Flu-like Symptoms

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

1. Can’t you get a flu shot for like five dollars at CVS? You can and you can get some ice cream while you’re there… unless you go with Joe Girardi.

For the past week the Red Sox clubhouse has been devastated by what must be the worst clubhouse plague since Derek Jeter sent herpes around the Yankee clubhouse in 2005. But it is all preventable.

Not only could the Red Sox have just sent players to CVS for a flu shot, they could have adapted this thing from big business where they invite people to come in and actually give their employees free flu shots.

Come to think of it, that is so obvious that Jose is almost sure the Red Sox must have done it. They’re not stupid. The question then is why didn’t more players get the shot? One explanation is that after the Mitchell report, no one is taking a needle in the clubhouse for any reason. A better explanation would be that Red Sox players as stubborn as Jose’s cousin Sherry. (Note: Dustin Pedroia has something else in common with Sherry—being 4’11”.)

Jose called Sherry a few months ago because he was going to visit her in North Carolina. When she picked up the phone, she sounded, to be generous, like death. She had the flu, it turned out.

“Ummm…. Don’t you work at a hospital? Couldn’t you have gotten a flu shot?” Jose pointed out in his “Jose told you so” voice.

“Yeah ,” she conceded.

“So why didn’t you get one?”

“Well, I was thinking about it, but then they made it mandatory, and I was like ‘you’re not going to tell me what to do.’ So I didn’t get one.”

Sound logic from a health professional!

And if its good enough for her, why wouldn’t it me good enough for noted health experts like Jason Varitek and Manny of the Carmen?

Jose can absolutely see a few Red Sox being all for the flu shot right up until they were told they had to get one. In fact, Jose is pretty sure that the union insists that getting flu shots be negotiated into the contract. Don Fehr insists that in return for major league players to receive a flu shot, they should each receive a cigarette boat, three pounds of mackerel and the complete works of Sinclair Lewis.

2. Aside from the general awfulness of Red Sox middle relief, the big story emerging from yesterday’s game was the sharpness of rookie pitcher Justin Masterson in his six inning, one-run major league debut. Masterson benefited from the fact that his sinker was working well and there is a vacant, ready made gimmick available for him.

Masterson is said to be preparing to take the “masterpiece” gimmick from professional wrestler Chris Masters, formerly of the World Wrestling Federation. (Note: If he takes this gimmick, he needs to avoid the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, as there is a good chance he would be kidnapped by guys posing as cops.) Accordingly, Masterson, will enter the field wearing a cape and no shirt, do a little pose down, and dare anyone to hit his special pitch known as “the master lock.” He will probably also be required to get a Master’s Degree, be certified as a Master Electrician, play golf at the Masters, spent time in the clubhouse playing Master Blaster or watching Master and Commander, listen to Metallica’s Master of Puppets or Depeche Mode’s Master and Servant and eat only products of the Masterfoods company.

3. The Red Sox have their first game of the season tonight against the Tampax Bay Rays, formerly the Devil Rays. (Note: If they were going to change their name, they should have changed it to the Dres, for some Yo! MTV Raps/NWA cred.) While rumors have abounded that the club dropped their name in response to concerns that their affiliation with Satan was hurting the gate, those rumors have been largely discounted among pastors not advising John McCain.

The real reason for a name change is part of an ongoing, nationwide tribute to the future 2007-2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics. Tampax Bay changed its name in order to honor Celtics guard Ray Allen. Other teams from around the country changing their names include The St. Paul Saints becoming the Paul Pierce Saints, The Brown Bears, becoming the Brown PJs and the Perkins School for the Blind becoming the Kendrick Perkins School for the Blind.

When reached for comment, Northwestern University expressed relief that Delonte West is no longer on the Celtics, as having the Delontes as a mascot would not help recruiting.

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

Jose Chooses Not to Run

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

1. Jose was all excited that he got to go to his first game of the year yesterday. And then when the game got out he got to spend sometime watching mediocre marathoners trot along towards the finish line. Good for them!

Jose has always wanted to run the marathon, but he never found it realistic. He has cranky knees, shaky ankles and poor self-discipline.

But what Jose does have is an idea. He has been inspired by, believe it or not, the Tampax Bay Rays. Seriously. Why can’t Jose complete a marathon? Sure he’d be horrible, sure he’d be really, really slow, but every year the Rays are horrible and they still go out and play 162 games.

Here is Jose’s Tampax Bay Rays theory of marathon running. Next year, after doing no training whatsoever, Jose will head up to Hopkinton, run the first mile or so and then walk the rest of the way. Jose figures that using this approach he could finish the marathon in under 10 hours as long as he doesn’t stop too often for beers.

Now some of you may be saying “Jose that’s not doing a marathon! That’s a total fraud.” Nonsense. When the Rays limp to the end of the season 40 games out of first, no one says “Hey, you guys didn’t really play a baseball season.” People just point out that the Rays played an entire season but very poorly.

The way Jose sees it, walking the marathon is basically the same thing. If Jose finishes, he can absolutely say he did the marathon. He went the whole 26.2. He can get the boost in self-esteem without all of the hard work and self-discipline.

And if the Rays are any model, then next year, there will be at least a few dozen people claiming that “this will be the year that Jose breaks five hours.”

2. Jose would be remiss if he let last night’s WWF Monday Night RAW go by without comment. Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain appeared on RAW via videotape to court the all important semi-illiterate vote.

In theory, Jose should not be writing about this, as it has nothing to do with baseball, but he can’t help himself. Besides, since the election is about America, and baseball is America’s national pastime, it does kind of have something to do with baseball in the same sense that elections for Governor of Massachusetts impact Tollhouse cookies, since they are the official cookie of the Commonwealth.

So as the rare commentator who knows both something about wrestling and politics, Jose feel obliged to break down each candidates comments.

Hilary Clinton

“Hi, I’m Hillary Clinton. But tonight, in honor of the WWE, you can call me Hill-Rod.”

Where the hell does the nickname Hill-Rod come from? Is she confusing A-Rod with wrestling? This only works if it is a vague reference to “Hot Rod” Roddy Piper. If it is, look for her to break a coconut over Obama’s head at the next debate. The sad thing is that, it would be one of her most dignified and human attacks to date.

“This election is starting to feel a lot like “King of the Ring.” The only difference? The last man standing may just be a woman."

Does someone running on the strength of her husband’s name really want to be invoking monarchial comparisons? Also, does this mean that if she wins she will start wearing a cape and crown like Harley Race, Randy Savage and Booker T did after she wins?

“The truth is, this election is so important. The next president will facea stack full of difficult challenges right from the opening bell. To fix the economy, bring our troops home from Iraq, and make college more affordable. You need a president who will go to the mat for you. And that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I’ve been knocked down, but I’ve always gotten back up. And I know how to take a hit for the American people. And if things get a little tough, I may even have to deliver the “people’s elbow.”

Because this country is worth fighting for.”

There are an awful lot of “issues” and not much wrestling talk in here save a few bad metaphors. Still, Jose questions whether she would really drop the people’s elbow. First, Jose doesn’t think she could pull off the little dance, and second, she seems more like the type to drop the move’s predecessor, “the corporate elbow.” Also, if one Clinton was going to pull off a wrestling move involving a little dance, Jose says it would be Bill doing the John Cena “Five Knuckle Shuffle” or possible Scotty Too Hotty’s “Worm.”

“Now, I promise to stick to the political arena. So don’t worry Randy Orton you’re safe… for now. When it comes to standing up for the American people though, I am ready to rumble.”

She is probably right that she would have an advantage over Randy K. Orton. Orton is known as the legend killer, so presumably he could only win an election against FDR or Lincoln, and would have all sorts of trouble against a historical footnote like Sen. Clinton.

Barack Obama

“Hey WWE fans – I hope you’re all enjoying the program tonight. You know, this is a historic time for America. It’s not just that the reign of Randy Orton may soon be coming to an end. It’s that at this moment, in this election, we
have a chance to finally end business-as-usual in Washington.”

Is Obama right? If Orton loses the title at Backlash on Sunday, it will reveal that once again he has the superior judgment he claims for opposing the Iraq war.

“For a long time now, we’ve had a politics where our leaders go after each other like they’re competing to become King of the Ring instead of coming together to provide universal health care, fix our economy, and solve our other
problems. That’s what I’m running for President to change.”

Now this is a better analogy than Hill-Rod’s. Obama knows that he can’t actually be King of the Ring, but he does know what it is like to take five chair shots in a row.

“So to the special interests who’ve been setting the agenda in Washington fortoo long – and to all the forces of division and distraction that have
stopped us from making progress for the American people – I’ve got one question: Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”

Okay, all in all this was a disappointingly substantive comment, but you really can’t beat his use of “Do you smell what Barrack is cooking.” Obama, of course, has a lot in common with The Rock. Both are of mixed race, both are remarkable charismatic and what Hilary has attempted to do to Obama is quite like being attached by a forklift driving Mankind in an empty arena.

John McCain

"Looks like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to celebrate their
differences in the ring. Well, that's fine with me, but let me tell you: If you want to be the man, you have to beat the man.”

At first this sounds fantastic. Really fantastic. But then you look at it a little closer. First, isn’t Ric Flair’s “If you want to be the man, you have to beat the man” more appropriate for an incumbent? Why does McCain get to be the man? They’re all just Senators. Beside, is it really wise for McCain who faces age questions to be up citing Ric Flair, a recently retired 60 year old wrestler? Is that going to make him seem younger?

