
Still further to the left, the other closet flaps open. There amidst the striped shirts and khaki slacks Jose can see the crisp white of his number 19 jersey, MELENDEZ stitched across the back, a necessary error if he is to distinguish his jersey from Josh Beckett’s. It is a good jersey, a prized possession and a generous gift, but it is not Jose’s playoff jersey. That honor goes to a grey road uni with 49 and WAKEFIELD framed neatly across the back. Jose got the jersey in 1995 when he was slinging fries at Fenway. It still has streaks of red face paint on it from the 1999 ALCS, when joy turned to grief and from Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS when grief descended like night, only to be broken the next day by four years of shimmering dawn. The shirt bears the stains of history. It bears the stench of history. It has not been washed in nine years.
To the closet’s left side a license plate/clock declares Jose to be the Red Sox “#1 FAN.” The clock does not work. Its white hands stretch across a compass rose of a clock and freeze at 10:40, the exact time the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. It is eerie. Sure, Jose set the hands there about two minutes ago so he could write this sentence, but still it is strange and wonderful.
Just below the clock hangs a final poster.
Pedro’s smiling face perched a cross a slim cartoon body face stares across at Rahjh’s impudent mug. Game 3, 1999. Until 2004, it was the happiest day of Jose’s life. Not only did the Red Sox crush the Yankees, but Jose also saw Jimy Williams at a bar sucking down scotch after scotch.
And that is all. Except for the Red Sox coffee cup on the table to Jose’s right.. and the four KEYS books atop the bureau to his right… and a Wakefield t-shirt… and a Red Sox Hideo Nomo t-shirt… and the sleepy dork, happily typing away in the voice of a long forgotten relief pitcher while the world passes him by.
This is who Jose is. This is who the Red Sox are. It is who you are too. It is why we will win. While Jose feverishly types his youth away, the Orange Country Register lists yesterday’s top five most read stories as:
The people of Anaheim are not us, nor are they we. They just aren’t. We let jerseys putrefy for nine years. We get memorabilia for players who were terrible. We brood and rejoice and brood a little more. They are fans, barely, but we are more. We are a religion, we are a movement, we are a people.
Yes we can? Certainly, but that is unremarkable. Yes we will.
Yes. We will.
2. On his blog yesterday, Tony Castrati suggested that the suddenly muscular Angles (note: not a typo, see KEY 3, or any think Jose has ever written about that team) have switched places with a Red Sox squad that had the league leader in stolen bases for the first time since Nixon was riding high. Specifically, he compared them to the plots of three movies: “Freaky Friday,” “Trading Places” and ""Like Father, Like Son.” While Jose admires any effort to work Kirk Cameron, the star of Like Father, Like Son into a baseball column, Jose categorically rejects Castrati’s analogy. Also, why not work in Malcom-Jamal Warner instead? This season has resembled the plot of at least three episodes of Malcom and Eddie. Also, unlike Warner, Cameron does not have a surprisingly good jazz combo, though Jose regrets that Warner’s group is not named “Theo and the Trio.”
But back to Castrati’s poor analogy. First, let’s start with the fact that these three movies have almost nothing in common. One is about two white guys trading bodies, one is about two white girls trading bodies and one is about high finance. And ff one wants to compare “Like Father, Like Son” to something, how can one ignore the Judge Reinhold vehicle “Vice Versa?” The only difference between the two films is that Reinhold changes bodies with Fred Savage thanks to a mysterious skull while Cameron trades bodies with Dudley Moore due to mysterious potion. They were made within a year of each other and can be purchased together as a two DVD set. Doesn’t Castrati do any research?
Now, let’s examine why each of the three films Castrati cites is a bad analogy.
In “Freaky Friday” a coke addled teenager trades bodies with her technically a man mother. Or, if your prefer the 1976 version, an FBI agent/Astronomer trades places with a voiceover woman from the underappreciated 1977 Doonesbury special, and inspires John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan. Jose thinks it’s pretty clear where this analogy goes off the tracks. While Red Sox-Angles playoff series have inspired players to shoot their wives and themselves, they have never once inspired anyone to shoot an elderly actor/president. Also, Jamie Lee Curtis is twice the man John Lackey is.
What about Trading Places? In this one, two rich white investors destroy lives before eventually destroying themselves. Actually, this one sounds like it might be just about right. Wait, that’s the banking crisis Jose’s thinking of not the playoffs. Never mind.
And actually, the plot is less centered on the rich brothers than on the subject of their manipulation of a black hustler and a white commodities trader. Jamie Lee Curtis plays prominently in this one too as a hooker who is three times the man Chone Figgins is. To Jose’s mind, the only way this analogy holds up is if current Angle and former Red Sox Darren Oliver teams up with Jon Garland to bankrupt the Red Sox commodity trading owner, John W. Henry, by cornering the market on concentrated frozen orange juice. If Oliver and Garland do corner the market on concentrated frozen orange juice in the next few days, Jose will concede that the Red Sox could be in trouble.
This leaves us with “Like Father, Like Son”/“Vice Versa.” Here’s why this one doesn’t work. For this analogy to hold, you’d have to assume that the Red Sox were Dudley Moore /Judge Reinhold to begin with and were magically transformed into Kirk Cameron/Fred Savage. Castrati argues that would be a bad thing, but he is wrong. Does he know that Dudley Moore is dead while Kirk Cameron prominent evangelical Christian actor? Also Dudley Moore was the star of a film called “Arthur,” and playing a carton aardvark is not exactly a great career move. So if this transformation did transpire, it would be to Boston’s benefit, which destroys Castrati’s model.
Still, Jose will give Castrati some credit. He had the right instinct in going for a Kirk Cameron analogy, he just picked the wrong film. Given the troubles the Angles will have driving in runners in this series, the correct Kirk Cameron film analogy is “Left Behind.”
