7/26/05 - Antipope Clement XV vs. Guy Hoping to Record One Out

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

1. Here’s an interesting factoid on tonight’s Red Sox starter. Did you know that he was the founder of the Macedonian Orthodox Church? It’s true, Jose just looked it up and it turns out that St. Clement is the guy. Jose will confess that he is a little bit confused, as Clement was, as best he knew a pretender to the papacy, you know Antipope Clement XV and all, and all that, and thus a Catholic or at least a Catholic heretic, rather than Orthodox Christian. But thankfully Jose has a solution to this seemingly irreconcilable paradox – it’s religion, it doesn’t have to make sense!!!

Jose’s biggest regret from his trip to the Balkans is that he did not have a chance to visit the monastery of St. Clement in Plaoshnik. He would have liked to have lit a candle, laid a baseball at his tomb, done something.

But what implications does this revelation have for tonight’s game? Well, first of all, it turns out that Clement was born sometime between 830 and 839 AD, meaning that he is a little bit older than the Red Sox realized when they inked him to a multiyear deal. This certainly explains his history of scuffling in the second half of the season, so look for Sox manager Terry Eurona to keep him on a short leash tonight. Another major issue is that the Serbian Orthodox church does not recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church as being autocephalous, insisting instead that it falls under the Serbian church’s authority. So Jose is concerned that when Clement pitches tonight he may have Patriarch Pavle on the brain.

On the upside, the letter K is the same in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, so if one hangs K cards at the game tonight, Clement will still understand what you mean. And even better, the letter B is different so he will have no idea what BB stands for. (Note: In Cyrillic it’s ББ.)

For the complete KEYS visit www.wallballsingle.com