“Come November, it'll be game over. And whatcha gonna do when John McCain and all his McCainiacs run wild on you?"

Now, he mixes in a reference to HHH, a Greenwich blue blood aristocrat and Hulk Hogan currently embroiled in a nasty divorce. Are these really the connections McCain wants to draw, to the economic elite and a man who has rejected family values? (Note: If McCain were a wrestler would his finishing move be the airplane spin? Wow, the man’s a war hero and Jose just said that? Shame on Jose.) Shouldn’t he have saluted John Cena for his service in “The Marine?”

On the upside, at least Mitt Romney is gone, it would have been sad watching him imitate Jake “The Snake” Roberts. (Note: And Dennis Kucinich would have been Doink the Clown.)

In the final analysis, Jose sees Obama as the winner. Perhaps he didn’t have the most substantive presentation. Perhaps he’s not the most experienced wrestling fan, but he won Jose over with his simple, provocative questions “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?” And Jose does. He really does. Jose smells what you are cooking Barack and he will stand with you, at least until someone can come up with something as good as Bill Clinton’s appropriation of The Honky Tonk Man’s “I’m cool, I’m cocky, I’m bad.”

3. Angels centerfielder Tori Hunter is questionable tonight after he sustained mild injuries when his Bentley was rear ended last Friday. Hunter explained the accident saying “It was really my fault. The problem is I had no idea I’d purchased a car. I could have sworn I’d bought a small business college. On the upside, this explains why I was having such a hard time getting credits. I really should have bought a Babson instead.”

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

Why Obama Should Come on KEYS

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

1. Jose read last night that ESPN had decided not to allow Bill Simmons to interview Barack Obama on his podcast because ESPN doesn’t do politics. What a shame. This probably means we won’t see Hilary Clinton on the Budweiser Hot Seat (note: owned by Cindy McCain) either.

This is terrible as it means we will have no way to learn how 90210 influenced Obama’s position on the estate tax or whether he would consider sending Rocky to fight Al Qaeda’s top boxer in the caves of Afghanistan. (Note: Jose doesn’t know how much 90210 would influence anyone’s position on the estate tax, but certainly The Simple Life should.)

So to make matters right, Jose though he would extend a formal invitation to Sen. Obama to be interviewed right here on KEYS TO THE GAME.

Obama should accept for the following reasons:

• It will help him with the critical Hispanic vote, provided no one realizes that Jose is actually a Japanese-German Jew.
• Because Jose is an Obama partisan, he can be counted on to not ask tough questions about lapel pins and people he may have once sat 30 rows away from at a White Sox game.
  

If Sen. Obama accepts the invitation, Jose would like to be prepared so he has tried to come up with some good questions. He encourages you to send additional ideas.

• You are a fan of the Chicago White Sox, a team that 80 years ago included members who did business with organized crime as part of a plot to throw the World Series. Do you renounce and disavow them?
• You have stated that you would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran if elected. Does this include the Iron Sheik, who once said, and Jose quotes “Amereeka? Ha Ptut”?
• In what ways does the “surge” in Iraq resemble Grady Little’s decision to leave Pedro in?
  Which baseball player are you the most like a) Derek Jeter (multiracial) b) Benny Agbayani (Hawaiian) or c) Bruce Chen (confusingly Chinese but Panamanian?
• Which team does your opponent, Sen. Clinton most resemble a) The 2004 Yankees (looked like a lock but then completely choked) b) the 1996 Red Sox (off to a terrible start, but then coming very close to taking the division with the help of gritty white “dirt dogs” like Darren Bragg c) the 1919 Cincinnati Reds (winning because of massive corruption on the South Side of Chicago or d) the 2006 Washington Nationals (Not very good and secretly born in Canada.)

2. Jose supposes that he is now obliged to mention that the Red Sox are playing the Yankees and whatnot but as Bartelby the Scrivener would say, he would prefer not to. To be honest, Jose is starting to think that the pundits are right and the Red Sox-Sox Yankees rivalry is really tired and overplayed.

Think about it. The rivalry was fun but after the Red Sox won the World Series, it was like, who even cares any more? It’s like when you’re looking to have sex for the first time. You keep wanting it and wanting it and then once you finally have sex, and you’re like “Okay that’s done, I never need to do that again,” which is why the human population is dwindling at an alarming rate.

Let Jose give you another example. You now how sometimes you find a $20 bill just sitting there on the sidewalk? It’s pretty great right? But now imagine that you found another $20, you probably wouldn’t even want to pick it up; you’d be so bored with the whole thing. Maybe you’d pick up a five for novelty, or even a penny (note: The Devil Rays of American currency) but a 20? No way.

That’s why Jose isn’t even going to watch the game tonight. Nope, tonight Jose is going to go to a show. He will save his TV watching for when the Red Sox are playing a fresh and exciting team like the Baltimore Orioles thank you very much.

3. One of the big political stories in the last few weeks has been Barack Obama’s gaffe at a San Francisco fund raiser when he suggested that many small town Americans are “bitter.” Hilary Clinton, in an ever more desperate effort to remain in the race, has latched on to the issue as she campaigns in Pennsylvania, going so far as to hand out stickers to people attending her campaign events reading “I’m not bitter.”

Ummm… Jose hates to be the one to raise the issue, but… has she ever been to Philadelphia or any of the towns that fall within the Phillies/Sixers/Eagles/Flyers catchment area? The people of Philadelphia and environs are pretty much the bitterest people on Earth, way more bitter than oppressed Tibetans. Ed Rendell, the Governor of Pennsylvania and former Mayor of Philadelphia was once photographed throwing snowballs onto the field at an Eagles game. That’s bitter.

When she forces Philadelphians to wear “I’m not bitter stickers” she is making liars out of every single one of them. It’s like forcing citizens of China to wear a sticker saying “I’m not Chinese” or members of the 2004 Yankees to wear a sticker saying “I’m not a choker.”

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

Change of Life

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

1. One of you asked, on Friday, where Jose had gone, why he had forsaken you, if you will.

It’s a good question, and as is the case with many good questions, there are a variety of reasonable answers. For instance, if one were to ask why Joe Borowski is still the Cleveland closer, the answer could be that he is Eric Wedge’s illegitimate son (note: this is not that realistic as the WWF has taught Jose that most illegitimate sons are midgets), that someone got confused after hearing his name only through the first syllable of his last name and thought they had Joba rather than Jobo, or something as simple as Eric Wedge suffering from a severe form of retardation. In the case of the good question of why Jose missed an all important April series against the hated New York Yankees, he can, likewise, offer a variety of answers. Perhaps it’s because of something you did or perhaps it is because an April series against a team that hasn’t won a championship in eight years seems unimportant.

Either of those answers would be a good answer, but neither of them would be a true answer. The true answer is that Jose is preparing for a major change of life. How big a change? Think of it as bigger than converting from catcher to first baseman, but not as big as menopause. (Note: Jose really didn’t want to bring up menopause, but as soon as he used the phrase “change of life” he kind of had to.)

Jose is leaving Boston.

Okay. Maybe it’s bigger than menopause, or even bigger than Menopause the Musical.

Jose is not leaving Boston because he wants to. Far from it. He is leaving Boston because he has to. He is doing it for you.

When Jose started this blog in May 2004, he was armed with nothing but the stunning grasp of cross-cultural minutia that only a liberal arts education combined with tens of thousands of hour of watching television ranging from the cartoon “Wheeled Warriors” to “Cop Rock” can provide. (Note: This is a lie. Like everyone else who ever lived, Jose never watched Cop Rock.) These tools served him well. They served him long. But, to stick with the tool metaphor, with repeated misuse cutting low branches off of Christmas trees, even the sharpest steak knife will grow dull.

The KEYS, and frankly the Red Sox, have grown tired and redundant. Year after year, it is the same. Jose makes quips about wrestling and comic books; the Red Sox win the World Series after a spectacular ALCS comeback. Lame. Just boring, repetitive and lame. (Note: Not lame.)

Thus, Jose has made a decision that it is time for him to get some new tools, possibly a jigsaw of allusion or a nail gun of enjambment. Jose is going back to school.

Staring this fall, Jose will be attending one of the several worthwhile universities in the country that is not in Boston and studying new and varied fields, reading texts exotic and subtle so he can more accurately compare their authors to Alex Cora.

But what does this mean for the KEYS? How will this affect you the reader? Well, there are a few ways this could play out. The one that appeals the most to Jose is the Keyser Soze option wherein Jose simply walks away and then all of a sudden starts talking in the first person, thereby undermining everything you thought you knew about him, and then gets in a car with Indians reliever Masahide Kobayashi and is never heard from again. The other possibility is that Jose will simply cut back to a reduced schedule, writing a couple of times a week, rather than at his current, grueling pace.

The truth is, Jose is not sure what will happen between now and the end of the season, or even when he will leave Boston. Perhaps he’ll stay until September, or perhaps he’ll open a small mission is rural Laos and teach the villagers that David Oritz is more powerful than their so-called gods. It could really go either way.

2. Among the stories emerging from the first 2007 World Series Champion Red Sox vs. 2000 World Series Champion Yankees series of 2008 was the strange tale of a David Ortiz jersey churned in with the concrete at the new Yankee Stadium. Apparently, a Bronx construction worker who was a Red Sox fan mixed it into the concrete in order to curse the new building. After an absurd five hours of jack hammering, the Yankees found and removed the jersey.