3. There have not been a lot of Normans on the Red Sox throughout their storied history. There was Norman Zauchin, who played a few years in the 50s and Norman Siebern, who played on the Impossible Dream team before wrapping up his career a year later. Nelson Norman coached for the Sox in 2001. But that’s pretty much it. At least it was until today.
Today that changes. Today we are all Normans. As we head into Battle against the Angles, 25 Normans will don helms of blue and Terry Eurona will prepare to be crowned Tito the Conqueror.
Norman Schwarzkopf will be watching. He’ll be in camouflage, so you can’t see him, but he’ll be there.
Norm and Norma Nathan will be watching from the great gossip column in the sky.
Norman the Lunatic, back to his asylum , his wrestling days long gone, will beg to watch the game just like Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Even Greg Norman will take a break from winemaking to see what a champion looks like.
Today, the Battle of Hastings will be replayed just a few days shy of its 942nd anniversary and, then as now, the Angles will be defeated and subjected to 1,056 years of subjugation minimum
Watch out Angles, the Normans are coming and it's Hastings all over again.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
1. The setting is new, but the scene is the same.
It is North Carolina here, yet it is still Boston within these walls. A semi circle of cardboard is lashed to the top of the closet, a flimsy backboard to a flimsier hoop. On it is an image, frozen, eternal, perfect. Orlando Cabrera dives into a jubilant crowd, Dave Roberts edges Kevin Youkilis for position in the scrum and even Johnny Damon, the good Johnny Damon, the bearded Johnny Damon embraces a still ambulatory Mosey Nixon.
Just below the clock hangs a final poster.
BATTLE FOR THE AGES
FENWAY PARK OCT. 16
PEDRO MARTINEZ vs. ROGER CLEMENS
FENWAY PARK OCT. 16
PEDRO MARTINEZ vs. ROGER CLEMENS
Pedro’s smiling face perched a cross a slim cartoon body face stares across at Rahjh’s impudent mug. Game 3, 1999. Until 2004, it was the happiest day of Jose’s life. Not only did the Red Sox crush the Yankees, but Jose also saw Jimy Williams at a bar sucking down scotch after scotch.
And that is all. Except for the Red Sox coffee cup on the table to Jose’s right.. and the four KEYS books atop the bureau to his right… and a Wakefield t-shirt… and a Red Sox Hideo Nomo t-shirt… and the sleepy dork, happily typing away in the voice of a long forgotten relief pitcher while the world passes him by.
This is who Jose is. This is who the Red Sox are. It is who you are too. It is why we will win. While Jose feverishly types his youth away, the Orange Country Register lists yesterday’s top five most read stories as:
- For Kobe, 30 is the new 20
- New O.C. football Top 10 released
- Lakers keep an eye on the beasts in the East
- Mr. October: Angels need to improve post-season approach
- 5 things to watch for in Lakers training camp
The people of Anaheim are not us, nor are they we. They just aren’t. We let jerseys putrefy for nine years. We get memorabilia for players who were terrible. We brood and rejoice and brood a little more. They are fans, barely, but we are more. We are a religion, we are a movement, we are a people.
Yes we can? Certainly, but that is unremarkable. Yes we will.
Yes. We will.
2. On his blog yesterday, Tony Castrati suggested that the suddenly muscular Angles (note: not a typo, see KEY 3, or any think Jose has ever written about that team) have switched places with a Red Sox squad that had the league leader in stolen bases for the first time since Nixon was riding high. Specifically, he compared them to the plots of three movies: “Freaky Friday,” “Trading Places” and ""Like Father, Like Son.” While Jose admires any effort to work Kirk Cameron, the star of Like Father, Like Son into a baseball column, Jose categorically rejects Castrati’s analogy. Also, why not work in Malcom-Jamal Warner instead? This season has resembled the plot of at least three episodes of Malcom and Eddie. Also, unlike Warner, Cameron does not have a surprisingly good jazz combo, though Jose regrets that Warner’s group is not named “Theo and the Trio.”
But back to Castrati’s poor analogy. First, let’s start with the fact that these three movies have almost nothing in common. One is about two white guys trading bodies, one is about two white girls trading bodies and one is about high finance. And ff one wants to compare “Like Father, Like Son” to something, how can one ignore the Judge Reinhold vehicle “Vice Versa?” The only difference between the two films is that Reinhold changes bodies with Fred Savage thanks to a mysterious skull while Cameron trades bodies with Dudley Moore due to mysterious potion. They were made within a year of each other and can be purchased together as a two DVD set. Doesn’t Castrati do any research?
Now, let’s examine why each of the three films Castrati cites is a bad analogy.
In “Freaky Friday” a coke addled teenager trades bodies with her technically a man mother. Or, if your prefer the 1976 version, an FBI agent/Astronomer trades places with a voiceover woman from the underappreciated 1977 Doonesbury special, and inspires John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan. Jose thinks it’s pretty clear where this analogy goes off the tracks. While Red Sox-Angles playoff series have inspired players to shoot their wives and themselves, they have never once inspired anyone to shoot an elderly actor/president. Also, Jamie Lee Curtis is twice the man John Lackey is.
What about Trading Places? In this one, two rich white investors destroy lives before eventually destroying themselves. Actually, this one sounds like it might be just about right. Wait, that’s the banking crisis Jose’s thinking of not the playoffs. Never mind.
And actually, the plot is less centered on the rich brothers than on the subject of their manipulation of a black hustler and a white commodities trader. Jamie Lee Curtis plays prominently in this one too as a hooker who is three times the man Chone Figgins is. To Jose’s mind, the only way this analogy holds up is if current Angle and former Red Sox Darren Oliver teams up with Jon Garland to bankrupt the Red Sox commodity trading owner, John W. Henry, by cornering the market on concentrated frozen orange juice. If Oliver and Garland do corner the market on concentrated frozen orange juice in the next few days, Jose will concede that the Red Sox could be in trouble.
