What Goes Down...

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

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

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

What goes down must come up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Day Is It?

It’s time for Jose Van Winkle’s KEYS TO THE GAME.


1. Yawn.

Yawn.

Sttttrrrreeeeecchhhhh.

Yawn.

What time is it where is Jose?

What day is it? May 23rd? No?

Twenty-fourth then? No? Really?

August 12th? Are you serious? August? How can that be? The last thing Jose remembers is that he was taunting some gnomes, some place in upstate New York, it might have been Dustin Pedroia, and the next things he knows he’s here and now.

Oh woe! Oh terrible woe! The things Jose must have missed. At least he’ll still have a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton for President. He won’t? Oh wow.

He’ll just have to try to put up with watching Kobe and the Lakers try to repeat as champs. No? Not that either huh?

Well, at least there are the Red Sox to fall back on. How’s Jon Lester doing since that no hitter? Still walking the park? He isn’t? Wonders of the future Jose guesses.

Jose can hardly wait to see Papi and Manny slug back to back again. What do you mean that’s not going to happen? Is Papi hurt again? We traded Manny?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!


Dear God the things Jose’s missed, the loss, the horrible loss. The future is a sad and evil place. Woe! Woe! Woe! (Note: Woe!)

Wait. They didn’t trade him for Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron did they?

This is brutal. Jose needs to try to chill out. Maybe there’s a new Bernie Mac movie out that he can watch?

What about a new Isaac Hayes album?

Oh the things Jose has missed! Oh the time that has gone by? Is nothing still the same? Is there no constant in Jose’s world?

There is you say? Praise the Lord! What is it? What has remained the same?

Julio Yugo is still not contributing in any way?

Good to know that some things never change.


2. As Jose returns after nearly three months without seeing a baseball game, there is one question the burns in his mind: Why isn’t this team better?

Jose does not mean why aren’t specific players better, or why isn’t the team as a whole putting up better numbers. What he wants to know is why, after a cursory look at team statistics, the Red Sox don’t have a better record. If you had told Jose at the beginning of the year that the team ERA would be 3.79, that St. Josh a Beckett would have the worst ERA of the regular starters at 4.08, that Youks would have 20 home runs and DJ Dru 19, Jose would be sure the Red Sox would be in first place, or would at least have a comfortable lead in the wild card.

And yet here we are in August and the Sox are four games behind Tampax Bay and just a shade ahead of the Twins for the wild card.

How is this possible?

Jose has done a lot of thinking on the subject and he has come up with a theory: The Red Sox ERA team ERA is actually, 379.000, but the Red Sox, following the lead of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, have decided to cut off some zeros. For the few of you who may not have been following the economic crisis in the troubled African nation, inflation there has, for some time been in excess of one million percent. The result has been a nation of impoverished billionaires. The highest bill printed, technically a “Special Agro-Cheque” rather than actual money, is for 100 billion Zimbabwe dollars. However, at the beginning of August, Dr. Gideon Gono, Chair of the Reserve Bank decided to slash 10 zeros from the currency, issuing new one dollar notes equal to the old 10 billion dollar notes.

Jose is pretty sure the Red Sox must have done something comparable, slashing three zeros from the team ERA to come up with the officially reported number. Jose hopes they have taken one more innovation from the big brains at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The RBZ remonetized old coins that have for years now been worthless. In other words, one dollar coins, sitting in Zimbabwe’s sock drawers that had fallen in value to less than one-ten billionth of a U.S. dollar are now back to being worth about .10 U.S. dollars. Jose hopes that the Red Sox have replicated this and remonetized Pedro Martinez’s 2000 ERA.

3. Jose does not keep up with the golf news, as he generally regards golf as a sport for rich jerks (note: unlike baseball?) But one tidbit from Sunday’s Globe did jump out at him. Apparently, a golfer named Heath Slocum missed the cut at the PGA Championship after double bogeyed in the 15th and quadruple bogeyed in the 16th. Apparently, this is bad.

What surprises Jose, however, is that he was still competitive in the 15th. Jose would have expected Heath Slocum to implode in the ninth.

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

How a Blind Man Sees the Red Sox

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

1. For the past few weeks Jose has been away from the Red Sox, isolated far away from his beloved Boston on a continent that both begins and ends with the letter “A.” (Note: Sorry Europe, everyone else stays in the game.) While being away has its share of hardships, being unable to attend games foremost among them, it is not without its advantages. Most notable Jose has the rare opportunity to view this Red Sox team with fresh eyes, or more accurately, no eyes.

Remember the parable of the blind men and the elephant? A few blind men are feeling up an elephant and they each get a dramatically different idea of what an elephant is based on the part of the beast they are fondling.

The man feeling the elephant's flank says, “Ah, an elephant is like a tree.”

“No, no,” says the man feeling the tail. “An elephant is like a stalk of wheat.”

“You’re both wrong,” says the man touching the trunk. “The elephant is like Ron Jeremy.” (Note: Kapow.)

While Jose, as a general rule is no better than equal to one blind man or two deaf-mutes, at this level of remove, Jose has the opportunity to equal at least three blind men, making him the equal of an entire NBA officiating crew, but without a gambling problem.

So how would a group of blind men see the 2008 Boston Red Sox at this juncture, you know, assuming that they actually weren’t blind at all, but were just really, really narrow minded so they could only see part of the team at a time.

The first blind man, let’s call him Ray, would feel up Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz and say “Ah, the Red Sox are like a locomotive, powerful and right on track.”

The second blind man, named Stevie, would grab hold of Jacoby Ellsbury, Rococo Crisp, and Julio Lugo and say “The Red Sox are like a Dalmatian that mated with a brown-haired thoroughbred horse, black white and brown and fast as hell.” Stevie does not have a great grasp of speciation.

A third blind man, called Usher (note: Doesn’t some African-American musician have to learn to play piano and then go blind once Stevie is gone, or maybe even now, since Ray is gone. Aren’t they like the Sith, there are always two, no more, no less? And you know it won’t be 50 Cent, unless he gets shot in the eye. Who already plays piano?) would grab hold of the middle relief and say, “No, no, you’re wrong. The Red Sox are like a vacuum cleaner, they do nothing but suck.”

But then a fourth sightless companion would come along, let’s call her Helen. Helen would grab hold of the starting rotation. She’d run her hands carefully over Beckett, Dice, Lester, Bartolo, Clay and Wake. Somewhere, Derek Lowe would be watching, lamenting his Sox days gone and wishing that the hot blind chick would be running her hands over him. And then Helen would pause thoughtfully and, twinkle in her glassy eyes, offer the true essence of the Red Sox. “Mmphellesss,” she would sagely state. “Mmmmphelless, waaaattaaahhhh.”

And that friends, is what the 2008 Red Sox, truly are.

2. Okay, that’s great. Now that Jose has made a Helen Keller joke the day after sending a link to KEYS to a prospective employer, he will have plenty of time to write. Good thinking Jose!

In the country where Jose is currently stationed, let’s call it Freedonia, there was recently a failed coup attempt and the former president alleged to be involved, let’s call him Groucho, was sent off to jail. While Jose is, as a matter of principle, deeply opposed to the overthrow of democratically elected governments, he does kind of wish that this sort of “Freedonia model” might be exported to Major League Baseball.

Yes, Jose knows that Buddy Leroux tried it once before, but he made a fatal mistake, he failed to get the army behind him before overthrowing Jean Yawkey and declaring himself Owner. If Buddy had stormed Yawkey Way with three highly trained and loyal divisions, there is no way, Mrs. Yawkey could have taken the team back. She was just a little old lady. There’s no way she could have handled more than two divisions.