While the news reports have largely fixated on the mystical aspects of the story, Jose is far more interested in the architectural angle. What this story reveals is the dramatic conceptual flaws in Yankee architecture. The biggest single flaw is the decision to build the stadium out of concrete. That is just foolish. By building the structure out of hard, heavy, inflexible concrete, the Yankees guaranteed that any response to this sort of mischief would be a debacle.

Compare this to when the Red Sox built the new Fenway Park. By refraining from using concrete and instead opting to use supple, flexible abstract as the principle building material, the Red Sox ensured that they would avoid all of the problems that the Yankees are facing and would not place a burden on the taxpayers.

If some idiot Yankee fan tried to mix a Jeter shirt in with the abstract that makes up the new Fenway, you can be certain that it wouldn’t take nearly five hours to find it.

3. Jose keeps seeing advertisements for this new vaccine called Zostavax which prevents shingles. Why anyone would invest money in a drug that is specifically designed to help lisping pitchers combat base hits is beyond Jose, but he will confess that he doesn’t really understand the pharmaceutical business.

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

Like Romeo and Juliet

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

1. Jose watched yesterday’s ring ceremony on his lunch break at a bar near Quincy Market. This was a distinct improvement from three years ago, when Jose spent the ring ceremony sitting in a conference room in Fall River. (City motto: Ask us about our ax murders!)

All in all the ceremony was nicely done in every aspect from the barrel roll during the flyover that did not result in an air disaster (note: take that Yankees) to the image of Manny Ramirez giving Johnny Pesky a peck on the cheek.

Jose did have a few complaints about the flags though.

First, in theory the flags from 62 different countries represented all of the places where Red Sox fans live. This is utter crap. For starters, Jose has hits from more than 130 different countries, and all of them, save for the few who come by looking of Puerto Rican DJ Jose Melendez, are probably Red Sox fans.

Second, the Red Sox included Taiwan on their list. While the move is brave, will it have an impact on recruiting and marketing in the People’s Republic of China? Alternatively, if they were going to go that far, maybe they should have had someone representing Tibet.

Third, Jose could totally have found them some people from Albania and Kosovo. And what about Finland? That’s a big western country. They couldn’t find a single guy at Nokia? And are all of the Panamanians Yankees fans thanks to Rivera?

Finally, Jose thinks they should have had about 12 guys holding Dominican flags. They deserve it.

2. But let’s not kid ourselves. The highlight of the day, even more than Daisuke’s brilliance or Manny’s triple was the emergence of a teary Bill Buckner to throw a first pitch backdoor curve to Dwight Evans.

In many ways, this was a day that did not need to happen. How can you argue that the man needed forgiveness?

He made an error. It was a bad error at a bad time. But it was just an error. There are thousands of them every year. They are inevitable, and yet his became the critical moment in a tragic narrative. The Buckner error was Juliet awakening to find Romeo dead. Sure, had Juliet actually been dead when Romeo killed himself it would still have been painfully sad, but it was that one shocking moment of reversal that elevated it to the spectacularly tragic. Likewise, the Red Sox were going to lose Game 6. They had already collapsed by the time Buckner made his error. Had he fielded the ball the game would have continued, right up until the next moment of tragedy. Perhaps Dave Henderson would have lost a fly in the lights and would have been forever remembered as a goat rather than as the hero of California.

And then there are the other ovations. In 1987 and 1990 when Buckner emerged for opening day he was lauded by the fans, cheered like few others. Was that something that needed to be forgiven?

Yet, the current persists swift and strong. At the bar, Jose heard the jokes about whether Buckner would drop the ball. On the SoSH game thread, the clever quipped that it should have been Dave Stapleton throwing out the first pitch instead. Even as the crowd was cheering, even as Buckner brought his fingers to his eyes to wipe away misty tears, the rejoinders and witticisms still dribbled along like a ball down the first base line.

So maybe forgiveness is necessary, but perhaps it is not number six who needs to do the forgiving. Perhaps it is we the fans who need to forgive ourselves. We care so much, we cheer so hard, we boo so loud that rationality even among the most quantitative of sabermetricians gives way to the base instincts, the lust for glory, the hate that drives revenge. We become the mob.

In Elementary Forms of Religious Life, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim described totemism as a sort of self-worship, where society revered itself as represented by some totemic animal. On rare occasions, Durkheim said, the rules of reverence normally governing interaction with the totem would be relaxed and in an ecstatic release of communal energy, the society would devour the totem. Durkheim was wrong in his description of totemic tribes, yet he was completely accurate in describing the Red Sox Nation. We worship this team. It is our totem. It is us. We revere it. We celebrate it. And yet, periodically we must devour it. Bill Buckner was the totem sacrificed. Years before Johnny Pesky, another number six played the same role.

We are a tribal people, we warriors of Red Sox nation, we priests of the Green Monster, and eventually, we will always yield to that, to the ecstasy, to the anger.

But not yesterday. Yesterday we were not an angry tribe reveling in our own identity, trying to exert control over the uncontrollable. Yesterday we were civilized. Yesterday we were men. And beneath all of the taunts and jeers, the fury and the fanaticism, we always knew that we were. Today, Bill Buckner knows too.

3. Today is opening day at Fenway, and as such, the start of the game will be delayed by the ring ceremony. As you know, the ring ceremony is an ancient and honorable rite forever binding player with team. Jose did weddings.about.com/od/weddingvows/a...emony.htm"%5da%20little%20historical%20research%5b/url%5d%20on%20the%20ring%20ceremony,%20and%20strangely%20enough%20all%20he%20could%20come%20up%20with%20was%20this%20stuff%20about%20rings%20sealing%20a%20marriage...

That’s what the good people who read KEYS at Sons of Sam Horn got yesterday instead of the actual KEYS posted here

Normally, Jose would just treat this as a minor technical error and move on, but here’s the thing—people seemed to find this funny. Not only did people seem to find it funny, there is some evidence that they liked it more than a standard KEYS.

This leaves Jose at a bit of an impasse. Is it really worth struggling over a toast crumb flecked keyboard for endless hours when the masses are just as happy with an endless string of %20s?

In search of an answer for the question, Jose did what he always does, he tried to find the correct baseball analogy. Has there ever been a baseball player who achieved just as much acclaim for comical failure as for stirring success and if so, did he keep trying to perform well, or did he simply give in to the madness?

The best comparison Jose can think of are those sorry souls who are doomed to catch the knuckleball. Jose recalls watching Creighton Gubanich allow three passed balls in one inning while the Red Sox were trailing big near the end of a game. The crowd howled with delight as Gubanich flopped after pitches like a fish on hook with electrodes attached to his gills.

And what was poor Creighton to do? It was probably clear at that point that he wasn’t going to be a big league catcher. Forty-seven at bats would be his whole career. But Jose bets he kept trying, kept focusing and hoping that he could turn it around.

Jose does not think he would have done the same. If Jose’s incompetence was met with glee and renown, he would probably play it up. If he were Creighton “Barrel” Gubanich (note: yes, Jose has wanted to use that nickname for a long time) he probably would have started diving in the wrong direction as knuckleballs fluttered at him, doing his best impression of a soccer goalie guessing a penalty kick. If he were Gerald Ford he would have started doing headers down every flight of stairs he could find. Hell, if he were Bill Clinton, he would have followed up the Lewinsky Affair by having a woman under the podium at the State of the Union.

Of course, this instinct, this flair for the incompetent may be part of the reason that Jose 20Kevin%20Youkilis:%20%20Harey%20at%20mekuddeshet%20li%20b'taba'at%20zo%20k'dat%20Moshe%20v'Israel%20(Translation:%20Behold,%20thou%20art%20consecrated%20unto%20me%20with%20this%20ring%20according%20to%20the%20law%20of%20Moses%20and%20of%20Israel).

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

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

1. Today is opening day at Fenway, and as such, the start of the game will be delayed by the ring ceremony.

As you know, the ring ceremony is an ancient and honorable rite forever binding player with team. Jose did a little historical research on the ring ceremony, and strangely enough all he could come up with was this stuff about rings sealing a marriage. Still, given that this is Massachusetts, Jose is pretty sure that it is legal for a man to marry an entire corporation, so he just adapted some of the man-woman vows for today’s occasion. (Note: Think of Sox owner John W. Henry as the giver of the rings.)

• This ring is a token of my enormous, ungodly wealth. With this ring, I consecrate the fact that you were part of my weird, vicarious obsession of living out athletic glories through millionaires. Response: I will forever wear this ring as long as I am not at an occasion where I have to shake a lot of hands and it will cut into my skin.
• I accept this ring as a symbol of your love and my faithfulness. When I am a free agent and other teams come calling for me, I promise to remain eternally faithful to you, as long as you offer at least four years at $13 million per.
• Special for DJ Dru: I give you this ring to wear with love and joy. As a ring has no end, neither does your contract. I am pretty much stuck with you from this day and forevermore, so I might as well make the best of it.
• For Tim Wakefield: I give you this ring as a visible and constant symbol of my promise to be with you as long as you are still competent, because I have you under a never ending contract...
• With this ring, I thee wed, and with it, I bestow upon thee all the treasures of my mind, heart, and hands, but not my wallet. I’m going to keep that.
  Because this ring is perfectly symmetrical, it signifies the perfection of last season. Wait, I borrowed that vow from Bob Kraft…
• For Kevin Youkilis: Harey at mekuddeshet li b'taba'at zo k'dat Moshe v'Israel (Translation: Behold, thou art consecrated unto me with this ring according to the law of Moses and of Israel).
  