This leaves us with “Like Father, Like Son”/“Vice Versa.” Here’s why this one doesn’t work. For this analogy to hold, you’d have to assume that the Red Sox were Dudley Moore /Judge Reinhold to begin with and were magically transformed into Kirk Cameron/Fred Savage. Castrati argues that would be a bad thing, but he is wrong. Does he know that Dudley Moore is dead while Kirk Cameron prominent evangelical Christian actor? Also Dudley Moore was the star of a film called “Arthur,” and playing a carton aardvark is not exactly a great career move. So if this transformation did transpire, it would be to Boston’s benefit, which destroys Castrati’s model.
Still, Jose will give Castrati some credit. He had the right instinct in going for a Kirk Cameron analogy, he just picked the wrong film. Given the troubles the Angles will have driving in runners in this series, the correct Kirk Cameron film analogy is “Left Behind.”
3. There have not been a lot of Normans on the Red Sox throughout their storied history. There was Norman Zauchin, who played a few years in the 50s and Norman Siebern, who played on the Impossible Dream team before wrapping up his career a year later. Nelson Norman coached for the Sox in 2001. But that’s pretty much it. At least it was until today.
Today that changes. Today we are all Normans. As we head into Battle against the Angles, 25 Normans will don helms of blue and Terry Eurona will prepare to be crowned Tito the Conqueror.
Norman Schwarzkopf will be watching. He’ll be in camouflage, so you can’t see him, but he’ll be there.
Norm and Norma Nathan will be watching from the great gossip column in the sky.
Norman the Lunatic, back to his asylum , his wrestling days long gone, will beg to watch the game just like Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Even Greg Norman will take a break from winemaking to see what a champion looks like.
Today, the Battle of Hastings will be replayed just a few days shy of its 942nd anniversary and, then as now, the Angles will be defeated and subjected to 1,056 years of subjugation minimum
Watch out Angles, the Normans are coming and it's Hastings all over again.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE ALDS.
Thursday, October 4
ALDS GAME 2: Angles in the Outfield, History on Parade
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Let’s review how we got here from there shall we? Yes, it will be as confusing one of those mapquest maps that directs you to go from Back Bay to Allston via the Callahan, Sumner and Holland tunnels, but this is important; it is the playoffs after all, and we need to do it.
So let’s get to work and review the series of appalling events that led to Joe Melendez, your humble servant, starting the Sons of Sam Horn game thread for the first game of the American League Division Series and now to him starting the thread for the second game.
(Note: Since most of the historical record has been destroyed in Nixonian fashion (subnote: by a secretary), it is particularly important for Jose to document the tragicomic events of October 3. It is also the reason that most of the of the times are wrong.)
1:00 AM Jose is haunted by demons.
1:02 AM Jose contemplates whether he is really being haunted or accidentally took peyote.
1:30 AM Jose writes about demons.
1:45 AM Jose writes clever comparison of ALDS and Norman Conquest of England. People will love this!
1:55 AM Jose throw together crappy third KEY as usual.
2:00 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:02 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:03 AM SosH server is down
2:20 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:21 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:22 AM Jose decides that if no one is going to start a game thread he might as well proofread KEYS.
3:00 AM Proofreading complete. Errors found 1,600.
3:01 AM Jose ponders how there can be 1,600 errors in a 1,500 word piece?
3:05 AM Jose concludes that he had at leas 700 distinct errors in spelling Houshmanzadeh alone.
3:06 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
3:07 AM Sleep, blissful sleep.
8:00 AM Jose wakes up .
8:01 AM Jose smiles. There’s a game today.
8:05 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
8:30 AM Jose leaves for work
9:00 AM Jose arrives at work
9:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
9:02 AM Coffee break.
11:00 AM Return from coffee break.
11:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
11:32 AM Posts KEYS on keystothegame.blogspot.com
11:35 Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
11:36 AM Jose contemplates starting game thread on SoSH.
11:36 AM Jose concludes that only a complete moron would start the game thread when it has been made abundantly clear that Curt Euro is going to start it. Moreover, why would Jose want to have game starting responsibilities when it means he has to rush through writing KEYS rather than posting them at 2ish on game day?
11:37 AM Jose rewards his clear thinking with additional coffee.
12:00 Noon Lunch meeting.
1:40 PM Unbeknownst to Jose some guy he has never heard of starts game thread declaring the start of the Red Sox-Indians series.
1:41 PM 60 posters point out that unless this guy has invented a way back machine and taken us to 1995, 1998 or 1999 match up in thread title is wrong.
1:42 PM Thread starter claims he will take us back to 1999 in his DeLorean, so thread title will be correct.
1:43 PM Same poster starts “Views and News” thread called “Iraq: Putting down the Indian insurgency.
1:44-2:45 PM Abuse. Constant abuse.
2:00 PM Jose returns from meeting
2:01 PM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:02 PM Jose sees game thread, concludes that yes, he must have inadvertently taken peyote, because that is the only explanation for why he is seeing that some guy he never heard of has started the playoff game thread and why is throwing up.
2:03 PM Jose waits patiently.
2:04 PM Jose sends moderator Sille Skrub message asking if this is going to be the game thread.
2:05-2:45PM Jose waits impatiently.
2:46 PM Jose says to hell with it and posts KEYS in idiotic, now seven page thread.
2:51 PM Curt Euro posts in now eight-page thread saying. “I was going to stop by and start the game thread since we did it back in 2004, but once Jose posts his keys, in my mind, that game thread is on.....
Let's put together a nice streak, win, say, 11 games before anyone else and I'll throw alcohol all over those of you that attend the parade.....”
2:52 PM Jose blushes.
2:53 PM Jose sends Curt Euro message to everyone he knows
2:54 PM Jose posts message from Curt Euro on keystothegame.blogspot.com
2:55 PM Jose fantasizes that if Curt Euro has read KEYS there is a chance, just a chance, that Red Sox players also call Papelbon strike outs “pap smears.”
2:56 PM Jose contemplates sending Curt Euro evite to candlepin bowling party.
2:57 PM Jose starts telling liberal colleagues he has a Republican friend now.