But just because it failed once, doesn’t mean that it will fail again. Jose, of course, does not wish to see a coup in the Red Sox organization. We are blessed to be ruled by a benevolent triumvirate that keeps us up to our necks in wine and orgies. Well, keeps the players up to their necks in wine and orgies anyways. Or maybe, Jose was just thinking about Derek Lowe again. (Note: Apologies to DLowe the Paranoid Android, there is no evidence that he ever cheated on his wife with more than one woman in a single sitting or that he was a wine drinker. DLowe always seemed like more of a vodka drunk.)

No, Jose would kind of like to see a coup inside the Yankees organization. The way Jose sees it going down is that former Yankees GM Bob Watson using the armed divisions he must get as MLB’s discipline czar, would overthrow Brian Cashman and Hank Steinbrenner and appoint himself GM for Life, President of the New York Yankees, First Citizen of Yankee Nation and Lion of the Bronx. Then for a façade of legitimacy, he would replace Hank as principle owner with Hank’s own father, the recently deposed George Steinbrenner.

George would call a press conference to declare his dramatic return. As he looked directly into the camera, a twinkle in his glassy eyes would offer the true essence of the Yankees. “Mmphellesss,” the senile old man would sagely state. “Mmmmphelless, waaaattaaahhhh.”

3. Jose would like to offer a hearty thank you to Hillary Clinton. Yes, Jose has been kind of tough on her these past few months, but he now wants to put aside the bitterness and offer a heartfelt thank you.

Thank you, Hil-Rod (note: remember you said wrestling fans can call you that) Thank you, thank you. Hil-Rod. Thank you because by comparing the Democratic Party’s refusal to recognize the votes in the meaningless, non-sanctioned Florida and Michigan primaries to Jim Crow and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, you have now made it totally acceptable for Jose to compare any event in baseball’s preseason to historical events such as the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre at Katyn.

Just as your husband made it socially acceptably to receive oral sex from interns under a desk, you have made it acceptable to trivialize monstrous events in human history by comparing them to contests that don’t count.

Thank you so much. Already, Jose is writing the story explaining how Julian Tavarez punching Joey Gathright in the face in a preseason game a while back is the same as the Darfur crisis.

Again, thank you for this wonderful contribution to our public discourse.

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

5 vs. 1

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

1. Should Julio Yugo continue as the Red Sox starting shortstop? That’s the question on everyone’s lips like so much dried spittle these days isn’t it?

The easy answer is “No of course not. What are you a moron? He can’t hit and now he can’t field either.” But that answer is only easy in the sense that Madonna is easy—everyone has used it. But that does not necessarily mean that this exhibitionist whore of an answer is correct.

Jose would like to offer an alternative answer, more chaste and refined, and therefore, more alluring while ultimately far less satisfying: We should keep Julio Yugo as the shortstop.

Now, Jose knows this isn’t the answer you want to hear, but stay with him for a moment. Jose is not proposing that the Red Sox leave things exactly as they are. That would be crazy.

What Jose is proposing is that they adopt a strategy more appropriate for our disposable, throw away, “Screw you Al Gore” society. Back when Jose was maybe 13 years old, he got the brilliant idea that rather than buying one nice car for say $15,000 (note: quite a bit in 1989 dollars), one could buy five Yugos for approximately $3,000 each and get more total years of use. Instead of driving a Toyota Camry for 12 years, you could get three years a piece out of each of the five Yugos and come out ahead.

This is what we should do with Julio Yugo. Rather than hoping to get a full 12-year career out of Jed Lowrie, we should just take five Julio Yugos. Perfect right?

There is, however, a minor hole in this plan. Julio Yugo has the price tag of a nice car and the performance of a Titoist spin on the Fiat.

2. Following another excellent game in which he hit a triple and a two-run homer, Rococo Crisp, once the odd man out in the Boston outfield, told the Boston Herald “I’m just going with the flow.”

Jose always expected that Crisp would one day start peppering his press conferences with product placements, but he always imagined it would be for breakfast cereals, you know, because his name sounds like Crispix…

Jose never thought that he would jump into pharmaceutical advertising and start promoting prostate products like Flomax. Obviously, Flomax advertises constantly during games, but Jose just never saw them doing direct product placements in post game press conferences. But we should probably just get used to it this is probably the start of a trend.

3. In other Julio Yugo news, the embattled shortstop underwent a CT scan during Saturday’s game. According to the Boston Globe, the scan came back negative, which is no big surprise as “CT,” Jose is pretty sure, stand for “catching” and “throwing.”

Jose is pretty sure that Lugo’s SLG scan will come back negative too.

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

Red Sox Nationalism

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

1. Nationalism is a problem.

Yes it can offer benefits, a sense of unity and purpose, a desire, as John McCain has said, to become part of something greater than oneself. But it also leads, almost inevitably, to arrogance, elitism and prejudice. Anyone who has spent as much time in the Balkans as Jose (note: four weeks) knows exactly how destructive nationalism can be and will come to view it with a fearful mix of respect and loathing.

And yet, without nationalism, can a nation ever truly be forged? Could Italian city-states have become one kind of resolute and more or less stable nation without nationalism? Could the United States have formed a nation out of a mélange of peoples without creating a nationalism based not on ethnicity, but the idea of Americanness? Could hundreds of German states… wait… okay let’s skip that one.

Since 1967, we Red Sox fans have slowly become a nation. We know this because Leisure Suit Larry Lucchino tells us so. But marketing aside, at this point it is undeniable. However, it is equally undeniable that we could not have become a Red Sox nation without a Red Sox nationalism.

Prussian thinker Johann Gottfried Herder reframed the idea of the nation as a Volknation a “folk-nation” motivated by the Volkgeist, “the spirit of the people.” Does the Red Sox Nation have a Volkgeist? Herder would certainly say so. He looked to language and cultural traditions to form the chalky outlines of the people’s divine form. Language, folklore, music, dance, we have them all. Every time a drunkard yells “A-Rod you wicked suck,” he is feeding into the Volkgeist. Dance? The wave is nothing more than the undulating heave of a nation in motion. Music? From Jess Cain’s Yaz Song, to Red Sox Mabmo #5, to Tessie, to Sweet Caroline, to Dirty Water, Red Sox nation can compete with any of that Bach or Mozart the Germans used to define themselves, provided Bach and Mozart dumbed down their music by 99% and later confessed to some weird feelings about Caroline Kennedy. And folklore? What is the “Curse of the Bambino” if not our version of the Brother’s Grimm, an absurd and terrifying account of things that are almost entirely fictional.

These are all good things, except for the Shaughnessy book, these symbols of our nationalism, but we would do well to remember that nationalism is not all good, to be vigilant against excess. There was an incident in New Hampshire several days ago wherein a fan of the New York Yankees, (note: Jose was going to write the Russia to our Germany but that made him a little sick. Then he was going to write the Germany to our Russia, but that also made him sick, so he settled on the Norway to our Sweden), responded to the “Yankees Suck” chant, the ancient cry of our people, with violence. This Yankees fan used her motor vehicle as a weapon, literally running down a group of Red Sox fans, murdering one. First, allow Jose to say that this is messed up. Really sick, horrible stuff, like worse than Roger Clemens horrible. Second, let’s not let the Red Sox Nationalism take us to those dark places.

We are not like Germany or Russia; we are better than them. We are fueled not my hatred of the other, but by love of our fellow citizens.

Let us not let Red Sox nationalism take us down the twisted path to madness, violence and death. It is all well and good to talk like a nation, think like a nation and act like a nation, but to destroy like a nation? To war like a nation? If that is the price of Red Sox Nationalism, Jose would be just fine being a Red Sox City-State.