2. The latest news from Fenway Park today is that Bill Buckner will throw out the first pitch. Let Jose be the first to say that this is kind of cool. Buckner was a great player who took a lot of crap for an error and never, even once blamed in on jet lag.

Jose welcomes this outstanding news. However, it does come with a hint of sadness, as it means that previously scheduled first pitch tossers Dennis Eckersley and Mike Brumley will be throwing out the first pitch for the Cubs.

3. This year’s championship ring features two Red Sox made out of rubies in the center. While this looks cool, it is going to be a disaster for Manny when he inadvertently throws his ring in the washing machine and it turns his uniform pink.

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

In Service of Pseudoscience

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

1. Every so often one has the opportunity to do something to benefit the cause of science and, by direct extension, poke the Pope in the eye.

Galileo had his lenses, Newton had his apple, Einstein had his tram and now Jose has his stupid little Web survey. Okay, Jose admits that it is not, strictly speaking, his Web survey. It belongs to a friend, mentor, and fellow Red Sox fan, who has made the terrible, terrible mistake of pursuing a PhD in communications. Apparently the PhD program in fractions at the University of Washington was too difficult to get into.

Still, even pseudoscience is a kind of science, just ask the President, and thus Jose supports it uncritically.

So here is the deal. If you click on this link, you will get to answer a few basic questions about baseball. Once you have done that you will be directed to a sort of futures market for 2008 statistics. You get 10,000 hypothetical dollars (note: 9345 hypothetical Canadian dollars, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hypothetical Zimbabwe dollars ) that you can spend betting on 2008 statistics like the number of home runs Big Papi will hit or the numbers of herpetic lesions Derek Jeter will experience. What’s better still is that merely by participating, you will be entered to win two tickets to a Boston Red Sox game in 2008 and possibly the Nobel Prize in Communications.

But that is really aside from the point. What matters here is that this is your opportunity to benefit science without having medical students cut into your body and mock your genitalia after you are dead. Did you ever think that just by making pretend wagers online you could help cure cancer, land a man on Mars or, if you are very lucky, inadvertently destroy the universe?

That day has arrived, and Jose, for one, is glad that you are alive to see it.

2. The big news as the Red Sox return to the Eastern Time Zone is the hawk attack at Fenway Park. During a tour yesterday, a red-tailed hawk nesting at Fenway attacked a 13-year-old girl named, of all things, Alexa Rodriguez, drawing blood, but thankfully causing no serious injury.

Now the temptation is to make the easy jokes based on the victim’s name, but that’s pretty tacky.

Sure, you could run headlines like “Fenway Gives Rodriguez the Bird”, “For a Change A-Rod Gets Dropped,” “Color War: Red-Tail vs. Yellow-Belly,” or even “Ornithologists: Slapping not effective against hawks,” but that would be really, really silly.

We all know that the similar name notwithstanding, this poor, brave kid has absolutely nothing to do with the Yankees third baseman. You can tell because if the hawk had attacked the actual Alex Rodriguez there would be five million Yankees fans criticizing the hawk for not removing its beak before hitting the slugger in the head.

3. Jose wrote last week that Bartolo Colon skipped the trip to Japan because the hefty righty did not want to spend any time in a country run by an elected body called “The Diet.”

This left Jose confused today as to why Colon has not joined the team in Toronto. Canada is run by a “parliament” a name that not even Jose can stretch into a fat joke, so why would Colon be avoiding the trip? But then Jose figured it out. It’s not that Colon is avoiding Toronto, it’s that he desperately wants to spend time in Pawtucket.

The Pawtucket Wikipedia page points out that the film version of the David Mamet play American Buffalo was filmed in Pawtucket. Jose will bet just about anything (note: nothing) that Colon saw that and assumed it was a movie about hot wings. Hence his interest in Pawtucket. In addition Jose is almost positive that the Board of Aldermen for the city of Pawtucket is technically referred to as “The Smorgas Board.”

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

Apples and Oranges

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

1. Jose got a weird and absurd email yesterday from an old friend comparing KEYS to the writings of David Foster Wallace, Chuck Klosterman, Bill Simmons and the lesser works of Herman Melville. (Note: KEYS stacks up nicely against Benito Cereno.)

The comparison is not only ridiculous because these men of letters probably never screw up “its” and “it’s” but also because each of them has an in-depth knowledge of his subject that goes far beyond anything Jose can offer. Klosterman really knows a lot about heavy metal. Simmons is, strangely enough, the best NBA writer around. Hermann Melville knows so much about whales that he can apply phrenology to them. And Jose? Jose doesn’t know that much about anything. These guys are specialists. Sure, they can do shtick, they make their living connecting their subjects to seeming unrelated topics, but at the end of the day, each has real, specialized knowledge on one or more subjects. Jose does not.

If these fellows are Josh Becketts, men who live on their fastball, yet can occasionally mix it up with a decent curve or change up, Jose is Daisuke Matsuzaka. Daisuke doesn’t have any pitch that is dominant, but he has about seven that are above average. Jose brings a similar approach to writing. Sure, Jose writes primarily about the Red Sox, but he’s not an expert. He can’t tell you about the prospects in Portland or compare the merits of two seam and four-seam fastballs. All he can do is contrast the two-seam fastball with the Paris Peace Accords with WrestleMania 2, with Suicide by Emile Durkheim. Could Jose give you great depth on any of those subjects? Not really. He can tell give you the overview of the Paris Accords and tell you that Suicide is about suicide, but he can’t write a book or even a good essay about either subject.

Where Jose does his work is in comparing apples to oranges. He makes comparisons that are against the laws of God and man, and somehow finds coherence in them.

What Daisuke did last night is not that different. Over his 6 2/3 of 1 run, 0 walk pitching, he succeeded on account of the very incoherence of his pitching approach. He was not a fastball pitcher, he was not a breaking ball pitcher. Rather, he was a guy who threw apples and oranges, pineapples and breadfruit, and he threw them all for strikes.

For Daisuke, as for Jose, it is not his brilliance in any one facet of his endeavor that makes him effective. It is his mastery of contrast; it is the genius of demanding that round pegs fit into square holes.

What the Red Sox need this season is for Daisuke to embrace the madness, to slide face first down the toboggan run of absurdity, to, in the words of Weird Al Yankovic, “Dare to be stupid. It’s so easy to do.”

2. In other news, new Yankees manager Joe Girardi ordered an ice cream freezer removed from the team’s clubhouse as part of a ban on junk food.

In related news, former Yankees pitcher and ice cream aficionado Corey Lidle told reporters “I’m glad I’m dead. Way better than playing for Girardi.”

Why won't the Yankees honor my memory?

3. The Boston Globe, “The Amazing Shrinking Newspaper,” reported today that with a payroll of $133,440,037 the Boston Red Sox have fallen to fourth in the majors in this year. This puts them behind the Yankees at $209,081,579, the Tigers at $138,685,197 and the Mets at $138,293,378.

This news comes as a shock to fans and pundits nationwide who have grown comfortable with the notion that the Red Sox have become “just like the Yankees.” To be honest, Jose feels bad for the folks who have become deeply invested in this narrative, so he thought he would give them a few talking points for how the Red Sox and the Yankees are exactly the same, while he waits to see that first column on how the Tigers are now nothing more than the Yankees.

Here goes:

• They are both baseball teams.

Okay, got it?

The comparison was always flawed (note: read asinine). How could you argue the Red Sox were just like the Yankees, when the Bronx Bombers haven’t won a single World Series in the 21st century and the Red Sox aren’t owned by a convicted felon. See it’s just silly.

Still, if you feel absolutely compelled to argue that they are the same, Jose supposes you could point out that neither team has a single Swedish national on its 25 man roster.

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

No Excuses

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

1. Whatever happens in tonight’s U.S. opener, can the Red Sox promise Jose something? Don’t blame anything on jet lag.

Blaming failures on jet lag is a handy excuse, but a poor one. “I have cancer”—that’s an excuse. “I was struck by lighting”—that’s an excuse. But “I didn’t do well because I have jet lag, because I’m a little sleepy”—that’s no excuse at all.

If Jose couldn’t perform when he is sleepy, every single KEYS would look like this

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

1. F*ck Jose is
tired!!!!!!
2.
2weriwe#$%SDFVJ
3. Seriously, f*ck you
guys.

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

And yet people persist in using jet lag as an excuse. Jose had a boss once who blamed jet lag for absentmindedness after flying to Boston from Miami. She might has well have said, “I just drove up from Weymouth, so I’m really jet lagged.” Just about the only time when jet lag is a legitimate excuse is when one is returning from Newfoundland, with that weird half hour time zone. And then it’s not because one is tired, but because the idea of changing by only half an hour is a total mindf*ck. (Note: In fairness, confusion over crossing the International Date Line is also a good excuse. You move an hour forward, then another hour forward, then suddenly you’re 24 hours in the past? Can you imagine Manny trying to figure that one out?)