2:58 PM Jose draws stick figure picture of Jose and Curt in sailboat. They are having fun!
2:59 PM Jose thinks about pointing out flaw in Curt's slide step to him.
3:00 PM SoSH moderator AlNipper49 deletes thread.
3:01 PM Jose feels like Sean Connery in movie “Medicine Man” after finding, then losing cure for cancer.
3:03 PM As he cannot prove that Curt knows who he is any more, Jose contemplates spending life chasing after ants or whatever like Connery in stupid movie.
3:04-3:24 PM Crying, lots of crying.
3:25 PM First suggestion that Jose start the game thread.
3:27 PM Gay community declares support for Jose starting game thread.
3:32 PM Jose starts game thread, leads with Curt Euro quote
3:33 PM First complaint that Jose has spelled Angels “Angles.”
3:34 PM Jose comes to jarring realization that either most Americans are woefully undereducated about pre-Norman England or most people don’t actually read KEYS, Jose concludes that either way, country is doomed.
3:34 PM Panda!
And that was pretty much how we got here from there. After all the chaos, all the madness, the Red Sox won, the Angles lost (note: no, Jose will not spell it right.) and Jose is writing this account while listening to the Yankees go down in flames, rather than yachting with super models, because, now Jose has all of this responsibility as a game thread starter.
2. Since there pathetic lack of knowledge about the Angles was exposed in the Game 1 thread, Jose has decided that he has a responsibility to use his position of high moral authority as game thread starter to educate you people about the importance of this quirky little tribe and what its history means for the rest of this series. Now, sit up straight and listen.
Did you know that according to wikipedia, the term Angle may originate with the form of fishing called “angling?” If this is so, doesn’t it mean that we need to be careful? Couldn’t it mean that perhaps Game 1 was nothing more than a juicy worm of victory used to entice Red Soxdom onto the barbed hook of overconfidence and ultimately into the frying pan of ignominious defeat? (Note: Frying pans of ignominious defeat are great for cooking on high heat, they are non-stick.)
Did you know that a legend proclaims that Pope Gregory I saw a group of Angles for sale as slaves in the Roman market and, impressed by their fair complexions said ““Non Angli, sed angeli” ("Not Angles, but angels") and resolved to convert them to Christianity? In 597 AD, Pope Gregory moved to fulfill his vow sending a monk called Bede who would start the gradual conversion of the Angles over the next 200 years. So what does this tell us about the Angles of today?
It suggests that perhaps the ultimate key to their defeat is the Christian faith. Bede arrived to convert the Angles in 597 and a mere 569 years later, their pagan beliefs extinguished and forgotten, they fell to the also Christian Normans. Could this possibly be coincidence?
In applying this lesson of history, the Red Sox appear to be off to a good start. The Los Angeles Angles squad appears to be completely devoid of pagans and animists. The critical thing then, is to ensure that the embrace Christianity wholeheartedly between now and game time. Maybe we can send the “Heaven or Hell” guy from Kenmore Square down to talk to them. He has pamphlets! And a sign!
Of course, maybe the fall of the Angles has nothing to do with Christianity? After all, there are lots of Christians in the world and they seem to be doing pretty well. Perhaps the most important event is when the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson is alleged to have pledged support for William of Normandy’s claim to the English throne after being shipwrecked at Ponthieu.
So here’s the plan:
1. Get Vlad Guerrero onto one of those harbor booze cruises or possibly the ferry to Hull.
2. Shipwreck him on Spectacle Island
3. Make him swear fealty to the Red Sox.
4. If he relents, shoot him in the eye with an arrow. Geena Davis can do it! She’s an archer and has Boston connections.
Look, Jose knows this is tedious, but it’s worth discussing. Just remember what Karl Marx said, history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, the third as baseball.”
3. At about 4:00 on the day of Game 1, Jose received a call from his friend Mark.
“You’ll never believe it,” said Mark excitedly. “I have an extra ticket to see the bunraku.”
“What?” Jose replied.
“Bunraku, Japanese puppet theater.”
“Nice!” Jose exclaimed. “Jose loves puppets be they Japanese, sock or political. When we going?”
“Tonight.”
“You didn’t say that. Tell Jose you didn’t just say that,” Jose said channeling Booker T.
“Yeah tonight.”
“Nooooo. Dear God Noooooo. Why? Is there no God? You score Bunraku tickets and it’s tonight? Jose has Red Sox tickets.”
“You’re going to go with the Red Sox over the puppets?” said Mark skeptically.
Mark is not a baseball fan. He is like a baseball thermometer. He is so indifferent to baseball, that if he knows about a baseball event, it is proof that it has crept from baseball event to general cultural phenomenon. The 2007 Red Sox have apparently not reached the point of expanding the mercury yet.
“Look Mark, Jose loves baseball for the same reason he loves bunraku. Both feature chanting and Japanese people.”
“It’s still not the same,” Mark pouted. “Where in baseball do you get to see lifeless objects move?”
“You’ve never seen DJ Dru have you?” countered Jose.
“Well baseball still doesn’t have four foot tall creatures of amazing complexity.”
“Dustin Pedroia.”
“The manipulation of inanimate figures by grown men?”
“DeMarlo Hale with Doug Mirabelli on base.”
“Well, I guess it really can’t compete,” agreed Mark mournfully.
“No it can’t,” respond Jose, but neither can the Angles, so it’s all good.
I'm Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Let’s review how we got here from there shall we? Yes, it will be as confusing one of those mapquest maps that directs you to go from Back Bay to Allston via the Callahan, Sumner and Holland tunnels, but this is important; it is the playoffs after all, and we need to do it.
So let’s get to work and review the series of appalling events that led to Joe Melendez, your humble servant, starting the Sons of Sam Horn game thread for the first game of the American League Division Series and now to him starting the thread for the second game.
(Note: Since most of the historical record has been destroyed in Nixonian fashion (subnote: by a secretary), it is particularly important for Jose to document the tragicomic events of October 3. It is also the reason that most of the of the times are wrong.)