2. The Red Sox blew a dramatic come from behind victory last night in part due to the 10th error of the year by embattled shortstop Julio Lugo. Lugo is one of those Red Sox players Jose has never managed to come up with a nickname for, but at last, after a good fielding horribly hitting 2007 and a better hitting but horrible fielding first month of 2008, Jose feels obliged to come up with something. Also, he didn’t see the game last night, so he is better off working on names than commenting on actual performance.

Here’s what Jose has come up with after three, perhaps even four minutes of work: Julio Yugo.

At first it seems obvious, crappy shortstop, crappy car—perfect.

But it is far more nuanced than that. The Yugo was introduced with great fanfare as a useful little thing that would fill a variety of needs, not flashy, but effective. Sound familiar? But it never settled into the U.S. market, and is ultimately regarded as one of the great disasters in automotive history.

The history of the Yugo is the history of Julio Lugo.

That said the comparison is not perfect. The Yugo, for all of its flaws, was at least cheap.

3. KEYS TO THE GAME fanboy Curt Euro took a major step in his rehabilitation from a shoulder injury this week, when he took a turn throwing from 60 feet (note: 20 yards). If he is able to throw at that distance without pain, he will immediately be the leading candidate for quarterback of the New York Jets.

Euro’s apparent recovery comes after he followed a routine of rest and rehabilitation recommended by the Red Sox. Euro and his doctors had insisted that surgery was the correct course of action. While Euro conceded that time has shown that the Red Sox recommendation was correct, his friend, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, insisted that this proved, more then ever, the need for surgery.

“I don’t care if he needs to have 100 surgeries,” said a defiant McCain. “Our objective is for Curt’s shoulder not to hurt. And we will keep cutting into his shoulder until it does not hurt anymore. Only then, will it be safe for have further surgeries.”

McCain continued “His surgeries, will of course, be covered under my health insurance plan, provided that they are not for an actual injury.”

With his recovery underway, Euro’s next task is to figure out how to meet the weight incentives included in his contract. Euro is unlikely to make weight due to the weight gain that is a well-known side effect of arm injuries.

As an alternative Euro has suggested a buoyancy incentive (note: credit to Dr. Katz Professional Therapist).

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

KEYS TO THE WORLD SERIES

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE WORLD SERIES.

1. It is 2090 already?

Dear God how the time’s gone by. Jose will confess he is still a little surprised to be alive at 114, but modern medicine is pretty amazing stuff. He’s even more surprised to still be working in the same job for the same pay.

Wait… What day is it? What day is it??? You out there, what is the date?

It’s October 29? But of what year?

2007? Then… But how… that would mean… The New York Daily News was wrong? How can that be? We’re talking about the New York Daily News and they assured, they assured us all on October 28, 2004 that the Red Sox wouldn’t win another World Series until 2090, another 86 year drought.

Jose looks forward to the correction.


2. As Jose writes this the players the owners and even the newspaper columnists have already taken up all of the best clichés.

“I think 2004 was for the parents and grandparents who suffered t, Dru, Lhrough eight decades. This is for us and our children and everyone in Red Sox Nation, proving that we could do it again.'' – Tom Werner, Red Sox Chairmen.

“See this is what happens when you win it all under the simple guise of being the best team, absent the melodrama.” Bob Ryan, Boston Globe Columnist

“Now, when history repeats itself, the refrain is one of celebration, not condemnation.” Tony Castrati, Boston Herald Columnist


“If you go to a high school graduation in the year 2026, you will hear a lot of Jacobys, Dustins, Jonathans, and Hidekis when they call the roll.” – Dan Shaughnessy, Local Cynic.

It doesn’t leave many angles for those blessed among us who do not write on deadline. Yes, having the convenience of being able to go into the streets of Boston and celebrate without having to worry about pounding out copy in time for the first edition was a relief, but it left naught but scraps for World Series perspective.

Thankfully, for Jose, there is always Steinbeck.

In The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, Steinbeck wrote “Somewhere in the world there is defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.”

This is the true story of the Boston Red Sox. For 86 years we were defeated and defeated and defeated again. We found our defeat in the world and were gravely wounded by it, but we never allowed it to destroy us. Ted Williams was not destroyed by defeat. Carl Yastrzemski was not destroyed by defeat. Johnny Pesky was not destroyed by defeat. Jim Rice was not destroyed by defeat. Bill Buckner, Calvin Schiraldi, maybe they were destroyed by defeat, but if so, they are not us. These fathers of the Red Sox Nation knew defeat and knew it well, but they rose above it, towered above it to become loved, revered made into icons both sacred and profane. We fans loved them no less for their failure to win, saw no less in their brilliance for their lack of the big, shiny trophy. Yes, for generations Red Sox nation triumphed over defeat.

And then came 2004. Victory. Sweet, sweet victory, for which, as General MacArthur reminds us, there is no substitute. But what would victory do to us? Who would we become? Would be made small and mean by victory like a turtle necked shipbuilder? Would we grow smug and self-satisfied, content with nothing but endless affirmation of our own superiority? No. We would triumph over victory just as surely as we triumphed over defeat.

We saw the nobility in the quixotic quest of wounded 2005 squad to defend its championship. And even as the 2006 team crumbled into dust, we rejoiced at the brilliance of David Ortiz, and were grateful to live in this time, in this town, with this team.

And when 2007 arrived, and when we struggled to maintain our 14 ½ game lead, we did not fret and fumble and insist on playing the role of tragic hero. And when we held the lead and clinched the division, we celebrated with a divine silliness rather than self-righteous entitlement. The Idiots were, perhaps, gone to history, but they were not succeeded by fools in cap and gown. If the 2003 team, the last to know truly bitter defeat were cowboys and the 2004 team, the first to know true victory were idiots, then perhaps this 2007 squad were prospectors, content to labor hard day after day, month after month, in the optimistic hope that they would eventually find gold.

And when the pan was shook, and the silt had slid through the little holes and back into the stream of the season all that was left were shiny nuggets of victory. It was not the shallow victory of inherited wealth, of having the good fortune to be born rounding third, but victory won methodically, through persistence, through effort and through grit.

Far from destroying them, defeat made the Red Sox strong and humble, and victory did not make them small and mean, but great and good.

They are our Boston Red Sox, and once more they are the Champions of the World.

3. Poetry has meant a lot to Jose this year, and thus he closes this season where we won with the brutal meter of ruthless consistency, in a final verse.


When Euro took the ball on opening day,
And Boston bowed to Kansas City’s nine,
The pundits screamed and started to inveigh,
Against the Red Sox and their quick decline.

Our team rebounded and soon took the lead
And grabbed the A.L. East about its throat.
And though the Yankees never did concede,
Their competition soon became remote.

The youngsters hit and pitched the veterans too,
Though some might say we failed to dominate,
And placed the blame on Lugo and on Dru,
But Boston’s team would not deny its fate.

With bats, and starting pitching and our pen,
Your Red Sox are WORLD CHAMPIONS ONCE AGAIN!!!!!!!!

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

Like a Locker Room Speech by Marcel Marceau

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

1. It is quiet here. It is painfully, relentlessly quiet. Denuded of the cracks and cheers the air is empty of vibration. All that remains to tickle the tympanic membranes, are those other sounds, the sounds so subtle, so remote, that they do not even exist to a man who is free from anything but the most monastic solitude. The heart thumps its regular rhythm, a metronome, infinite and plodding. Beneath the percussion is the slow gargle of blood tickling arteries and veins on its journey through the French horn of the circulatory system. And then there is the buzz. Like the whir of fluorescent light or the flapping of a mosquito’s wings, the buzz annoys, high and harsh, even as it calms by providing evidence of one’s continued existence.

Jose heard these sounds described once in a radio story about a composer who wrote a piece of music consisting entirely of rests. The composer went deep into a subterranean isolation chamber to hear true silence, the silence that burns like acid in one’s ears, and there, alone, he heard these sounds.