The fact of the matter is that in this day and age, where jet lag can be easily remedied through a combination of alcohol and the abuse of prescription drugs, no one should complain about it ever.

The Red Sox also shouldn’t complain about parasites. First of all, how the hell did Kevin Brown and Jason Giambi get parasites in Japan? Are you seriously telling Jose that Brown never picked up a parasite in his hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia (note: Lastings Milledge, founder) but he got something in a country where taxi drivers where white gloves and have doilies on the seat backs?

The only time Jose will allow anyone on the Red Sox team to blame a loss on a parasite is if Javier Lopez gives up a home run to a lefty.

2. It’s April Fools today, and while Jose isn’t much for pranks, you know those wacky Red Sox are. Here are just a few of the hysterical jokes that are happening today:

• Noted prankster Dustin Pedroia replaces manager Terry Eurona’s Metamucil with the ashes of former manager/racist Pinky Higgins.
• Theo Epstein calls Josh Bard and tells him the Red Sox have reacquired him to catch Tim Wakefield. The joke ends poorly, as Bard throws himself from a bridge.
• Kevin Cash is announced as opening day backup catcher.
• Having accepted assignment to AAA, outfielder Bobby Kielty shows up to work at offices of AAA of New England.
• Bobby Kielty announces intention to convert to Judaism, explaining “It kept Kapler on the big club.”
• Theo Epstein calls Doug Mirabelli to tell him the Red Sox would like him back, when Mirabelli arrives, Theo turns out the lights and hides under his desk.
• Red Sox announce signing of Sidd Finch, not the mythical pitcher who could throw 168 mph, but an actual truck driver from Eau Claire Wisconsin.
• DJ Dru announces that he is ready to play tonight. No one is fooled.
• Dr. Charles Steinberg announces that Dodgers and Red Sox will play an exhibition game in a field that is only 200 feet down the left field line. Wait. That one’s real? Really?

3. One of the most heavily hyped matchups at WrestleMania XXIV was a battle between a 440 lb. behemoth called the Big Show and the 150 lb. welterweight boxing champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather. It was a mismatch of epic proportions.

In a lot of ways, Jose sees this contest as a good analogy for tonight’s game between the Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics. The Red Sox are the giant, the monster, crushing everything in their path, and the Athletics are the munchkin, game and tough, but at a catastrophic disadvantage.

“Now wait, just a minute,” some of you may be saying. “Mayweather won that matchup. Does that mean you think the A’s are going to win tonight?”

Well, to be blunt. Yes.

The A’s are going to win tonight provided that the analogy holds. This means that they will win if a) Joe Blanton is allowed to punch David Ortiz in the face with brass knuckles and b) the entire contest is scripted for the A’s to win.

If brass knucks are allowed and the game is fixed, Jose has a hard time seeing the Sox pulling this one out.

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

So...Very... Tired

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

1. Thoughts on the opening day victory.

• Upon receiving a 1,000,000 yen for being the player of the game Manny Ramirez quipped, “I think I’ll use it for gas money.”

This is downright irresponsible and could drive rampant speculation that gas prices will climb still higher. Manny is no longer on Jose’s list for fed chairman.

• Baseball at breakfast is great! You wake up in the morning with no food in your stomach, so you get drunk a lot faster.,

• How many times do you think Manny has asked to see the Great Wall?

• When the Sox get back to the postseason, does Tim McCarver call Brandon Moss “Bronson” Moss or does he call him something completely different?

• Wait you want more? Jose is writing this at one in the morning. Ungrateful bastards.

2. In today’s installment of “baseball for evasive politicians” Jose will examine how Hillary Rodham Clinton could use baseball to gloss over the fact that her dangerous trip to Tuzala, Bosnia and Herzegovina was actually a cakewalk with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.

If Jose were handling crisis communications her statement today would have read

While it is obvious to anyone who reviews the video that my trip to Tuzla was not dangerous, and my vivid accounts of sniper fire, mad dashes and bear attacks were exaggerated, you cannot, must no judge these comments without putting them in the appropriate cultural context.

As you know, I represent the state of New York in the U.S. Senate, and for New Yorkers and a Yankee fans, it is custom to exaggerate to the point of nonsense. In recent years, the cultural bias against my people has receded, and rather than pointing out the inconsistencies of New Yorkers, our fellow Americans have supported our traditions. For instance, when New Yorkers claimed that Derek Jeter was an excellent shortstop, did the nation protest? When he gained acclaim by making routine plays look spectacular did FOX mouthpieces object? No, they complemented his elegant gait and awarded him with a gold glove award.

Under this standard, the Jeter Standard, my spectacular effort to make a routine ceremonial mission look like a spectacular diplomatic coup should be heralded by the employees of Rupert Murdoch and lead to me winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

OK, maybe this one is a bit of an uphill struggle, but its still way better than her campaign’s current argument that she “misspoke” How does one say “sniper fire” by mistake? The only possible misspeaking Jose can think of is that she meant to say she was there on a “snipe hunt” which is, by definition, a fool’s errand.

3. In 1762, the great French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (note: not to be confused with French-Canadian wrestler, Jacques Rousseau a.k.a “The Mountie”) wrote a book entitled Emile: Or, On Education. The treatise outlines an elaborate educational philosophy that includes the teaching of citizenship, morality, a trade and sentiment.

It does not, however, teach baserunning, which is unfortunate for Oakland outfielder Emil Brown. Brown, representing the tying run, was caught between second and third with one out in the bottom of the tenth.

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

Same (Expletive), Different Year

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

1. There is a tendency on these days of pomp and pageantry for self-important scribes to exaggerate the significance of human events. It is this inclination that leads inevitably to the endless march of picayune prose that marks any occasion of note. Even worse, it can lead to alliteration. From inaugurations, to opening days, to graduations, the spirit of the story is the same year after year and too often the words are as well.

Jose began to write this KEY last night with the declaration, thrice repeated “Thank God for baseball.” After getting stuck in a clumsy metaphor of desert and oasis, Jose turned to the opening day KEYS from last year in search of inspiration and there he found it.

“Thank God for Opening Day. "

It was a striking rebuke to his sense of himself as an original, as a one of a kind. Simply replacing a comparison between himself and a heroin addict with a vague reference to Battlestar Galactica (note: so say we all), was not enough to sooth his soul. The introduction would have to go and with it Jose’s smug certainty of his own cleverness. This has all happened before, it will all happen again. (Note: There’s the Battlestar reference. See what Jose is reduced to when there is no baseball on—James Edward Olmos. Not good.)

Now into his fifth year of writing, Jose is as much a hack as any beat writer or world-weary columnist. He is just as prone to tired gimmicks and weary metaphors.

And does the Red Sox historic trek to Japan provide relief? Only in the sense that Ken Ryan provided relief in 1995. Rather, the significance of the occasion simultaneously raises the stakes and opens new, trap doors of cliché and ponderousness.

The Red Sox are in Japan? Why not write about sushi? Or sumo? Or bowing? Or karaoke? Or sex with space octopi?

Why wouldn’t Jose suggest that it is curious that 156 years after Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan, Japan is opening the American League. (Note: With the obligatory quip that opening Japan and staring in Friends makes the Commodore versatile indeed.)

Why wouldn’t Jose imply that the Oakland A’s may already be operating under Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which expressly bans going on offense?

Why wouldn’t Jose quip that the reason Bartolo Colon didn’t go on the trip is that he heard the country is run by The Diet?

Why indeed?

This is opening day of the baseball season. Today, the records are all 0-0. Today Kevin Cash is batting the same as David Ortiz. (Note: Check that, Kevin Cash actually starts the season batting -.162) Today, everyone is in first place. Today, everyone gets a fresh start. And that includes Jose. Maybe he’ll run out old stories and reuse obsolete nicknames because this is spring training and everything old is new again… except for Curt Euro… and Tim Wakefield…and Mike Lowell… and… well, Ellsbury’s new.

2. In the absence of baseball for the last few months, Jose has been paying attention to politics. On the one hand, this is a bad thing, because it turns out, Jose hates you. Your beliefs are wrong, your candidate’s tactics are vile and if your champion is elected (s)he will most likely destroy America, except for Florida, which even in the absence of 49 other states would still somehow get a massive federal bailout.

On the other hand, it is a good thing, because it has convinced Jose that there is a baseball related excuse for pretty much every gaff made on the campaign trail with the exception of Gerald Ford’s 1976 claim that Poland was not under Soviet domination. The only baseball-related explanation for that would be if he took a fastball in the ear sometime during the campaign.

Consider one recent example. When Dr. Samantha Power, an Obama foreign policy advisor got in hot water for calling Hilary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” she could have wriggled out of it if only she had invoked her Red Sox fandom. (Note: Jose is a big fan of Dr. Power’s work. However, her decision to call her book about genocide “A Problem From Hell” made it impossible, even callous for Jose to use the title for his book about managing the 1997 Red Sox bullpen. It would have been called “A Problem From Hell: The Red Sox in the Age of Slocumb and Trlicek”.)

If Jose had been doing crisis communications for the Obama campaign, he would have urged Dr. Power to recontextualize the statement rather than disavow it. Her statement should have been

When I called Senator Clinton a “monster” I did not mean that she is a terrible person who would stoop to any level to get elected, and I regret that she viewed it that way. As you know, I am a Red Sox fan, and thus view the term “monster” as a reference to Fenway Park’s famous left field wall. What I meant to communicate when I called Senator Clinton a “monster” is that she is far too green, looks more imposing than she actually is, is gradually being sold to corporate interests and is confusing to the Japanese.