1:00 AM Jose is haunted by demons.
1:02 AM Jose contemplates whether he is really being haunted or accidentally took peyote.
1:30 AM Jose writes about demons.
1:45 AM Jose writes clever comparison of ALDS and Norman Conquest of England. People will love this!
1:55 AM Jose throw together crappy third KEY as usual.
2:00 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:02 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:03 AM SosH server is down
2:20 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:21 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:22 AM Jose decides that if no one is going to start a game thread he might as well proofread KEYS.
3:00 AM Proofreading complete. Errors found 1,600.
3:01 AM Jose ponders how there can be 1,600 errors in a 1,500 word piece?
3:05 AM Jose concludes that he had at leas 700 distinct errors in spelling Houshmanzadeh alone.
3:06 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
3:07 AM Sleep, blissful sleep.
8:00 AM Jose wakes up .
8:01 AM Jose smiles. There’s a game today.
8:05 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
8:30 AM Jose leaves for work
9:00 AM Jose arrives at work
9:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
9:02 AM Coffee break.
11:00 AM Return from coffee break.
11:01 AM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
11:32 AM Posts KEYS on keystothegame.blogspot.com
11:35 Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
11:36 AM Jose contemplates starting game thread on SoSH.
11:36 AM Jose concludes that only a complete moron would start the game thread when it has been made abundantly clear that Curt Euro is going to start it. Moreover, why would Jose want to have game starting responsibilities when it means he has to rush through writing KEYS rather than posting them at 2ish on game day?
11:37 AM Jose rewards his clear thinking with additional coffee.
12:00 Noon Lunch meeting.
1:40 PM Unbeknownst to Jose some guy he has never heard of starts game thread declaring the start of the Red Sox-Indians series.
1:41 PM 60 posters point out that unless this guy has invented a way back machine and taken us to 1995, 1998 or 1999 match up in thread title is wrong.
1:42 PM Thread starter claims he will take us back to 1999 in his DeLorean, so thread title will be correct.
1:43 PM Same poster starts “Views and News” thread called “Iraq: Putting down the Indian insurgency.
1:44-2:45 PM Abuse. Constant abuse.
2:00 PM Jose returns from meeting
2:01 PM Jose checks to see if SoSH game thread is up yet.
2:02 PM Jose sees game thread, concludes that yes, he must have inadvertently taken peyote, because that is the only explanation for why he is seeing that some guy he never heard of has started the playoff game thread and why is throwing up.
2:03 PM Jose waits patiently.
2:04 PM Jose sends moderator Sille Skrub message asking if this is going to be the game thread.
2:05-2:45PM Jose waits impatiently.
2:46 PM Jose says to hell with it and posts KEYS in idiotic, now seven page thread.
2:51 PM Curt Euro posts in now eight-page thread saying. “I was going to stop by and start the game thread since we did it back in 2004, but once Jose posts his keys, in my mind, that game thread is on.....
Let's put together a nice streak, win, say, 11 games before anyone else and I'll throw alcohol all over those of you that attend the parade.....”
2:52 PM Jose blushes.
2:53 PM Jose sends Curt Euro message to everyone he knows
2:54 PM Jose posts message from Curt Euro on keystothegame.blogspot.com
2:55 PM Jose fantasizes that if Curt Euro has read KEYS there is a chance, just a chance, that Red Sox players also call Papelbon strike outs “pap smears.”
2:56 PM Jose contemplates sending Curt Euro evite to candlepin bowling party.
2:57 PM Jose starts telling liberal colleagues he has a Republican friend now.
2:58 PM Jose draws stick figure picture of Jose and Curt in sailboat. They are having fun!
2:59 PM Jose thinks about pointing out flaw in Curt's slide step to him.
3:00 PM SoSH moderator AlNipper49 deletes thread.
3:01 PM Jose feels like Sean Connery in movie “Medicine Man” after finding, then losing cure for cancer.
3:03 PM As he cannot prove that Curt knows who he is any more, Jose contemplates spending life chasing after ants or whatever like Connery in stupid movie.
3:04-3:24 PM Crying, lots of crying.
3:25 PM First suggestion that Jose start the game thread.
3:27 PM Gay community declares support for Jose starting game thread.
3:32 PM Jose starts game thread, leads with Curt Euro quote
3:33 PM First complaint that Jose has spelled Angels “Angles.”
3:34 PM Jose comes to jarring realization that either most Americans are woefully undereducated about pre-Norman England or most people don’t actually read KEYS, Jose concludes that either way, country is doomed.
3:34 PM Panda!
And that was pretty much how we got here from there. After all the chaos, all the madness, the Red Sox won, the Angles lost (note: no, Jose will not spell it right.) and Jose is writing this account while listening to the Yankees go down in flames, rather than yachting with super models, because, now Jose has all of this responsibility as a game thread starter.
2. Since there pathetic lack of knowledge about the Angles was exposed in the Game 1 thread, Jose has decided that he has a responsibility to use his position of high moral authority as game thread starter to educate you people about the importance of this quirky little tribe and what its history means for the rest of this series. Now, sit up straight and listen.
Did you know that according to wikipedia, the term Angle may originate with the form of fishing called “angling?” If this is so, doesn’t it mean that we need to be careful? Couldn’t it mean that perhaps Game 1 was nothing more than a juicy worm of victory used to entice Red Soxdom onto the barbed hook of overconfidence and ultimately into the frying pan of ignominious defeat? (Note: Frying pans of ignominious defeat are great for cooking on high heat, they are non-stick.)
Did you know that a legend proclaims that Pope Gregory I saw a group of Angles for sale as slaves in the Roman market and, impressed by their fair complexions said ““Non Angli, sed angeli” ("Not Angles, but angels") and resolved to convert them to Christianity? In 597 AD, Pope Gregory moved to fulfill his vow sending a monk called Bede who would start the gradual conversion of the Angles over the next 200 years. So what does this tell us about the Angles of today?