But Jose needs no subterranean cavern, no layer of the Morlocks, to succumb to this bitter silence any more than he needs an orchestra at rest. To him, silence is nothing more than the absence of baseball. And on the treacherous Wednesday off day Jose was left to its cruel neglect, given a taste of what shall come should the Red Sox lose again to Cleveland.

Simon and Garfunkel were wrong; silence does not “like a cancer grow.” Silence is not some foreign growth crushing organs with sheer bulk. It is more insidious than that. Silence like a virus spreads. It infiltrates just a few cells at first, then turns those cells into breeding grounds for its minions of quiet and despair. With each off day, the silence of the off-season penetrates more deeply, overwhelms more perniciously until there is naught but void.

But Jose will not yield to the silence. He will not bow to the bitch goddess inevitability; the silence cannot yet come. He will not allow it.

Sometimes even those sworn to silence, those who’s very being is defined by the absence of sound, must break their vows, must deny their essence to stave off the abyss. In 1976, Marcel Marceau, a man more famous for silence than any other, uttered the lone word “non” in Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie.” More recently, Darryl and Darryl, the silent woodsman in the television program Newhart, are, in the series finale, so infuriated by the grating chatter of their wives that they scream their first word in the series “QUIET!!!” And in comic books, even the Inhuman King, called Black Bolt, who dares not speak because his voice can level cities, will utter a word when the situation is so dire that the silence must be shattered.

Jose cannot fall back upon the shock of the spoken word to rend the silence. Jose is verbose, and a word spoken would have no impact among the hundreds of thousands he has written.

All Jose has to tear apart the shroud of void, is one word, one slender syllable, that can have the impact of the mime aloud, or the mute come to speak. The day is dark, the silence is encroaching and the time for action has come.

I predict the Red Sox will win tonight.

2. The epic poems were nice, perhaps they were even actually epic, but they haven’t brought the Red Sox any wins, so away with them.

Perhaps, as Granny Melendez often suggests and Jose’s brother Sam confirms, these KEYS have been simply too long to read. So to hell with the verses as long as Dustin Pedroia’s swing and as plodding as Doug Mirabelli. Those days are gone. Rather than offering you one grand epic, Jose will offer a few short distinct poems, some merry little couplets for Game 5.

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Thank God we’re not starting D. Jonathan Dru.

Roses are red, dead ones are black,
Where is Millar? Let’s break out the Jack.

Marigold’s orange, lilies are white,
Why isn’t Ellsbury, playing in right?

Begonias are red, or their white or pink,
Seriously guys, you should start with a drink.

Grass it is green, bark it is brown,
You will come back, from three to one down.

Outfield is green, in, a burnt umber,
The bats will arise from their postseason slumber.

Poppies are red, they’re used to make smack,
It’s time for Pedroia to show us some sack.

Maples have leaves, in winter they’re bare,
Do you really think Manny just doesn’t care?

Pine trees have needles, oak trees have leaves
We need for our shortstop to pull up his sleeves.

Daises are red, when slathered in paint
Tonight young Josh Beckett will prove he’s a saint.

Hyacinth’s blue, except when it’s not,
Like back in ’04, let’s go drink a shot.

3. The Cleveland Indians’ Casey Blake was sharply critical of Manny Ramirez for celebrating by stretching his arms toward the sky after hitting a home run to pull the Red Sox within four runs in Game 4.

What a jackass. Does Casey Blake not recognize not only step 2, but also step 11 of the yoga movement the Sun Salutation? Or maybe he does recognize it and he just hates the sun. Does he know that the sun is where we get light and heat from? Does he know that plants need it for photosynthesis? It’s like, really, really important. And there he is just pissing all over the sun, like he’s so much better than it.

All, Manny does is give a friendly greeting to Ra or Apollo if you prefer, and Casey Blake gets all self-righteous.

Blake went on to say that Manny’s sun salutation was “so opposite of how I am.” So how is he exactly? Jose’s supposes that means that rather than offering a salutation to the sun, he would say so long to it after hitting a home run. Would he just say but and storm out the door? Would he sit down and have a long talk with the sun? Nah, he seems like the sort of guy who would send a text message to the sun. “SRY I CANT SEE U. KC.”

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

10/7/07--ALDS Game 3: Angles in the Outfield, Flies Over the Wall

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

1.
God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
-Ogden Nash "The Fly"

Jose is pretty sure that we know the answer to that one now.

Friday was a big day for those of us who have ever wondered if every thing on our crazy little sphere has a purpose, if each and every act and creature no matter how seemingly random or unimportant is part of some grand design.

If Ogden Nash were still here today, Jose wonders if he wouldn’t add a bit more to his two perfect lines? Jose has noticed lots of hack writers getting rich writing “sequels” to books by other people, as if “Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride” wasn’t just Jane Austen fan fiction.

Ergo, Jose thought he should give it a g

The Fly II
By Jose Melendez, a sequel to The Fly by Ogden Nash
(Note: Name borrowed by the film “The Fly II: Like Father Like Son”

God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.

But God’s work’s never out of sight
Not here on this Lake Erie night.

A fly descends and brings his brood
And Joba Chamberlain is screwed.

They bite his face and ears and neck
His pitches turn to wild drek.

He walks a batter, Wild Pitch!
“God damn these bleeping flies they itch!”

A sac to third, he’s wild again
And no one’s warming in the pen?

But if the flies cost him control
How come Carmona’s on a roll?

When he K’d A-Rod with a curve
Was not old Alex quite unnerved

By flies or was it simply that
October still destroys his bat?

While half a continent away
The Sox and Angels start to play.

And flies affect this outcome too,
But not the ones that gnaw and chew

The necks of pitchers thick and stout
Who cannot get a batter out.

The flies in Boston split the night
And shoot up past the tower light

Off rounded bat on 1-0 counts
These flies on to the Mass Pike bounce.

Drosophila Walkoffengame
Is this sort of fly’s Latin name.

It doesn’t bite it doesn’t sting
This fly is naught but towering.

Though one’s a bug and one’s a ball
Both kinds of flies can end it all.

In Erie nights and Boston sky
We know now why God made the fly.

The weird thing is that it seems fully possible that Ogden Nash would love this shoddy bastardization of his work. The man was an Orioles fan, so you at least know he would like the part about the Yankees choking.

2. Before moving on to a third key that will also deal with the Yankees succumbing to insects, Jose feels obliged to do some serious writing about the Red Sox to prove that he is not Yankee obsessed and does not take more joy from Yankee losses than Red Sox wins.

But rather than focusing on the simplest story line, Manny’s home run, which Jose has already addressed in verse, he’d like to focus on a few other story lines from the evening.

• Terry Eurona--Managing Legend: We all know Tito is a good manager in the regular season, maybe even an excellent manager, but in postseason, it is like he is an entirely different guy, as mere excellence elevates to mathematical perfection. It is as if the man is Toyota Corolla, solid and reliable but unspectacular, that suddenly gains the ability to go 220 mph when you need it to take someone to the hospital.

Not a big car person? Jose isn’t either, so let’s try a different one. Maybe Tito’s more like the Hulk. The Hulk, of course is actually puny Bruce Banner when there’s nothing on the line, but when the stakes are high and the adrenaline flows, he becomes the super strong Hulk. So that’s another cut at it.

You don’t like comics either? Great. Why are you reading the KEYS again? Fine, Jose is inclusive, but just one more analogy. Tito in the regular season is like a chess computer program. It plays well, very well, when set to expert, and will beat average or even good players most of the, but in the playoffs Tito becomes Deep Blue, the IBM chess computer that makes millions of calculations per second, thinks hundreds of moves ahead and can beat the best straight up.

