Rituals Ancient and Austere

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

1. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Japanese culture, the rituals that precede the epic confrontation between Japans’ two biggest baseball stars, Mr. Matsu and Ichiro, this evening may confuse you. In order to assist you, Jose has put the one-eight of his brain that is Japanese to work, summarizing the finest guides to the ritual, the internet has to offer.

Matsuzaka mounts the mound and Ichiro enters the batter box even though first pitch may be minutes away. There are strict traditions and rituals that must be obeyed in preparation for the at bat. The pitcher and batter first face away from each other and perform shiko, a foot stomping ritual which drives demons from the field. Next, each takes ladle of water Matsuzaka from a relief pitcher, probably Hideki Okajima, and Ichiro from the man on deck. The water purifies the field. Also, for Ichiro’s benefit, it slows down the infield.
Next each takes a first handful of salt and throws it onto the field, infuriating the ground crew, who will now have to deal with brown spots for the rest of the year. Each then squats and faces the other. From here they clap their hands in unison, in the rhythm of the intro to “Put Me in Coach” to summon the gods. Gods love clapping. The players also turn their palms upwards, as if to say, “come here and let’s play that game where I try to slap your hand and you try to get away.”

Then comes the stare down. Each man crouches down and glares at the other. Eye black helps! Over the course of the next several minutes, the cycle of stare downs and sewing the ground with salt continues cyclically, until one man blinks or starts to laugh.
How can you tell when it’s time for the first pitch?
Well, aside from the yelling of “play ball," the umpire will offer a cloth to each player to wipe the sweat off of his hands, or alternatively, to blow his nose.
Now and only now, with the elegant, ancient ritual complete, the park purified, the warriors cleaned of sweat does Matsuzaka strike out Ichiro on five pitches. Banzai!

Please try to be sympathetic to what may seem like a strange and foreign custom. And remember, even though the ritual preceding the first pitch may take a full five minutes, we can handle it. It can’t possible take longer than Nomar’s ritual before each pitch.

(Note: Thanks to Canada’s Sumo page, for providing insight into this mysterious ritual. See Ron Borges how easy it is to not plagiarize?)

2. While the NESN television crew (note: or so Jose heard) failed to immediately identify the long standing animus between Sox reliever Brendan Donnelly and the Mariners’ Jose Guillen, the Globe’s Nick Cafardo did a nice write up today capturing the sordid history. (Note: Reader Moises Sabina of Portland, Maine suggested that Jose nickname Donnelly “Brendan ‘Black’ Donnelly,” in honor of what is apparently a popular television program. Not a terrible idea. However, in light of the recent trouble radio host Don Imus has gotten into over racial remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Jose thinks he will skip anything that could ever, even vaguely by the most self-righteous of people, be interpreted as a racial remark. Moises may not understand this, as there are few people of color in Portland, Maine, but the only way this joke would be appropriate is to call him Brendan “African-American” Donnelly. And that’s not funny. Wait… hold on. Al Sharpton on line one.)

But Jose digresses. While Cafardo did a good job of identifying the most obvious causes of the feud (note: Guillen through a fit when Donnelly and other Angles pitchers did not issue retaliatory beanballs in 2004, and responded by pointing out pine tar on Donnelly’s glove in 2005) he missed what we liberals call “ the root causes.”

Let’s look at the timeline:

March 6, 2004—Donnelly tells Guillen the seat next to him on spring training bus to Tucson is taken. It is not.
March 10, 2004—Guillen calls Donnelly a “stupid head.”
April 4, 2004— Donnelly sticks hand of sleeping Guillen in warm water—leading to nickname “piss boy.”
April 29, 2004—Guillen has sex with Donnelly’s mother.
April 29, 2004—Donnelly’s mother gives Guillen herpes
May 15, 2004—Guillen breaks Donnelly’s glasses
May 30, 2004—Donnelly calls INS on Guillen.
June 7, 2004—Guillen calls DEA on Donnelly
June 20, 2004—Donnelly post some really mean stuff on Guillen’s myspace page about how he’s a whore and how he thinks he’s so great but he’s not.
July 4, 2004—Guillen celebrates Fourth of July by putting cherry bomb in Donnelly’s locker.
July 20, 2004—Donnelly tells Guillen to go back to Hati.
July 20, 2004—Guillen corrects Donnelly on the geography of Hispaniola.
August 1, 2004—Peace and Truce of God, nothing happens.
August 2, 2004—Donnelly replaces Guillen’s normal bats with sticks of TNT.
August 20, 2004—Guillen blows up Donnelly’s car.
September 5, 2004—Donnelly puts Guillen through a table.
September ???, 2004—Guillen rips Angels pitchers for failing to retaliate after hit batsmen,
September 27, 2004—Guillen suspended for remainder of season without pay.
September 29, 2004—Guillen suspends Donnelly naked from a flag pole in front of Angel Stadium.
December 25, 2004—Donnelly sends Guillen lump of coal for Christmas.
January 6, 2005—Guillen sends Donnelly Hunta virus for Greek Christmas
June 14, 2005—Guillen points out Donnelly has pine tar on his glove, Donnelly suspend eight games
April 11, 2006—Donnelly strike out Guillen on three pitches in Fenway debut,
April 11, 2006--Guillen acts like a punk.

Jose’s not saying it’s Spiderman vs. Dr. Octopus or Shawn Michaels vs. Brett Hart or even that it’s The Cosby Show vs. The Simpsons. But there’s a lot of history and it’s not pretty. And you know what they say about history. He who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to take a fastball in the ear.

3. According to the Globe, peppy new shortstop Julio Lugo struggled to find his way to Fenway Park for yesterday’s home opener and nearly arrived late to the ballpark. Sources say that, while Lugo drove very quickly, far quicker than his predecessor at short Alex Gonzalez, his failure to get his foot set on the break pedal before making decisions about which way to go led to some sloppy performance and possibly to inadvertently throwing away his map.

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

Early Bird Gets the Spurn

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO SPRING TRAINING.

1. What a dick move. There, Jose said it. What a dick a move. He said it again.

Since Manny came to Boston with, in the words of Bill Weld, nothing more than the shirt on his back and 20 tons of gold, he has had no bigger apologist than Jose. But that’s over now.

Jose could handle the questionable injuries, the mysterious family illnesses, the causal canters to first, the perpetual trade demands, but not this. Nope. Jose hates, H-A-T-E-S, HATES when people show up early. It’s so damn inconsiderate.

So when Manny showed up in Fort Myers yesterday on February 26, two full days before the reporting deadline and three days before he said he was going to report, Jose just lost it.

Jose is sure the Red Sox are none too happy either. He can just imagine. Tito’s in the clubhouse shower and suddenly the bell rings. Surprised and confused, he wraps a towel around himself and staggers, dripping, to the door, his scalp still slathered in soap. And Manny’s just standing there, a tub of potato salad in hand saying “Hi, Tito man, hope it’s okay that I came by a little early.”

It’s not okay. Tito is dripping, the food isn’t out yet, there’s no music on and he’s not even done vacuuming the carpet, and now he has to entertain Manny while he gets ready? So he does the only thing he can, he pretends it’s okay, and calls for Doug Mirabelli to entertain Manny with his rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot, while he finishes his shower.

Tito rushes back to wash off what’s left of the lather. No time to wax his head or iron his shirt. Not five minutes later he’s back down and Manny is already into the shrimp cocktail and is playing catch with Doug… in the house. To make matters worse, Doug starts talking about how he wants to get dreadlocks just like Manny. Nightmare.

So that’s it. No more. There are lines in society you just don’t cross. You don’t leave puppies by the side of the road, you don’t crap on the sidewalk and you don’t show up early. It’s just Manny being Manny? No, screw that. It’s Manny being a selfish jerk who doesn’t think that other people might need time for shower a shave and a moment with the Mrs. before the party starts.

2. There was a tough letter to the editor in today’s Boston Globe censuring new Sox reliever Brendan Donnelly for being sexist jerk. Donnelly had told Dan Shaughnessy in a column in Monday’s Globe that the low point in his career had come when he pitched to a young woman in a Frontier League game in West Virginia.