It suggests that perhaps the ultimate key to their defeat is the Christian faith. Bede arrived to convert the Angles in 597 and a mere 569 years later, their pagan beliefs extinguished and forgotten, they fell to the also Christian Normans. Could this possibly be coincidence?
In applying this lesson of history, the Red Sox appear to be off to a good start. The Los Angeles Angles squad appears to be completely devoid of pagans and animists. The critical thing then, is to ensure that the embrace Christianity wholeheartedly between now and game time. Maybe we can send the “Heaven or Hell” guy from Kenmore Square down to talk to them. He has pamphlets! And a sign!
Of course, maybe the fall of the Angles has nothing to do with Christianity? After all, there are lots of Christians in the world and they seem to be doing pretty well. Perhaps the most important event is when the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson is alleged to have pledged support for William of Normandy’s claim to the English throne after being shipwrecked at Ponthieu.
So here’s the plan:
1. Get Vlad Guerrero onto one of those harbor booze cruises or possibly the ferry to Hull.
2. Shipwreck him on Spectacle Island
3. Make him swear fealty to the Red Sox.
4. If he relents, shoot him in the eye with an arrow. Geena Davis can do it! She’s an archer and has Boston connections.
Look, Jose knows this is tedious, but it’s worth discussing. Just remember what Karl Marx said, history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, the third as baseball.”
3. At about 4:00 on the day of Game 1, Jose received a call from his friend Mark.
“You’ll never believe it,” said Mark excitedly. “I have an extra ticket to see the bunraku.”
“What?” Jose replied.
“Bunraku, Japanese puppet theater.”
“Nice!” Jose exclaimed. “Jose loves puppets be they Japanese, sock or political. When we going?”
“Tonight.”
“You didn’t say that. Tell Jose you didn’t just say that,” Jose said channeling Booker T.
“Yeah tonight.”
“Nooooo. Dear God Noooooo. Why? Is there no God? You score Bunraku tickets and it’s tonight? Jose has Red Sox tickets.”
“You’re going to go with the Red Sox over the puppets?” said Mark skeptically.
Mark is not a baseball fan. He is like a baseball thermometer. He is so indifferent to baseball, that if he knows about a baseball event, it is proof that it has crept from baseball event to general cultural phenomenon. The 2007 Red Sox have apparently not reached the point of expanding the mercury yet.
“Look Mark, Jose loves baseball for the same reason he loves bunraku. Both feature chanting and Japanese people.”
“It’s still not the same,” Mark pouted. “Where in baseball do you get to see lifeless objects move?”
“You’ve never seen DJ Dru have you?” countered Jose.
“Well baseball still doesn’t have four foot tall creatures of amazing complexity.”
“Dustin Pedroia.”
“The manipulation of inanimate figures by grown men?”
“DeMarlo Hale with Doug Mirabelli on base.”
“Well, I guess it really can’t compete,” agreed Mark mournfully.
“No it can’t,” respond Jose, but neither can the Angles, so it’s all good.
I'm Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Wednesday, October 3
ALDS Game 1: Angles in the Outfield, Demons in the Bedroom
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. It is one A.M and the cool licks of Herbie Hancock are jarred by the syncopated staccato of demons rattling the bedroom door.
They are the same demons. They are always the same demons.
But somehow they look different. Like a great aunt with a horrific new hairdo, these demons seem uneasily intimate and distressingly foreign all at once.
After a few moments of anxious contemplation, the difference becomes clear. The demons have changed the names on the backs of their jerseys. The blood red numbers framed in the ghostly gray flannel are the same, but the names are all wrong.
There’s #78, wiry and cruel as always, with the letters A-N-X-I-E-T-Y stretched across his back. Funny, it used to read S-T-R-E-S-S didn’t it?
And there’s #86, a stout, pile of a wraith with “Fear of Failure” crowded onto his back like so many Houshmenzadehs on Cincinnati Orange. But Jose is not fooled for even a moment he knows the spook called “Self-Deceit” when he sees him.
But it is the third demon, that is the most frightening—Demon #03—“The Past.” The back of his frock may read “The Past,” but as he should know better then anyone, the past leaves insidious traces of what once was, and the uneven shading of the fabric where the word “History” once stood, betray the work of days gone.
The door was never an obstacle for the demons. It was not locked, no chair barred its opening, and even if Jose had taken precautions it would not have mattered. They are, after all, demons, and privy to the latest in door opening magicks.
“Bad things are going to happen,” hisses Anxiety, a thin mist of noxious saliva spraying from his mouth. “Errors will be made, meatballs will be thrown and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Oh, it’s true, it’s so true,” Fear of Failure interjects. “And when things go wrong, my word, it will be Aww-full.” His sing song tone makes Jose wince. “And then it won’t matter what’s been done already. Who will care that they won the division? Who will care that they had the best record in baseball? They are going to fail and it will be so, so Aww-fullllllll.”
And then The Past steps forward, the bastard, and readies his speech, his haunting. But he does not taunt. He is not a taunter, not some petty ghoul like his accomplices. He is a scholar of disappointment and tragedy.
“Congratulations,” he offers smugly. “Really, Jose old boy, I mean it. Your fellows avoided the collapse, much to my surprise, and congratulations are most definitely in order.” He pauses, preparing a change of tack.
“But do you think that’s all I have in my satchel? 1978? Do you thing that’s the most wicked charm I can conjure? You know better than that. You’ve seen the balls through the wickets, the phantom tags, the extra inning home runs by light hitting nobodies. There is so much opportunity for mischief, so many passion plays to reenact.”
It is frightening to be sure. Jose prefers not having his rest interrupted by haunting, and he shakes, shivers even, beneath his covers.
And yet he responds.
“You are a terrifying bunch, Jose must concede. Absolutely monstrous.
And in many ways you may be right. Things could well go wrong for the Red Sox this October.” Jose prepares a strategic fortification behind the safety of the passive voice. “Pop ups could be dropped, bases could be left loaded and pitchers might be left in one pitch too long. These are all distinct possibilities.”
