6/7/05 – World’s Worst Hitter vs. World’s Worst Baserunner

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

1. Yesterday, a friend of Jose’s forwarded an inquiry to him from a discussion board at her office.
Red Sox Dance Figure Symbolism Query (Again)

A little while ago I asked for input from Red Sox fans regarding a folkdance a friend of mine is writing. (It will be set to a tune called"The Reverse the Curse Reel," which a Boston-area fiddler wrote last fall.)

She is looking for a little more help:

"We are almost done devising this thing, and it actually seems to work.However, we're hoping to find a Red Sox or baseball connection for an odd feature we're faced with. The dance ends with parallel reels of 3 on the sides, which flow perfectly from the preceding figure. The women need to end it either awkwardly, as per RSCDS standard, or do a twiddle, which isn't standard but is more fun. We're inclined to go with the twiddle, but would love to justify it with some symbolism.

So, can you (or any of your useful connections) think of a connection for a hook, or a twiddle, or taking a long path, or any other way one could describe doing the extra loop on a reel of 3? Of course, a manager gives a pitcher the hook. Can we work that in? Is it an appropriate way to end the dance?"

[The reel is a figure in which three dancers walk the same figure of eight path simultaneously, starting in different spots. The twiddle is an extra turn or twirl the women have to put in to end in place facing in the right direction.]

Thanks.

Here’s Jose’s take on it… Huh?

As you know, Jose has made a blogging career out of connecting pretty much any human endeavor (note: wrestling, politics, crochet, fly fishing) to Red Sox baseball, but this may be beyond even his formidable powers.

Nevertheless, Jose will give it a try. But before he starts, Jose needs to define the terms here. The posting provides a definition for “twiddle” and “reel,” but not “RSCDS.” Let’s look it up. Hold on for just a moment more… There. It stands for Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. Good thing Jose looked it up; his best guesses were that it stood for either Red Sox Castoff Donnie Sadler or Red Sox Calamity Dale Sveum. Now that we’ve defined our terms let’s dive deep into the symbolism.

Now, since this is a “folk dance” the absolute easiest thing in the world would be to tie it in to closer Keith Foulke, for whom folk dancing is named. If we looked for a symbolic move based on Foulke’s performance this year, it would almost certainly involve the men spinning the women into each other and the whole group ending up in a bruised mess on the ground.

Fortunately, the dance is called the “Reverse of the Curse Reel,” so they’re probably looking for something connected to last year, thereby avoiding the pile of mangled folk dancers that is Keith Foulke’s 2005 season. In fact, last year’s accomplishment is too big to limit to Keith Foulke, as great as he was, so let’s build a dance that will honor the whole squad. Jose set off to actually learn some dance terminology that goes beyond twiddling with the help of www.wallballsingle.com