The letter’s author, polemicist Courtney Feeley Karp of Jamaica Plain, scolded

With the strides women in sports have made in the 35 years of Mr. Donnelly's
life, I find it revolting that such a view could be displayed so proudly in the
press by someone wearing the uniform of a team I love so much. Whatever else
professional athletes are, they are people children look up to and aspire to be,
and comments like Mr. Donnelly's send a poor message to boys and girls.

Jose takes exception to this analysis. He thinks it sends a great message to both boys and girls. First, the boys. Listen up men! If you are an aspiring Major League pitcher and not only are you in the Frontier League but women are getting hits off of you, you should absolutely quit professional baseball and go get an education, because you are going to need it. This is not to say women can’t be fine athletes. They can, but if women, children or Cesar Crespo are getting hits off you, it is safe to say you are never going to make it to the show, and you should walk away from the sunk costs and do something else with your life.

Now for the girls. Ladies, Jose knows that some of you, well, at least one of you, were offended by Donnelly’s comments. But let Jose ask you a question? Don’t you kind of like the idea that you could destroy a man, that you could take a young strong guy and rip away his dreams? That’s some serious power isn’t it? Think about it. All this woman in West Virginia needed to do was to bloop a base hit over short and Brendan Donnelly, a future Major League Pitcher would have hung up his spikes for good. This means that you ladies have an important role to play in America’s pastime.

What if a woman had gotten a hit off of Calvin Schiraldi in the minors? Would Game 6 never have happened? What if Marino Rivera had given up a hit to some chica down in Panama? Would there have been a Yankee dynasty? You have the power ladies. You do. Now go get to work getting a hit off of Rudy Seanez.

3. In other news, kudos to former Sox GM Dan Duquette, for taking over as Director of Operations for the newly formed Israeli Baseball League, established with the goal of preparing Israel for the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Jose had advocated for an Israeli team in the WBC last spring, so it is good to see someone go to work on it. Though let’s be honest, if anyone had said a Red Sox GM would be running an Israeli baseball league, we all know who we would have guessed, that’s right noted Zionist Haywood Sullivan. His son Marc could play there and everything.

Still, while the goal is noble, Jose does wonder if the new enterprise might encounter more than a few cultural and geopolitical challenges.

• Will the pitchers mound be at the 1948, 1967 or 1973 height?
• Will the Wailing Wall need to be lowered to increase the number of home runs? Should they sell seats on top of it?
• If baseball becomes a hit in the Middle East what will Arabs play baseball in? The name the Arab League is already taken.
• Is it really a good idea to give anyone in the Middle East a bat?
• Since observant Jews are not allowed to complete and work on the Sabbath, will Friday night or Saturday afternoon games have to be 8 2/3 innings long?
• Won’t some Palestinian Manny Ramirez just use roadblocks as an excuse to show up late?

On the upside, all of the hot dogs will be kosher, which taste better anyway.

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

Jose Owes You

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

1. Today is Sam Melendez’s birthday. He is turning 27. He would be 29 if not for Ed King. Jose’s father was a Dukakis appointee and Ed King’s 1978 Democratic Gubernatorial primary victory put a dent in his family expansion plans. When Ed King died some months ago, Jose wrote a letter to his father, who lived in Kosovo at the time, suggesting that it might be time to have another baby. None is forthcoming. This is probably good news for Jose’s mother.

Sam is the youngest of the Melendez children after middle child Jose and older brother Jack, who, much like the 2007 Red Sox closer, does not technically exist. He was a fiction created by Jose’s father, after he read an article about how one should never make up older, missing siblings because it will feed into a child’s insecurities. Jose’s father saw this, noted it, and then decided that science, or possibly humor, demanded that he try it. Since then Jack became a cautionary tale of what happens to disobedient children. More recently, to continue the closer analogy, he has become a sort of rotating spot, to be filled by committee. The latest Jack was a 33 year old Kosovar Albanian named Isak, who is easily the best Jack to date. Among the advantages of having Isak fill the Jack role is that he is a Muslim. The Melendez family, which has both Jewish and Christian traditions, has long had a “feast but not fast” approach to holidays, celebrating Christmas, Chanukah, Easter and Passover, while ignoring inconveniences like Yom Kippur or Lent. With a Muslim in the family, we can at long last try doing the evening feasts during Ramadan without the annoyance of fasting all day.