Jose jerks up right, switching from his cocoon of blankets to a more aggressive posture.
But do you really think, you antiquities, you relics, that our fate is in your hands?
"Jose knows why you’ve, refined, shall we say, your jerseys. It’s slight of hand isn’t it, a little subtle misdirection? You know as well as Jose does that your power comes from belief and that if no one believes you, misfortune may still come, but it will be nothing more than the bitter bite of luck and completely unrelated to your insidious efforts
These pseudonyms are nothing more than a reaction, as a silly reaction at that, to the events of 2004. 2004 exposed you for the grifters you are, and now you are trying to rebuild your strength, to recreate an illusion that has been hopelessly shattered.
But really, did you thing that Jose wouldn’t figure it out? If you really wanted to frighten him, you should have sent demons named ‘eighth inning relief’ and ‘offensive production from the catcher.’ Now, begone, Jose has some serious sleeping to do."
And with that icy dismissal, the demons snarled and hissed, before suddenly disappearing in a puff of sulfurous smoke.
And then it was back to the norm, the open door, the only evidence of the infernal visit.
“Joes knows that you only have power if he believes in you,” Jose yelled into the void. “But he at least believes that you could have closed the door.”
And a tired Jose trudged to the door, and pushed it closed, before retreating to his cocoon, secure in the certainty that whatever would happen in the days ahead, it would be a function of skill, perseverance and perhaps even luck, but safely insulated from the demonic power of anxiety, fear and the past.
2. Three years ago tomorrow, Jose wrote about a playoff series startling similar to this one. He taunted Garrett Anderson about being no more effective than Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life, quipped about manager Mike Scioscia’s recovery from the radiation sickness that struck him on the Simpsons and expressed his well-warranted fear of Vlad Guerrero. And then Jose vowed that the Red Sox would conquer the Angles like so many angry Normans.
And conquer the Red Sox did, making the Angles their King Harold, with a David Ortiz walk off home run ending it as swiftly and surely as an arrow in the eye on the battlefield of Hastings.
But things have changed since then. Pedro is gone, Curt Euro is not the man he used to be, and The OC is playing, suitably enough, in the OC. But the 2007 Red Sox are not without their weapons. Most advantageously, is that in St. Josh a Beckett we have an honest to God Norman on the mound. The Beckett clan descends from the Gilbert of Thierceville, Normandy, a wealthy Norman merchant who fathered Thomas Beckett.
Just to clarify, for those of you who come to KEYS from wrestling perspective, Normans are not people connected to the unfortunately gimmicked WCW wrestler Norman the Lunatic. They are people from Normandy, France, and William the Conqueror, who ended Angle rule of England, was the Duke of Normandy.
So what does this tell us about today’s contest? If one looks at the record, the Normans are 1-0 against the Angles historically, so one should anticipate a Red Sox win today followed by five hundred years of intermarriage, the eventual merger of the Red Sox and Angles into one team, and then centuries of colonial rule over the Cleveland Indians.
3. In other news, it turns out that blackmail works. It works really well.
As you may recall, in an earlier KEYS, Jose attempted to blackmail his way to playoff tickets by threatening to send a KEYS thong to the shiny new wife of his regular ticket provider with a message about how “he like all of his ladies to wear these.” It would be a gross distortion of the truth about his previous thong purchase, but it’s blackmail not sworn testimony, so what do you expect?
Jose didn’t expect it to work though. It never works on TV. On TV, the blackmailee learns that whatever humiliation he has in store, it is a small price to pay to be out from under the thumb of the extortionist, and the blackmailer learns that crime doesn’t pay. In the real world, it turns out, this is not how it goes.
In the real world, the blackmailer asks for something reasonable, like playoff tickets, and the blackmailee gives in rather than deal with the hassle. Then the blackmailer instead of pressing his advantage to demand money or a car simply goes to the game and drinks a few beers. The blackmailee, not subject to ongoing harassment, never decides that the price is too high and thus never goes to the police. The blackmailer gets tickets, the blackmailee gets his horrible secrets kept to himself, and everyone is happy.
Having learned this lesson, Jose has decided that when he blackmails Angles pitcher John Lackey by threatening to reveal certain improprieties (note: Does Jose have anything on Lackey? Almost certainly not, but maybe Lackey will think he has something. That’s the beauty of blackmail.), he will not ask him to do something completely out of proportion, like throw the game. Rather, he will only demand that Lackey turn in his typical Fenway Park performance. Reasonable, effective, blackmailtacular.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. It is one A.M and the cool licks of Herbie Hancock are jarred by the syncopated staccato of demons rattling the bedroom door.
They are the same demons. They are always the same demons.
But somehow they look different. Like a great aunt with a horrific new hairdo, these demons seem uneasily intimate and distressingly foreign all at once.
After a few moments of anxious contemplation, the difference becomes clear. The demons have changed the names on the backs of their jerseys. The blood red numbers framed in the ghostly gray flannel are the same, but the names are all wrong.
There’s #78, wiry and cruel as always, with the letters A-N-X-I-E-T-Y stretched across his back. Funny, it used to read S-T-R-E-S-S didn’t it?
And there’s #86, a stout, pile of a wraith with “Fear of Failure” crowded onto his back like so many Houshmenzadehs on Cincinnati Orange. But Jose is not fooled for even a moment he knows the spook called “Self-Deceit” when he sees him.
But it is the third demon, that is the most frightening—Demon #03—“The Past.” The back of his frock may read “The Past,” but as he should know better then anyone, the past leaves insidious traces of what once was, and the uneven shading of the fabric where the word “History” once stood, betray the work of days gone.
The door was never an obstacle for the demons. It was not locked, no chair barred its opening, and even if Jose had taken precautions it would not have mattered. They are, after all, demons, and privy to the latest in door opening magicks.