• Hideki Okajima--Regularity: As satisfying as Paps’ performance was last night, it was Okajima’s performance that was the most satisfying. After all of his recent struggles, he appears to be back to the way he was.

To give you a sense of the magnitude of relief Jose feels from Oki’s performance think of it this way. Imagine you have a high fiber diet and it keeps everything running smoothly, like clockwork. You know what Jose’s talking about; he doesn’t need to get graphic. Then one day, things just aren’t happening. The next day they aren’t either. You keep trying to use the facilities; you sit and you wait and nothing happens. Then, after a few days, when you are starting to feel genuinely concerned that there is something seriously wrong with your innards, you decide to try one last time before going to the doctor. Suddenly everything goes as smoothly and cleanly as ever. Imagine how satisfying, what a relief that would be? That’s how satisfying, Okajima’s performance last night was.

• Julio Lugo and DJ Dru--To die unsung would really bring them down: Last night, the two most disappointing Red Sox of the year not named Piniero, Romero, Pena, Hinske, Gagne or Mirabelli, did exactly what they were supposed to. (Note: That list is totally unfair. Dru was way more disappointing than anyone except Gagne.) Dru drove in two in the first, and Lugo got a single in the ninth and advanced to second on a well-executed hit and run to set up Manny’s game winning homer. Everyone forgot about the two of them between Manny’s home run and Dru’s brother playing much better than him in the post season for Arizona, but not Jose.

Both of these guys were heroes last night and when they next come to Fenway how about actually yelling “Drrruuuuuuuu” rather than “booooo” for once and yelling “Luuuuuuggggooooo” instead of yelling “Yuuuuggggooo” like you do when you disrespectfully compare him to a Fiat’s poor Balkan cousin.

OK has Jose filled his quota for Sox talk? He has? Now back to the Joba bashing.

3. A couple of days ago, Jose received a press release from a PR drone for a major non-Popeye’s chicken franchise.

The open letter is below, with a few minor changes to avoid promoting a company that has not offered Jose any free chicken.

October 5, 2007

An open letter to Steve Bartman:

As you know, the chatter about black cats, billy goats and curses has returned to the Windy City.

But like you (knock on wood) we don’t believe in hexes. And we don’t play the blame game. In fact, we’d rather lick fingers than point them.

But just to be safe, on behalf of die-hard Cub fans everywhere, we’d like to make you an offer we hope is too good to refuse.

If you promise to watch your beloved team from the comfort of your own couch, [Not Popeye’s] will provide you with the “Ultimate Stay At Home Party Pack.” It’ll include a feast of the Colonel’s World Famous Chicken plus all the side items, and your very own Limited Edition 42" 3-Pixel-Plus High-Definition LCD TV.

Take us up on this offer and maybe the 07 playoffs will be remembered for a feast of fowl at your home, rather than a foul ball at Wrigley Field.

After going 99 years without a World Series title, we think this [Not Popeye’s] offer could potentially be Cubdom’s secret recipe for success. We look forward to hearing from you. Enjoy the playoffs and here’s hoping for some good luck in ‘07!

Sincerely,

[Some Rich Jerk]

President, [Not Popeye’s] Corporation

Jose finds this agitating. Who sits around and says “Hey let’s bribe some poor guy to further humiliate himself in order to sell chicken.” . One would hope that they would offer similar deals to Kyle Farnsworth and Alex Gonzales, who actually bear responsibility for the loss.

And you know what? Bartman is a classy guy and has donated all of the schwag given to him by various marketing jerks to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation out of love and respect for former Cub Ron Santo, a diabetes sufferer and one of the foundation’s major supporters. But he can’t give Fried Chicken to the Foundation can he? Kids with diabetes probably can’t even eat the probably sugar-laden chicken from Not Popeye’s.

And it’s not like it would keep the guy home anyway. If you want to keep Kevin Millar away from a game, sure, offer him chicken, if you want to keep Wade Boggs from a game, take away his chicken, but poor Steve Bartman? Please.

That said, as is often the case with marketing ideas, the problem may be more execution than concept. Except for the obvious criminality of offering bribes in an effort to change the outcome of a game, perhaps a different product offered to a player might be more effective.

Let Jose give you an example of a promotion that could influence the outcome of actual playoff games.

An Open Letter to Joba Chamberlain

As you know when summer turns into fall in Northern Ohio, the winds die down and swarms of flies descend upon Jacobs Field.

And like you, we don’t like getting bit by bugs. Thus, we at the SC Johnson Corporation were disappointed and embarrassed to see you slathering yourself in Deep Woods OFF insect repellent and still being swarmed by flies as you attempted to pitch.

Deep Woods OFF is a powerful insect repellent with 25% deet, and thus is highly effective, unlike that deet free nature crap. Our chemical engineers and entomologists met and concluded that the only way that many insects could have been attracted to you after using our product is if you smell like garbage.

Still, we want another chance to prove to you and the world that OFF is an effective product, so we would like to make you an enticing offer.

Should the series go to five games and you return to buggy Cleveland, we would like to dip you in a tank of 100% deet.

If you accept, we guarantee you will not have any problems with bugs, either because it successfully repels them or because rather than throwing wild pitches, you will be pitching wildly and unable to play, as excessive deet exposure is connected to between 14 and 46 cases of seizure according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

After going the entire agonizing century without a World Series, we think that this Deep Woods Offer could be the suck repellent the Yankees are looking for.

We’re hoping to hear from, and good luck at not catching West Nile Virus.

Sincerely,

Some Other Rich Jerk
SC Johnson Corporation

See, that’s a good promotion. It’s timely, not four years out of date, it helps someone who smells like feces, not just some poor sap who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it could actually affect a game.

(Note to SC Johnson: If you would like to use this letter, Jose bill’s at $175 an hour. It took him 37 hours to write it.)

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

Where's the Drama?

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

1. Where’s the drama?

Is it, as a drill sergeant on a short lived FOX boot camp reality show once suggested, being saved for “yo mamma?” Is it the preserve of pale goth chicks in pasty white makeup? Jose does not know. But surely, it is not at Fenway Park

Today is the World Famous Sons of Sam Horn bash, and there is absolutely no rumor, as yet, of Manny Ramirez demanding a trade. Not even a peep. Where the hell does that leave Jose? Lost and alone, and a little bored. That’s where. Two years ago, Manny was poised to be traded to the Mets on bash day and it made for easy copy. Pithy verbiage like “stop the music” and “trading Manny for Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron is the stupidest idea ever” flowed freely from Jose’s clicking keys, like beer, and wine, and tequila and vodka, and rum and probably more than a little isopropyl down SoSHer Tom Ricardo’s formidable gullet.

And today? Well, today Jose has to actually use a drunken Cranston frat boy in an analogy. That’s how bad the material is today.

But let’s say Jose wants to write about real trading deadline drama. Let’s imagine, for once moment, that he would rather not write about the man called TRic. What would he write about? Would he hop on the rumors that the Sox are looking into Jermaine Dye or Marx Texiera? What about the Reggie Sanders option? Or there are even those silly rumors about Ken Griffey Jr.?

Pish tosh Jose says. Pish tosh. There is only one trade Jose wants to discuss, and that is the trade that brings Todd Helton to the Red Sox for Mike Lowell and Wily Mo Pena.

Let’s break it down.

Why would the Red Sox make this trade? It would give them a serious power boost, a skilled first baseman and allow them to move Kevin Youkilis to third.

Why would the Colorado Rockies make this move? Okay, bear with Jose for a second because it’s a little statistical, but here goes: They make the trade because someone put LSD in the water cooler. Think about it. It might work. Under the influence of acid, Colorado officials could easily become convinced that Helton was a snake monster they needed to get rid of, and that accepting a 30 foot tall Dominican giant and a kindly old wizard was a preferable to cutting him outright.