But back to Jose’s real brother. It is his birthday today and Jose has not gotten him a gift yet. With only a few hours to go until the party, this might seem like the right time for Jose to flip out like Andy Yount at a grave site, but no, he’s keeping his cool. Thankfully, the Melendez family has a long tradition of IOUs.

Don’t have a gift for an important occasion? No problem, simply present a coupon for “something cool” at a later date. Or don’t present a coupon and offer a firm, binding hand shake. The reason Jose raises this tradition is not only because he plans to pass off this KEY, oh so thoughtfully written, as a birthday present. No, it’s because he believes that this offers the solution to the Red Sox increasingly complex situation with free agent outfielder and shoulder surgery candidate DJ Dru.

Everyone knows Dru will come to the Sox eventually. Now that Dru has failed a physical, he is unlikely to be able to match the three years $33 million he left on the table in Los Angeles anywhere else, and the Red Sox seem unlikely to walk away from such a long coveted trophy. And yet the two sides seem unable to agree on a final deal that will get Dru his money, while protecting the Red Sox from his seemingly inevitable physical breakdown. So here’s the solution—I-O-U. It’s simple, Theo should show up at the next negotiating session with a card—you need to have a card—in a nice envelope with “DJ” written on the front, maybe in calligraphy if there’s a Chinese woman in the office. Inside there should be a card that reads “I owe you one contract. Theo.” If he doesn’t have time to get a good card an index card will do. However, if he does go the index card route, he should use the coupon style of IOU. “This coupon good for one contract. Must be redeemed by 1/11/08.” Then everyone can stop worrying and stop making such a big deal out of it and figure it out later. Now, if you’ll excuse him, Jose has to go find an index card and a Chinese woman.

2. Jose watched as much of President Bush’s speech last night as he could stand. (Note: Remarkably, it was even more painful than the Celtics game.) As he watched, he wondered if Bush really understands what strategy is. Strategy is not just doing the same thing but more so. It almost made Jose wonder if Bush has been taking strategic advice from George Steinbrenner. Whereas Steinbrenner spends $200 million, fails and then assumes the problem is that he didn’t spend enough money on overpriced veterans, Bush responds to four years of a failed war strategy by deciding… eventually… that what he needs to do is the same thing but with more troops.

Actually, Jose is reevaluating this comparison even as he writes it. Sure, Steinbrenner might respond to his problem by doing more of the same, but at least Steinbrenner would have pumped more money in right away, rather than waiting four years, and he would have fired some people for failing to get the job done.

That’s right; we’ve come to the point in American history where George Steinbrenner seems like a better presidential option than the guy in the Oval Office. May God have mercy on us all.

3. Have you noticed that weeks after his acquisition, Jose still hasn’t said a word on reliever Brendan Donnelly? Do you know why? It’s because he’s been doing research, deep, muckraking research. And do you know what he’s learned? Well, Jose doesn’t want to concern you, but he’ not totally convinced that Donnelley can pitch, that he’s ever pitched.

During the course of his investigation Jose unearthed evidence that Donnelly used to be a Congressman for Massachusetts’ 11th district. But guess what? THERE IS NO 11th DISTRICT. It gets worse. Donnelly, while a “Congressman” and candidate for Governor claimed to have played football at Boston University where there is… ready for it? NO FOOTBALL PROGRAM. What’s next? Is he going to claim that he was Ambassador to some magical fantasy country called Trinidad and Tobago?

This brings us to today. Sure Donnelly changed his first name from Brian to Brendan and put on some nerdy glasses and, but he’s not fooling anyone, not anymore. Jose sees no more reason to believe that he’s a pitcher than he does to believe that he was a Congressman or a 1-AA college football star. (Note: Oxymoron.)

So as sad as it may be, Jose has to say count on Jor-El Piniero, count on J.C. Romero, hell, even count on Jullienned Tavarez, but count on B. Donnelly? Fool Jose once, shame on you. Fool Jose, twice? See the wit and wisdom of George Steinbrenner… er… President Bush.

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