“Bad things are going to happen,” hisses Anxiety, a thin mist of noxious saliva spraying from his mouth. “Errors will be made, meatballs will be thrown and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Oh, it’s true, it’s so true,” Fear of Failure interjects. “And when things go wrong, my word, it will be Aww-full.” His sing song tone makes Jose wince. “And then it won’t matter what’s been done already. Who will care that they won the division? Who will care that they had the best record in baseball? They are going to fail and it will be so, so Aww-fullllllll.”
And then The Past steps forward, the bastard, and readies his speech, his haunting. But he does not taunt. He is not a taunter, not some petty ghoul like his accomplices. He is a scholar of disappointment and tragedy.
“Congratulations,” he offers smugly. “Really, Jose old boy, I mean it. Your fellows avoided the collapse, much to my surprise, and congratulations are most definitely in order.” He pauses, preparing a change of tack.
“But do you think that’s all I have in my satchel? 1978? Do you thing that’s the most wicked charm I can conjure? You know better than that. You’ve seen the balls through the wickets, the phantom tags, the extra inning home runs by light hitting nobodies. There is so much opportunity for mischief, so many passion plays to reenact.”
It is frightening to be sure. Jose prefers not having his rest interrupted by haunting, and he shakes, shivers even, beneath his covers.
And yet he responds.
“You are a terrifying bunch, Jose must concede. Absolutely monstrous.
And in many ways you may be right. Things could well go wrong for the Red Sox this October.” Jose prepares a strategic fortification behind the safety of the passive voice. “Pop ups could be dropped, bases could be left loaded and pitchers might be left in one pitch too long. These are all distinct possibilities.”
Jose jerks up right, switching from his cocoon of blankets to a more aggressive posture.
But do you really think, you antiquities, you relics, that our fate is in your hands?
"Jose knows why you’ve, refined, shall we say, your jerseys. It’s slight of hand isn’t it, a little subtle misdirection? You know as well as Jose does that your power comes from belief and that if no one believes you, misfortune may still come, but it will be nothing more than the bitter bite of luck and completely unrelated to your insidious efforts
These pseudonyms are nothing more than a reaction, as a silly reaction at that, to the events of 2004. 2004 exposed you for the grifters you are, and now you are trying to rebuild your strength, to recreate an illusion that has been hopelessly shattered.
But really, did you thing that Jose wouldn’t figure it out? If you really wanted to frighten him, you should have sent demons named ‘eighth inning relief’ and ‘offensive production from the catcher.’ Now, begone, Jose has some serious sleeping to do."
And with that icy dismissal, the demons snarled and hissed, before suddenly disappearing in a puff of sulfurous smoke.
And then it was back to the norm, the open door, the only evidence of the infernal visit.
“Joes knows that you only have power if he believes in you,” Jose yelled into the void. “But he at least believes that you could have closed the door.”
And a tired Jose trudged to the door, and pushed it closed, before retreating to his cocoon, secure in the certainty that whatever would happen in the days ahead, it would be a function of skill, perseverance and perhaps even luck, but safely insulated from the demonic power of anxiety, fear and the past.
2. Three years ago tomorrow, Jose wrote about a playoff series startling similar to this one. He taunted Garrett Anderson about being no more effective than Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life, quipped about manager Mike Scioscia’s recovery from the radiation sickness that struck him on the Simpsons and expressed his well-warranted fear of Vlad Guerrero. And then Jose vowed that the Red Sox would conquer the Angles like so many angry Normans.
And conquer the Red Sox did, making the Angles their King Harold, with a David Ortiz walk off home run ending it as swiftly and surely as an arrow in the eye on the battlefield of Hastings.
But things have changed since then. Pedro is gone, Curt Euro is not the man he used to be, and The OC is playing, suitably enough, in the OC. But the 2007 Red Sox are not without their weapons. Most advantageously, is that in St. Josh a Beckett we have an honest to God Norman on the mound. The Beckett clan descends from the Gilbert of Thierceville, Normandy, a wealthy Norman merchant who fathered Thomas Beckett.
Just to clarify, for those of you who come to KEYS from wrestling perspective, Normans are not people connected to the unfortunately gimmicked WCW wrestler Norman the Lunatic. They are people from Normandy, France, and William the Conqueror, who ended Angle rule of England, was the Duke of Normandy.
So what does this tell us about today’s contest? If one looks at the record, the Normans are 1-0 against the Angles historically, so one should anticipate a Red Sox win today followed by five hundred years of intermarriage, the eventual merger of the Red Sox and Angles into one team, and then centuries of colonial rule over the Cleveland Indians.
3. In other news, it turns out that blackmail works. It works really well.
As you may recall, in an earlier KEYS, Jose attempted to blackmail his way to playoff tickets by threatening to send a KEYS thong to the shiny new wife of his regular ticket provider with a message about how “he like all of his ladies to wear these.” It would be a gross distortion of the truth about his previous thong purchase, but it’s blackmail not sworn testimony, so what do you expect?
Jose didn’t expect it to work though. It never works on TV. On TV, the blackmailee learns that whatever humiliation he has in store, it is a small price to pay to be out from under the thumb of the extortionist, and the blackmailer learns that crime doesn’t pay. In the real world, it turns out, this is not how it goes.
In the real world, the blackmailer asks for something reasonable, like playoff tickets, and the blackmailee gives in rather than deal with the hassle. Then the blackmailer instead of pressing his advantage to demand money or a car simply goes to the game and drinks a few beers. The blackmailee, not subject to ongoing harassment, never decides that the price is too high and thus never goes to the police. The blackmailer gets tickets, the blackmailee gets his horrible secrets kept to himself, and everyone is happy.
Having learned this lesson, Jose has decided that when he blackmails Angles pitcher John Lackey by threatening to reveal certain improprieties (note: Does Jose have anything on Lackey? Almost certainly not, but maybe Lackey will think he has something. That’s the beauty of blackmail.), he will not ask him to do something completely out of proportion, like throw the game. Rather, he will only demand that Lackey turn in his typical Fenway Park performance. Reasonable, effective, blackmailtacular.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
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