Similarly, Jose is certain that former Congresswoman and Clinton advisor Geraldine Ferraro could have explained away her comment that Senator Obama is “lucky” to be black. All she needed to do was to clarify that Obama was “lucky” in the same sense that Jackie Robinson was “lucky” because his skin color won him the first baseman’s job on the 1947 Dodgers vastly more experienced Ed Stevens.

Of course, the analogy is not perfect, as Ed Stevens never claimed marriage to long time Dodgers first baseman Dolph Camili as his primary experience.

3. Kudos to the Boston Globe for rightly calling Terry Eurona the best manager in Red Sox history. After all of the garbage he taken from fans and press alike en route to two titles in four years, the commendation is well-deserved. As long as we’re heaping praise on the bald and the beautiful, Jose would also like to congratulate Tito on being a reincarnation of the Buddha.

Even putting the baldness, aside, it makes sense. When asked about how he was dealing with jet lag, Tito told the Boston Globe “I feel like [expletive] today, but I feel like [expletive] every day, so I'm fine. We're fine.”

Have you ever heard a more elegant explanation of noble truths one, three, four and possibly two?

One: Tito acknowledges that existence is suffering. “I feel like [expletive] today”

Two: Okay, this one is only implicit. Tito does not specifically state that his desire—his desire to not have been on a plane for 18 hours—is the cause of his suffering, but it is totally in the subtext.

Three: Tito extinguishes his suffering by no longer desiring not to suffer. “But I feel like [expletive] every day, so I'm fine.”

Four: Tito walks the middle path, desiring only to do his duty. “We're fine.”

This is heavy stuff. Now if only Jose could determine the religious significance of "I've seen [Youkilis] in the shower and, let me tell you, he's not the Greek God of anything." It probably has something to with Chinese rule in Tibet.

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

Count all the Games

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

1. March 5, 2008

Jupiter--New York Yankees President Hank Steinbrenner today called on Major League Baseball to count all preseason games toward the Major League Baseball Standings.

"The people of Jupiter will have their voices heard," screamed Steinbrenner. "We will not allow the tens of thousands of fans who have attended these games in good faith to be told they wasted three hours of their lives."

When asked why the Yankees had reserved their position prior to the pre-season that the games would not count, Steinbrenner responded angrily.

"These are the games that matter. You cannot win the AL East without taking games against important rivals like Toronto. How could a game against Toronto not count, while regular season Red Sox wins against unimportant teams like Kansas City and Minnesota be allowed to count?"

Critics responded harshly to Steinbrenner's claim.

"Hank Steinbrenner wants to change the rules when it suits him," said Red Sox CEO John W. Henry. “He didn’t favor this change until it gave the Yankees a 1.5 game lead over the Red Sox.”

Steinbrenner also, reportedly has been lobbying heavily for the inclusion of “supergames” games that would not be won on the field, but would be determined by a complex formula.

“The supergames should be free to send whoever is the best American League prospect for November,” insisted Steinbrenner.

2. When Jose first posted the press release above, someone suggest that it was from The Onion. Immediately, Jose got incredibly paranoid, because he goes to great lengths to avoid plagiarism. He is the sort of guy who footnotes excessively, and feels obliged, when mentioning batting averages, to point out that he is not the guy who invented the stat.

But that’s how it is these days. With the proliferation of the internet and large numbers of idiots writing at great length, it is exceedingly difficult to write anything that has not been vaguely mentioned somewhere or conceived by someone else.

As a result, Jose gets paranoid, very paranoid. He gets paranoid not least of all because it is often unclear exactly what is plagiarism and what is not. Sure, it’s plagiarism for an academic or a journalist to use someone else’s words or ideas without attribution, but is it when someone in a different profession does effectively the same thing?

Is it plagiarism when someone throws a circle change without thanking Frank Viola for the pitch? Every time Bartolo Colon puts on a pair of 64-inch waist pants this year, should he have to acknowledge Rich Garces for developing the idea of pants with a 64 inch waist?

When an ump calls a phantom tag, shouldn’t he have to cite Tim Tschida? When a pitcher loses a playoff game to Jeff Suppan, shouldn’t he have to cite Roger Clemens?

These are serious issues, and Jose demands a Congressional inquiry.

3. Quick question: Do Hank Steinbrenner and Serb Prime Minster Vojislav Kostuncia have the same speech writers? Let’s compare:

Steinbrenner: "Red Sox Nation? What a bunch of (nonsense) that is. "That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans.”

Kostunica: “For the citizens of Serbia, for Serbia, there is no and will never be a fake state of Kosovo on its territory”

Steinbrenner: “This is a Yankee country. We're going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.”

Kostunica “We must focus on decisions of historic importance and annul once and for all any act of the separatist Albanians and confirm that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia"

It’s not precisely the same, it’s just that if Kostunica had said “"The Republic of Kosovo? What a bunch of (nonsense) that is. That was a creation of the U.S. and Europe, which is filled with Albanians.” Would it have sounded odd to anyone?

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

Jose Told You So

BUY THE KEYS BOOK, STILL ON SALE: STILL WITH A HAPPY ENDING

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

1. A truck? You people are excited about a freaking truck? We won the World Series and you have the audacity to be excited that a glorified moving van has headed on down to Florida signifying the beginning of the end of the winter of our content?

You want something to be excited about, be excited about the fact that after, as the boxing announcers would put it, his longest period of inactivity, Jose Melendez is back!

Jose hasn’t written at all in two months, and only three times since the World Series, and you know what it garnered him? An endorsement deal. That’s right after begging and pleading for folks to buy his books, after spending years forcing out cruddy winter columns in order to have a chance to plug his latest volume, Jose was rewarded for his sloth by an actual advertiser, paying him in actual money. If other advertisers want to reward Jose you know what to do.

Now, a lot of you may be asking why Jose didn’t write much during the Hot Stove season past. The reason, simply enough, is that there wasn’t that much to write about. Aside from the Santana saga and the steroids imbroglio, both of which warranted a few clicks of the keys, what was there to write about?

Did the Sox make any big free agent signings? Did they make any crazy trades? Did they do anything that would warrant Jose stepping lively?

Nope, that left Jose to dwell on the Patriots, at least until 10 days ago, and the election. Sure he could have written, but what would he have written about? You want to know what you missed. Fine, but don’t say Jose didn’t warn you.

• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Is Santana coming to Boston?
• Santana is not coming to Boston.
• Which was worse the 1994 Baseball Strike or the Hollywood writers strike? (Note: This actually had the potential to be good, hell it still could be. The baseball strike was good because it screwed up a possible Yankees Championship run; the writers’ strike was good because it screwed up a season of Grey’s Anatomy. The baseball strike was bad because it screwed up Tony Gwynn chasing .400. The writer’s strike was bad because it screwed up Lost. Wait, no it didn’t. It ended in time. Thank God.)
• Sean Casey: The next J.T. Snow or the next Mike Marshall?
• Jose’s reflections on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto: If her husband is called Mister 10% does that mean she’s married to Craig Grebeck. (Note: See, it’s a batting average joke.)
• The Giuliani Candidacy vs. The 2004 Yankees vs. the 2007 Mets, Triple threat match to determine the Greatest New York Collapse of the Century

Jose will stop there. He might actually need to use some of these if he is going to stagger through another season.

2. Let’s see where did Jose leave off? What was it that he wrote the last time he put finger to key?

Here it is:

“Jose is just wondering but did the Mitchell report say anything about Debbie Clemens and steroids? Have you seen her/him? If she's not on steroids, the only other possible explanation is a y chromosome.”


Now we have learned that Mrs. Clemens was, if fact, using human growth hormone, a fact confirmed by Mr. Clemens in his testimony to Congress yesterday.


Jose, of course, is not one to say, “I told you so.”

He is, however, one to say, “Jose told you so.”

JOSE TOLD YOU SO! JOSE TOLD YOU SO!


Dear God that feels good.


There is good news in all of this for Roger, however.

Sure, he is disgraced, he may never make the Hall-of-Fame and there is a reasonable chance he will be indicted for perjury or witness tampering, but rest assured it does not turn out that he has been married to a man for all these many years. Given that the only explanation other than drug abuse was androgyny, Roger should really be pretty happy that another guy gave his wife an injection the glutes.

3. Funny thing is that Jose was actually in the Rayburn Building for a meeting yesterday at the same time that Roger was testifying before the committee.

Jose had a number of conversations that day with his colleagues, who are not quite the same baseball fans he is, and they kept saying things like “Doesn’t Congress have better things to do? What a waste of taxpayer money.”

This got Jose thinking, what would he rather have his tax dollars spent on? Sure, there are a lot of things that the federal government does that are important to him like defense, roads, human services and aid to Kosovo, but don’t they do lots of other things that are far less important to him?

Doesn’t seeing his tax dollars go to the public humiliation of Roger Clemens, whom he loathes, seem like a pretty good deal?

Let’s think about this. Has Jose gotten more utility from these hearings or the MX Missile? The hearings have definitely been more valuable, though he thinks that the Midgetman Missile might have been a slightly better use of funds than the Clemens hearings because it has a funny name.