Okay, maybe no one is going to take this seriously baring the use of mind-altering drugs or possibly a kidnapping of some kind, but people took Manny for Huff and Cameron seriously, and was that really any less asinine? Okay, yes it was, but not by much.


2. Jose likes to think that he was Julio Lugo’s inspiration.

It only makes sense doesn’t it? Jose is a singles hitter with a propensity for groundouts, and an ugly tendency to throw the ball away. Sound like anyone you know? And yet at last night’s Sons of Sam Horn softball game, Jose absolutely raked. A deep home run, a triple, a single and a long fly out. No errors either. Okay, maybe one error, but it’s beer league softball.

Then all of a sudden Julio Lugo, who had been heating up anyway, suddenly crushes a ball over the monster for a grand slam. Rococo Crisp started heating up after Jacoby Ellsbury, a younger, whiter version of himself showed up. Is it not possible that Jose had the same impact on Lugo?

Admittedly, logic would say, “No that’s completely impossible. Stop being a jackass Jose.”

But Jose, jackass that he is, thinks otherwise. Sometimes all that matters is to hear the footsteps, to sense the sickly sweet breath of competition blowing down your neck.

This was one of those times.

And Jose is glad because, despite his being the worst hitter in baseball for the better part of this year, Jose never lost faith in Julio Lugo. Maybe it’s because of Jose’s deep, and borderline racist conviction that all Dominicans can hit a baseball. Maybe it’s because it simply seemed impossible that anyone not named Crespo could be that bad, or maybe just maybe, it is because Jose sees Lugo as some sort of an old testament God figure, testing Jose like God tested Job, with horror after horror. But like Job, Jose never lost faith. He got angry, sure. He may have cursed the heavens about Lugo’s four-year deal, screaming “Why, why, why are you doing this to Jose.” But he never lost faith.

And do you know why? Because Julio Lugo never gave Jose boils. If Julio had given Jose boils like God gave to Job, Jose would be all about benching him.

3. When Mike Timlin came into last night’s game, the near universal reaction at the SoSH post softball pool party was “Nooo, not Timlin.” Indeed, people would walk in the door to see the grizzled righty on the mound and immediately recoil.

This is wrong. This is dead wrong. Mike Timlin does not deserve this. We owe him our respect. He gave us years of brilliant service, he should have been on the mound in the 8th in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, he has pitched 14 straight scoreless innings. That’s worthy of respect isn’t it? Still, that’s not enough to earn undying loyalty even as skills deteriorate, Jose knows that. No, the reason we should continue to respect Mike Timlin is that he is a large man who owns a lot of guns, and that and that alone makes him worthy of respect.

And fear. Lots and lots of fear.

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

Saufen wir?

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

1. There’s an old joke about a fellow who plans to share a soda with his friend, half and half. When the friend goes to take his share, he finds the can is empty.

“Hey, I thought you were only going to drink half,” says the parched and befuddled pal.

“Absolutely,” replies the fellow. “But mine was the bottom half.”

And so too it is as we come to the second half of the baseball season. The second half, the sticky summer months and crisp of autumn that follows the All-Star break, must be the Red Sox’s half. The Red Sox must not be the considerate gent who takes the top half of the soda, and then waits for the Yankees to guzzle the second, as they are prone to do. No, the Red Sox must be the team that gulps down the first half, only in order to consume the second half with even greater voracity. Having liberated the can’s top half of its calories they must now deprive the second half of its sparkly sweetness, lest anyone else dare to crave so much as a sip.

The Germans have a verb for this—saufen. It means to drink, but not like a man, not like a creature of sentience walking on two firm feet. Rather, it is to drink like an animal, lustily, sloppily, without any consideration for how one’s indulgence might appear. It is a verb meant for swine, and drunks, and, with any luck, our 2007 Boston Red Sox as they go for that bottom half of the can.

2. Sure the All-Star game was fun this year. It was fun to watch Ichiro scramble round the bases, it was a kick to watch A-Rod get nailed at home without even a courtesy slide and it was a blast to watch St. Josh a Beckett pick up a win against the NL’s best. But the All-Star game could use some changes. It is hard for anything to continue for 70 some odd years without getting a little bit stale (note: see the Soviet Union), and the mid-summer classic is no different. While others spent their All-Star breaks frolicking in the Dominican or caring for ailing mothers, Jose spent his plotting how to save the All-Star game.

• You know how the NHL does North America versus the World for its All-Star game? One of Jose’s highly paid consultants suggested that baseball should go with steroid users vs. non-steroid users. This would settle the argument once and for all about whether steroids actually help one to hit a baseball.
• Change the voting system to the electoral college. Have fans in each state vote not for actual All-Stars, but for slates of electors who will vote for All-Stars.
• Losers fed to volcano god
• Replace home run derby with a bunt derby.
• McCovey’s Cove reporter Eric Byrnes eaten by sharks.
• In addition to awarding the All-Star Game MVP, provide the Scott Cooper award to the second time All-Star least likely to make a third appearance.
• Set up “Tim McCarver Guesses Your Weight” booth outside of stadium. (Note: McCarver kept insisting that Alfonso Soriano was 160 lbs.)

3. Tony Castrati kicks off the second half of the season today with a history of the Red Sox shortstop woes, a story nearly as long as Barbara Tuchman’s epic history of World War I, The Guns of August and nearly as tragic.

The reason Jose brings up The Guns of August is that it describes World War I as a war that no one saw coming, that no one wanted, and that happened anyway. Once the machinery of war began to move, it was simply impossible to stop it. That, it seems, is where we are with the shortstop situation today. No one wanted the revolving door at shortstop that began with Nomar’s trade to the Cubs, no one saw it coming, and yet it has proceeded apace with countless millions of dollars and baseball lives squandered.

As surely as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, led to the inexorable march of boots, the trade of Nomar led to the inexorable march of short stops. Orlando Cabrera came, followed by the great and confusing shortstop rotation among Boston, Anaheim and St. Louis, followed by trade of Edgar Renteria and the rise of Alex Gonzales and, ultimately, the signing of Julio Lugo—the worst hitter in baseball.

Did the Red Sox plan to swap down to a shortstop, who, as Tony Castrati points out, ranks dead last in batting average among major leaguers with enough at bats to count for the batting title? No more so than Franz Josef planned for his empire and his dynasty to be disintegrated when he issued his ultimatum to Serbia. And yet it happened.

But when will it all end? The bloodbath in Europe concluded in 1918 when the Central Powers, simply lost the will to go any further, to absorb any more losses, and decided that an odious settlement was preferable to another year of trenches, gas and death. Will the Red Sox reach that point as well? Will they decide that the awful cost of the shortstop position being semi-permanently reduced to the walking rump state that is Julio Lugo is a fair price to pay for halting the endless rotation of good man after good man in and out of position number six?

Jose doubts it, and perhaps it is for the best, as George Steinbrenner is no more likely to be merciful than Georges Clemenceau.

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

Managing Lugo

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

1. Jose is pretty sure that he has figured out how the Red Sox can get out of the slumping Julio Lugo’s distressingly long four year contract—sexual harassment charges.

Lugo reportedly told Boston Globe reporter Amelie Benjamin that he is having trouble sleeping. While to many that might sound like a perfectly innocent comment that Lugo is distressed by his low batting average, to a trained litigator, it is clearly a come on, a suggestion that the young reporter should help him “do something” about his inability to sleep.

Come on bear with Jose, he’s trying to help the team out here. If you have a better idea, he is more than happy to hear it. Of course, the existing comment is not quite enough to bring a real complaint, so Jose calls upon Ms. Benjamin to do know what needs to be done and ask Lugo the questions that will lead to enough borderline suggestive comments to establish a pattern.