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

l'Affaire Clemens

BUY THE 2007 KEYS BOOK—STEROID/HGH FREE*
*Except for Gagne and Donnelly

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE MITCHELL REPORT.

1.
1856 The Supreme Court rules that escaped slave Dred Scott, is property and cannot be taken away from his owner without due process.
1894 French soldier Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans.
1986 Randy “Macho Man” Savage takes the Intercontinental Title from Tito Santana after hitting him with a foreign object (Note: In the last KEYS Jose claimed Tito Santana was part of the Can-Am Connection, not only is that wrong, it makes no sense, as Tito is Mexican. We regret the error.)
2007 Roger Clemens is accused of steroid abuse by Sen. George Mitchell.

Do you see where Jose is going with this? You must. There is injustice in the world. There has always been injustice. Some days, there is more than on others.

Sometimes injustice is driven by racism and greed. Other times it is caused by anti-Semitism. On still other occasions, it is due to an abhorrent lack of instant replay in professional wrestling. Yet today in our country injustice burns a little hotter, stings a little sharper, for in our national pastime, it has happened again. Bu not only has injustice transpired once more, it has taken a more odious form.

The victim of today’s injustice is not a slave, a Jew or even a Mexican. No he is a victim more reviled than even these once loathed classes. The sad soul is a white Christian millionaire. Yes, gasp. Gasp in horror at the evil in the world. And unlike those who have come before him this man, this poor pathetic man, does not even get the dignity of unjust imprisonment, loss of liberty or confiscation of property to illustrate his plight. His punishment is nothing less horrible than being named in a non-binding report to the Commissioner of Baseball that has no legal weight whatsoever and cannot result in any meaningful sanction.

Truly, Jose weeps for Roger Clemens.

Today’s injustice was not caused by bigotry or the lust for glory, but rather by a deviant devotion to empiricism and a madman’s commitment to the notion that overwhelming evidence is indicative of guilt. What would Jefferson say?

Yes, this is the kind of country we have become.

The United States of America is now a place where a man, a great man, a man who stood face to face with Jeff Suppan and almost won, can be openly slandered by a convicted felon, and never given the opportunity during the investigation to refute claims. Or more specifically, where a man who has several times almost made it through the first few innings of critical ALCS games can be given an opportunity to refute accusations, decline that opportunity, and then complain that there has never been an opportunity to dispute the story. If this continues rest assured that the disappearance of habeas corpus is next. Or possibly, before. Jose gets confused.

As you go to bed tonight, filled perhaps with shadenfreude or fahrvergnuegen, Jose want you to think: What if it were you?

What if you had just made tens of millions of dollars for a few below average innings on top of more than $100 million over the course of your career? What if you were regarded by many as the greatest pitcher of all time? Wouldn’t you trade it all away for a clean reputation? Wouldn’t you offer those achievements up like so many Jacoby Ellsburys and Jed Lowries for the Johann Santana of vindication?

No, you probably wouldn’t.

Jose weeps for the nation.

2. Jose is just wondering but did the Mitchell report say anything about Debbie Clemens and steroids? Have you seen her/him? Jose doesn’t want to say that she’s mannish or anything, but he’s heard that when Suzyn Waldman was gushing about Roger’s return to the Bronx, all noted she-he fan A-Rod could say was “Debbie’s back?” “Debbie’s BACK!!!!!!!!!”
If she's not on steroids, the only other possible explaination is a y chromosome

3. Why did Mo have to be in there?

Mo Vaughan did it. He absolutely did it. They even have a check from him. The case against Mo Vaughn is tighter than Jeff Loria on Marlins payday.

There was a time when this would have broken Jose’s heart. That time was 2PM this afternoon. To Jose, Mo always represented what was good about baseball, what he loved about the game. Mo loved baseball, he loved Boston and he loved being a leader in the community. For Christ’s sake, Jose bought his children’s book “Follow Your Dreams” and got it autographed.

And now this. Jose would have preferred that it was anyone from the pre-2004 Series Red Sox. Nomar, Rich Garces, Toby Boreland, anyone but Mo.

Jose supposes he can take some comfort from the fact that evidence indicates that Mo did not try the stuff until the end of his career when he was with the Mets desperately trying resuscitate a deteriorating body ravaged by sore knees and fried dough. There is something less odious, though perhaps more pathetic, about an athlete using drugs to keep a career alive, rather than to go from good to great.

Still, it makes Jose weep. Mo Vaughn was his first baseball hero. Not his first favorite player, Jose was in college by the time Mo won the MVP, but the first player Jose truly saw as heroic. He was noble and decent and committed. And now what is he? A tragic hero, Jose supposes, a good man with a pronounced weakness for strippers and fleeting glory.

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

Is Santana Claus Coming to Town?

BUY THE 2007 KEYS BOOK—BECAUSE WHO KNOWS IF SANTANA IS COMING DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY

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

1. You probably think that Jose has been taking it easy since the Red Sox won the World Series. And why wouldn’t you? He only wrote one entry in the entirety of November.

Yes, it’s true that Jose is looking to ease up on his workload this off-season after absolutely spending himself in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t staying actively involved in the hot stove season. For instance, Jose has been following the Johann Santana saga with enormous interest.

Jose thinks the Sox are playing the game brilliantly so far in offering a competitive package that will either win the star lefty or force the Yankees to overpay. Jose particularly likes the fact that with Jacoby Ellsbury now part of the deal, the Twins will have to include “another significant piece” in order to get Jon Lester as well. While most speculation has been that the piece would be either reliever Joe Nathan or his bullpen mate Pat Neshek, Jose believes that the media is way off on this one. The most likely extra piece appears to be former White Sox farm hand Norm Martel, who could combine with Santana to reform the legendary tag team Strikeforce. This would of course be followed by an ugly split and Martel starting a career as a male model.

However, the kink in this proposal is that if the Red Sox are prepared to call up Sanata’s previous tag team partner Charlie Zink (formerly Zenk) from the minors, Martel would be an unnecessary addition, as the Red Sox could look forward to having a new “Can-Am Connection” in the rotation.

But what if the Yankees do offer the better deal and manage to snag Santana? The Red Sox best bet then might be to acquire Winchester resident Brutus Beefcake and reunite him with his old tag team partner Bobby “The Hammer” Valentine in order to reform the “Dream Team.”

So don’t think that Jose hasn’t been thinking about the hot stove—he has. He just clearly hasn’t been thinking very hard about it.


2. Santana Claus Is Coming To Town

Jon Lester is out,
Jacoby’s now in,
His groupies will pout,
And we’ll lose Masterson,
Santana Claus is coming to town.

His changeup is great,
His fastball is nice,
We want him to pitch with Beckett and Dice,
Santana Claus is coming to town.

He comes from Venezuela,
Where Chavez reigns supreme,
But Johan will give Yanks more pain,
Than Hugo in his dreams.
Hank said he’d give up,
Both Melky and Hughes,
An offer that still, will probably lose,
Santana Claus is coming to town.
Santana Claus is coming to town.

3. Santana notwithstanding, there are lots of wonderful things going on this off-season. Perhaps most importantly Red Sox starter and KEYS BFF Curt Euro has endorsed Sen. John McCain for president and plans to campaign with the Arizona Senator. This comes shortly after the news that wrestling legend “Nature Boy” Ric Flair has endorsed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

These bold moves have left other campaigns in a quandary. With elderly yet active professional athletes becoming political king makers in the Republican party, Jose’s sources have reported that competition has grown intense for the endorsement of Carolina Panthers Quarterback Vinny Testaverde and Boxing legend Evander Holyfield.

Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been aggressively seeking the endorsement of Roger Clemens, citing their numerous similarities:

· They both purport to love Massachusetts yet have done everything possible to make its residents look like jackasses.
· They are both obsessed with earning every last dollar no matter who it hurts.
· They both have large numbers of robotic sons with weird names.
· They are both on Jose’s sh*t list.

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

The Euphoria is Wearing Off

Buy the 2007 KEYS BOOK—THEY WIN IN THIS ONE!

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

1. The euphoria is finally wearing off.

Jose’s blood pressure is down, the adrenalin in his blood has thinned to watery broth and the pleasant fog that has cloaked and soothed him for lo these many months is finally lifting.

Yes, the ecstasy of winning the 2004 World Series has at long last dissipated.

Thank God we won another one. Now Jose can be assured of another three years of low-level elation.

But in all seriousness, Jose is no longer constantly giddy, and the benign sense that all is well with the world is gradually giving way to the melancholy that comes every year at this time as surely as the leaves glide to the ground.

It really is better this way. Ecstasy, it turns out gets boring eventually. (Note: No, it doesn’t.) Pain. Now that’s the ticket. Pain and ennui, ennui and pain, those are the rich loam in which decent writing germinates and blooms.

Strangely enough it was last night, as Jose strolled the streets of Denver, that the melancholy descended. One would imagine that the sight of so much Rockies NL Champion merchandise would start the endorphins flowing, but it was not to be. No he could not even muster the energy to make a bankruptcy joke to a guy he met named Jack Clark. There are lots of good things going on, but none of them could counter the little slip of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket.

The paper was marked 11/14/2005. Exactly two years ago to the day yesterday, how odd. How odd it is that two years after the occasion, Jose would find this little reminder of the last time he had certainty in his life. Without going into what the paper represented (note: no, it was sadly not a lottery ticket), it was the seeming guarantee of a clear path in Jose’s life, it was the phone ringing with his calling at the other end, it was the lead blocker opening that seam for him to sprint though. But soon after that date, too soon, Jose saw his future, then so neatly laid out, disintegrate as surely and as painfully as Andy Yount’s at a graveyard so long ago. Yount’s future was shattered by glass and Jose’s by red tape, different, yet so, so the same.

And then came the uncertainty. Who was Jose? Who was he going to be? It is frightening, this uncertainty. Just ask Alex Rodriguez. He was brave. He chose uncertainty. He dove headfirst into the churn, but then made a horrifying discovery. He didn’t much care for it. It turns out that he did not understand that uncertainty is, well, uncertain. While Rodriguez left the trail clear and true to go off into the brush, he somehow failed to grasp that there might be snakes there. Rodriquez chose the uncertain path confident that it would lead to a certain outcome, but as soon as it turned that first dark corner, he got scared and ran back to the safe embrace of Steinbrenner Inc and their $275 to $300 million arms.

What a shame. What Alex doesn’t understand is that certainty secure and comfortable though it is, is boring. And even worse, it is limiting. Jose lost the certainty of his calling, but after the initial anxiety, he has embraced it. He can do anything; he can be anything. And he will be.

Alex Rodriguez, by contrast, will know exactly who and what he is the moment he signs this deal. He will be a Yankee; he will be a Hall-of-Famer; he will even be the greatest player of all time. But that’s not all. He will also be unloved, forever made to somehow look small by inferior teammates with superior shadows.

It is a good choice, perhaps, for the weak, for the cautious, for poor, lonely Alex, but not for Jose. Jose is made of sterner stuff. Jose welcomes the uncertainty. He embraces the stress, and the anxiety and the… Opportunity?

So let the melancholy come, let it sound smooth and dark like Scottish rock. Let is crash to the earth in sheets. Jose is ready; Jose is intoxicated by the melancholy. And unlike Alex Rodriguez, he is not afraid

2. Congratulations to Kevin Youkilis for winning a gold glove for his errorless season at first.

Now, a lot of you may not know why they give out gold gloves to the best defenders. You probably think that it is symbolism, that because gold is valuable they give it to the best fielders as a way of honoring them. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense. If that were the case they would give them platinum gloves, as platinum is more valuable than gold.

No, what the gold glove is actually about is equity. The original concept of the gold glove was that it would create more parity by burdening the best fielders with snazzy, but painfully heavy and inflexible gloves made literally out of gold. By forcing Willie Mays to play with a gold glove, you could level the playing field between him and say, Pete Incaviglia. Of course, over time, this gave way to the current, metaphorical gold glove, which doesn’t really do the job, because, as everyone knows, metaphors are not very heavy.

This is why Jose is so excited about the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Sure Paul is an ultra-libertarian who is convinced that everything would be great if only government did nothing, which is, of course, crazy, but Jose does think he is brining an important issues to the table by calling for a return to the gold standard.

By calling for every gold glove to be made out of actual gold, Paul will return sanity to the gold glove process and fight the absurd defensive inflation that has lead to Derek Jeter winning the award.

Be honest, doesn’t that make a lot more sense than just having so-called “gold gloves” that float freely against foreign currency backed up by nothing?

3. The other big news in Red Sox nation is that Curt Euro has resigned a one year deal with the Red Sox that will pay him $8 million plus as much as five million in incentives tied to performance and his ability to report to camp in shape. In fact, he can get $2 million just for showing up to camp at weight.

If this works, Jose imagines we will see a proliferation of diet plans wherein you give a contractor $2 million and they give it back only if you meet weight targets. In honor of Curt, they’re going to call it the Mouth Speech Diet.

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

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.

BOSTON RED SOX 2007 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS

World Series Game 4: Thus Spake Nietzsche

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

1. “God is dead.”

Thus spake Nietzsche.

Of course, Jose doesn’t believe that God is dead, he’s something of a Pascal man, determining that the potential benefits of belief are a far better gamble than atheism.

But the Colorado Rockies must be wondering this morning if Nietzsche wasn’t right after all? Because if God is alive, why oh why would the Rockies be down three games to none?

Jose wants to be clear. He is not mocking God. He is not mocking religion. Heck, his parents just went to church two minutes ago. Sure, it’s a Unitarian church so it doesn’t count, but at least they’re going through the motions.

What Jose is mocking is the incredibly foolish and self-indulgent notion that God is the equation changer in baseball games. It is nonsense, and it holds one’s faith up to ridicule and doubt. If one proclaims as Rockies Chairman and CEO Charlie Monfort did that “I believe God sends signs, we're seeing those" or as Team President Keli McGregor told Time that God is "using [The Rockies] in a powerful way," does it not follow inevitably that should the Rockies lose this series one of two things is true: either a) the Rockies have done something displeasing to God or b) if God really does care about baseball games, He is not powerful enough to actually win them?

The way Jose sees it the Rockies have put God in a terribly awkward position, and if Jose were God (note: he is not) he would be really resentful.

This is why God is best left out of baseball. Jose decided long ago after praying for Celtic playoff wins, that athletic victories were too small, too unimportant in a world of suffering to waste valuable prayers on.

We do not need religion in baseball; the intermixing of the two demeans them both. What we need in baseball is what we have—superstition. For decades, forever really, the true faith of baseball has been the soft animism of superstition. When Curt Euro hops over the base lines is he not appealing to some mysterious force in the universe? When Wade Boggs shoved chicken after chicken down his curious gullet was it not a form of prayer?

When Jose crosses his fingers, or kneels on the floor or rocks back and forth or visualizes base hits, is it not an appeal to some troublesome spirit? (Note: Or possible signs of an anxiety disorder?)

That said, the funny thing is that Jose has become a baseball atheist. Out in the world he is a deist, but with his eyes on the ball field, he has come, albeit slowly, to reject the heathen gods of bat and ball. It does not matter if he crosses his fingers. It is irrelevant if Curt Euro steps on a baseline. What matters is having the best players, the best preparation and the strongest minds. Now ritual can play a role in that. Simple repetition can focus the mind and relax the body, but it is vestigial, nothing more than the token remains of a rite that once had meaning.

Perhaps this is the legacy of 2004, the lesson at last learned by Red Sox fans, that one wins or loses not on the strength of one’s superstition, but on the strength of one’s bats and arms, and on the competence of one’s management.

Superstition would demand that Jose now, yell out “UNO!!!!” as he did three years ago, to proclaim, as in the card game, that there is just one win remaining. But he no longer feels the need. What he says and what he does are irrelevant to the outcome. What matters are the men on the field and the minds in the dugout.

UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! UNO! Of course, Jose did say he tends toward Pascal’s Wager, so let’s not anger the baseball gods, just in case they are real.

2. As the seen shifted to Denver and National League rules, there has been an absolutely appalling amount of silly talk about how the Red Sox should rejigger their defense to keep David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, and Mike Lowell all in the lineup. While the solution last night was to sit Youkilis, that is not particularly creative. We have heard calls for Youk to play right field, for Mike Lowell to play shortstop, and for all Jose knows, for David Ortiz to catch. (Note: David Ortiz has bad knees. He should not catch.)

But no one has come up with the most obvious solution—let Mike Lowell pitch. Jose knows it sounds crazy at first, but this could totally work. The guy’s got a gun for an arm, and… well, that’s about all Jose’s got. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.

Okay, let’s try a variation on that. Mike Lowell should be on the lineup card as the pitcher and should bat in the nine hole, but Jon Lester should do the actual pitching. How would this work? Disguise.

How hard can it be for Jon Lester to pass for Mike Lowell? They are both cancer survivors, so if Lester just constantly chats up the ump about “When I had cancer,” and remembers not to say it was lymphoma, as Lowell had testicular cancer, that’s a start right there. Then all you need is some modified Groucho glasses that keep the eyebrows but shrinks the nose a little bit, and some makeup to make Lester look 50 years older and presto—Mike Lowell is your pitcher.

Now, Jose knows what some of you are thinking “Hey, that’s cheating!” But come on, it’s not that bad. It’s not like they’re doing something really reprehensible like video taping the game or hitting umpire Chuck Meriwether with a steel chair or anything.

3. As Jose searched desperately for material for this Game 4 KEYS, he naturally looked back to Game 4 of the 2004 World Series for inspiration, and what he found surprised him. Three years ago yesterday, Jose in his second KEY relied heavily on the Transformers, the cartoon about robots that transformed into vehicles, comparing Derek Lowe to Megatron and St. Louis starter Jason Marquis to Bumblebee.

Cut to today and Major League Baseball has finally caught up with Jose, flashing Transformers logos throughout the World Series in efforts to move DVDs of the ho-hum summer blockbuster. The result, naturally enough, is that Jose needs another shtick. As an aspiring hipster Jose cannot keep using Transformers references once they get in vogue any more than he can keep drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon once they start underwriting National Public Radio.

Ergo, Jose will now explain to you how the 2007 Colorado Rockies are exactly like Go-Bots, the Tonka equivalent of Transformers.

Like the Go-Bots, the Rockies entered the series with a lot of hype and to significant excitement, but ultimately they were simply defeated by a vastly superior product.

Also, Jose is almost positive that there was a Go-Bot that changed into a bird called Latroy Hawk-Ins and one that was a three-way changer from a robot to a diet book to a TV maid named Garret Atkins.

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