A few suggestions:

Amelie: Are you disappointed that you haven’t hit more homeruns this year?
Julio: I’m very upset that I’m not hitting home runs. I love to hit home runs.

Amelie: Do you think your size has contributed to your power outage? You’re not that big.
Julio: Hey, I’m plenty big.

Amelie: Sexualharassersayswhat?
Julio: What?

Amelie: Do you agree that Jose Melendez is a piggish *sshole, who has disrespected me and all female sports reporters by even suggesting a sexual tone to this perfectly innocent conversation?
Julio: Wanna f*ck?

Jose should say, in order to be respectful, that it doesn’t have to be Amelie Benjamin who asks the questions. If could be any female reporter, or even an androgynous male one. Jose is equal opportunity like that.

2. As the Sox prepare for this four game series, Jose hopes they are ready to deal with this right reliever Benoit. Jose’s heard he has killer stuff.

3. The Yankees caught a break last night, when umpires declined to call the game due to downpours when the Yankees were trailing 6-4 after 6. Instead, the umps allowed the seventh to begin and the Yankees scored four runs to take an 8-6 lead before the game was “suspended.”

Under major league rules, since the bottom of the inning was not completed after the visitors took the lead in the top of the inning, the game must be suspended and completed on a later date. This doesn’t make any sense to Jose.

Whenever Red Sox players get suspended they miss one day, five days, ten days, whatever, but yesterday the entire Yankee team, and the Oriole for that matter get suspended, and all they have to do is make up 2.5 innings later? That’s crazy. It’s like one of those in-school suspensions, where you still have to go to school and do all of your work, but they just write down on your transcript that you were suspended because they’re total d*cks.

Or wait, maybe there’s one other possibility. You know how British women, like on Are You Being Served? and what not call garter belts suspenders? Maybe it’s like that and they just halted the game because the Yankees were having trouble keeping their stockings up?

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

Jose's Back... Back Again...

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

1. A lot of you (note: none of you) have been wondering where the KEYS have been for the last two days. After all, they were game days, it was a weekday, where the hell was Jose? Well, Jose figured that if the Red Sox bats could take a few days off, there is no reason that Jose couldn’t take a few days off as well. And Jose only skipped two days, unlike the four day break for the bats.

The other motivating factor for Jose’s break was fatigue. Jose was not really planning on staying up for all of those west coast games. In fact, he was pretty firmly committed to going to sleep at a reasonable hour. So he followed a carefully proscribed ritual.

10:00: Turn on game.
10:01: Curse out Julio Lugo for grounding to second.
10:30: Go get popsicles.
10:35: Go get more popsicles.
10:50: Curse out Julio Lugo for grounding to second.
11:00: Wonder who killed Manny Ramirez and replaced him with weak hitting doppelganger.
11:01: Flip to Cartoon Network to see which episode of Futurama is on.
11:02: Conclude Futurama episode has nothing to do with blurnsball, and flip back to game.
11:20: Get craving for Chef Boyardee Ravioli
11:21: Fight off craving with more popsicles.
11:25: Pop into Sons of Sam Horn game thread to post expletive.
11:35: Yawn.
11:50: Curse out Julio Lugo for grounding to second.
12:00: Go to bed.
12:01: Turn on radio
12:02: Switch back on forth between WEEI and WRKO to find game.
12:03: Curse Glenn Geffner
12:04: Close eyes.
12:05-end of game: Lay there eyes closed in horror as Sox fail to score against: Dan Haren, Lenny DiNardo, Joe Kennedy, Kiko Calero, other guys who suck.(Note: Yes, Jose knows Haren does not suck.)
After game: Fall asleep angry.

So Jose would wake up tired, angry and pretty much completely unable and unwilling to write a KEYS.

2. This is interesting. You probably didn’t know, but it turns out that Curt Euro had a no hitter through 8 2/3 last night. Really. Don’t feel bad about not knowing, there no way you could have. After all, no one brought it up. Jose got home during the eighth after a long day in Brockton and sat down to watch the game, and the announcers were all like “Curt is pitching well. He’s pitching really, really well.

“Duh, he’s got a one nothing lead in the eighth, of course he’s pitching well,” Jose thought to himself. It’s really bad commentary to just say ‘he’s [pitching well over and over again.’”

Obviously Jose figured it out when Shannon Stewart hit a two out single in the ninth, and Orsillo mentioned that it was Oakland’s first hit of the day, but before then, there was absolutely no mention that there was a no hitter going. It was strange. A no hitter’s pretty special right? Wouldn’t you think the announcers would say something like “Curt Euro has a no hitter through seven which puts him a mere six outs away from a remarkable feat.” But no they said nothing. It’s awfully unprofessional if you ask Jose.

And Jose kind of wonders if Curt even knew? He was just sitting there alone on the bench, no one even talking to him. He must have been lonely. Jose knows he’s not the best liked guy in the clubhouse, but it isn’t right for them to ostracize him like that. Besides don’t you think he’d like to know that he had a no hitter in progress?

The way every one was tiptoeing around it you’d almost thing there was a curse or something. But obviously no one believes in that stuff. The more logical explanation is that Remy and Orsillo are bad announcers and the Red Sox are all jerks who hate Curt Euro.

3. This weekend, Jose is going to see the Boston regional of the U.S. Air Guitar championships. Basically, guys dress up like rock stars, take to the stage and pretend to plan imaginary guitars. Jose knows this sounds absurd, but before you get all judgmental, and call it “Stupid” or “Crazy” keep in mind that the Red Sox have been pretending to swing imaginary bats all week and no one’s said boo.

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

Memory Loss

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

1. Every once in a while, there emerges a new medical technology, an innovative surgical technique that radically alters the game of baseball. Once it was arthroscopic surgery, converting season ending procedures to mere weeks on the shelf. Then came Lasik eye surgery giving players formerly constrained by contact lenses, the vision of a young Ted Williams. And then, of course, there was hysterectomy, which allowed Alex Rodriguez to stop becoming hysterical every time something went wrong and settle into perhaps the greatest month in baseball history.

So what’s next for sports medicine? Can we identify the trend now, before it blossoms in full and get the Red Sox an edge? Jose believes he has seen the future of sports and the future looks like lobotomy.

Well, perhaps Jose is being a bit melodramatic. Jose is not suggesting that Red Sox players have full frontal lobotomies. That would be silly, and as the old song reminds us, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, then have to have a frontal lobotomy.” No, he is just suggesting that it might be a huge advantage to a Red Sox player if he had his hippocampus removed, or at least badly damaged.

Jose got the idea while reading Eric Hinskie’s comments on last night’s 10-3, four error debacle.
“You’ve got to have a short memory,” Hinskie told the Globe’s Nancy Marrapese-Burrell. “We’ve got to try to forget about these two games and move on.”

The hippocampus, as even the dimmest of neuroscientists knows, is the portion of the brain that converts short term memory in to long term memory. By removing it, a player would be assured that rather than lingering on the shame and humiliation of dropping two at home to the Blue Jays, he could give complete focus to tonight’s game in Baltimore.

Jose knows it sounds a little risky for players to remove parts of their brain in order to increase their performance, but Manny seems completely incapable of forming long term memories about things like trade request’s he’s made, times he’s used the death of his grandmother as an excuse and the number of balls in the count, and he hits just fine.

Look Jose is not saying this is a cure all. All he is saying is that his late maternal grandmother, who he loved dearly, had a stroke that damaged her hippocampus and you know what? She didn’t have a single throwing error after it. Not one. (Note: Jose’s Grandma Martha had a wonderful sense of humor and sense of baseball, so he is pretty sure that wherever she is, she is not offended. But if she is, she can send Jose a sign by striking down Vernon Wells.)

2. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Alex Rodriquez shared his thoughts on his red hot start, his potential opt out and the Yankees 0-5 road trip.

Among the revelations in the story was that the difference between this year and last is that A-Rod now loses himself in the resonant sounds of his iPod shortly after arriving at the ballpark.

KEYS’ has obtained A-Rod’s iPod and is pleased to offer you, as a KEYS exclusive, the deepest psychological analysis possible in this modern age, the first ten songs that come up on Rodriguez’s iPod.

1. Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)—Traditional
2. Blues Lips—Regina Spektor
3. Slap—Ludacris
4. So Lonely—The Police
5. Loser—Beck
6. I Can’t Win—The Strokes
7. Money –Pink Floyd
8. Thrown Away—Papa Roach
9. April Lady—Queen
10. I Want You to Want Me—Cheap Trick

In addition to discussing his iPod, Rodriguez also answered a question about whether he was a better pilot than departed Yankees Thurman Munson and Corey Lidle, saying "Let's see how far we can fly, then I can tell you. I'm in the middle of flight right now, so I don't want to talk about it.”

3. In perhaps the most shocking news of the young season, three weeks in a Red Sox is tied for the lead league in stolen bases with six, as Jose Lugo’s two steals last night tied him with Kenny Lofton, Gary Matthews Jr. and Brian Roberts.

In fact, the last time any Red Sox player had this much stealing so early in the season was 1992, when Jack Clark had, as of April 25, already effectively stolen the $3 million the Red Sox were ostensibly paying him to hit home runs.

(Note: Jose’s mother has never enjoyed herself as much at a Red Sox game as she did in 1992 when we had seats not far from home plate where she could relentlessly boo Jack Clark. This was unusual, as Jose’s mother likes baseball, but does not have particularly strong feelings about it. What she does have strong feelings about, however, are multi-millionaires whose appetites are so excessive that they file for bankruptcy. Though in fairness to Clark, he probably needed one car for each of the 16 extra base hits in 1992 plus another two just in case.)

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

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.

Call H&R Block, Because It's Time for Some Accountability

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

1. One of the funny things about writing a blog is the accountability involved. Jose knows that sounds weird. After all, the entire point of a blog is that it offers every nimrod with a post-Commodore 64 computer the opportunity to be part of the new media, to pat himself on the back and say “My opinion matters” while remaining untraceable, anonymous hiding from the cleansing, illuminating light of day like so many MIT undergrads. (Note: Being stereotypical about smart people is cool right?)

But the accountability is real, even if the influence is not. Things said long ago remain in print. Even if they disappear from the public realm, victims of a surprise change of domain name, somewhere perhaps, someone still has the incriminating prose on a hard drive, waiting. Which brings us to Julio Lugo. When it comes to Julio, Jose has some accountability problems. But rather than hide it, rather than spend every day hoping and praying that none of the 7 owners of a 2006 KEYS book come’s forward with the incriminating evidence, Jose will lay it on the table now.

On Wednesday, December 2005, as part of a discussion of the Red Sox efforts to bring back members of the 2004 World Series champions, Jose wrote

The solution is to identify new talent, new faces and to fit them into the equation. But not Julio Lugo. No matter how much fun as it would be to hear “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard, four or five times per game next year, Jose would rather pray that ER’s 30 errors was a one year anomaly, than hope that Julio’s 20 plus errors every year is anything other than a simple fact.

Can you see the problem? Now, that the Red Sox have actually signed Lugo, this leaves Jose with a lot of backtracking to do, if he is to return to the comforting bosom of Red Sox fandom and not only say he loves Julio Lugo, but truly mean it. How can it be done? The record is right there in breathtaking black and white. He could try the Big Brother method and change the old record to insist that he has always loved Julio Lugo, loves Julio Lugo today, and always will love Julio Lugo. Perhaps his lament of last December could be… reconceptualized… to read

The solution is to identify new talent, new faces and to fit them into the equation. Specifically, Julio Lugo. And it would be great to hear “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard,” four or five times per game next year. Jose would rather not pray that ER’s 30 errors was a one year anomaly, and be absolutely certain that Julio’s 20 plus errors every year is something other than a simple fact. P.S. Jose adores you Theo. Seriously, you’re great. And no, this didn’t used to say something else.

See it’s a little clumsy. So Jose will go to his other option which is to cloud his past comments with the iron obfuscation of statistical certainty cloaked in impenetrable verbiage. Thus, Jose wishes to issue the following statement for immediate release:

Noted baseball analyst, statistician, pneumismatist and phrenologist, Jose Melendez, is pleased to announce that tertiary and quaternary statistical analysis of the play and performance of new Red Sox shortstop Julio Lugo has reversed, contraindicated and deconstructed the findings of primary and secondary analysis. It has thus been revealed as if my divine intervention as seen in Genesis, Exodus, Kings and Romans that Julio Lugo is a stupendous, astonishing, magnificent, splendiferous, effervescent and ebullient defender and Jose it is in the warmest tradition of hospitality and graciousness that Jose welcomes him to the Boston Red Sox..

While using venerable, heirloom, legacy scientific tools such as error counting and unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence had indicated that Lugo was a bad to dreadful to criminal fielder, more sophisticated analyses done by some other guys, namely range factor and zone rating, paint a portrait of a Julio Lugo who is not only superior to the league average but lords above Alex Gonzales. Jose suspects that further analysis (note: quintenary?) will reveal that Julio Lugo has range that is superior to The Flash, girthier pecs than Fabio and a heart than eclipses even that of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Jose apologies and remonstrates himself for any pain or injury his earlier discourses may have caused Mr. Lugo and his family, excluding his ex-wife, who is a liar and a skank.

Phew… Jose feels better already.

Look, the man
is literally leaps and bounds
better than Orlando Cabrerra



2. CORRECTION: In his previous entry, Jose told the story of a six year old wheeler dealer who held Jose hostage over a 1993 Jose Melendez baseball card. Regrettably, the story omitted one critical detail that changes the context. In the story, Jose described his stone faced bravery in staring down the wheeler dealer and cutting a favorable deal. Missing was the fact that immediately after the transaction was complete, the wheeler dealer offered to trade/sell Jose another card, a Jeff Suppan card. As no one would buy a Jeff Suppan card, not even the Milwaukee Brewers, who recently paid $40 million for the actual Jeff Suppan, Jose can only assume that the Melendez card transaction left the wheeler dealer with the impression that Jose was a sucker. The publishers of this feature apologize for the omission of this critical detail.

3. Have you seen the Globe today? Go ahead and get one. Jose will wait. Got it? Now throw away the front section, the business section, and the arts. Keep Metro if you want, Brian McGrory has another great column today. Jose thinks he calls the people of Hingham douchebags. (Note: Actually, the column is about violence in Boston and is well worth a read.) Okay now, you’re at Sports. Take a quick look. Notice anything weird. Take your time, look at Page E1 all the way through E8. Done? So what did you notice? Yup, that’s right mark it down 1/2/07 there is not a single word about the Red Sox in the Globe Sports section. (Note: When Jose was writing this in his head, he somehow got the idea that it was February 2, so his line was going to be “That’s right, mark it down and call Marla Gibbs and Jackee, because on 2/2/7 there is not a single word about the Red Sox in the Globe Sports section.” Too bad.)

Unbelievably we now have a Boston Globe with more on Boise State football, hell with more on Vanderbilt women’s basketball than on the sun, the moon and the stars that are the Boston Red Sox. Okay, maybe technically Shaughnessy mentions the Red Sox in his column about how Bill Belichick hates Eric Mangini, but god damn it, that’s a football column, and Jose had already written this key when he noticed the mention, so it doesn’t count.

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