That is not meant as a slight. Nomar not only boasts Hall of Fame credentials, but has been the type of performer on the field that we–fans and sportswriters alike–admire most, a 100 percenter 100 percent of the time. Besides, has any athlete’s name ever had such perfect pitch–“NOMAHHHH!”–for Fenway Park’s frenzied faithful, with their pahhk-your-cahhh-in-the-Hahvahd-Yahhd bellows?
As a result, a lot of folks up here are bewildered, mystified: how, under any circumstances, could the Red Sox consider trading their captain, this exemplar? How can you trade a local legend?
Well, let’s start with the most obvious: the Red Sox have a long history of parting company with their legends, starting with Babe Ruth (who, of course, got the Red Sox in this cursed mess). Same deal for Jimmy Foxx and Johnny Pesky and, later, Carlton Fisk, Freddy Lynn, Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn. But history is just a camouflage for much harder truths. And the truth is that right now it is time for Garciaparra and the Red Sox to part company.
This sad revelation dawned on me for the very first time–and frankly it startled me–on the night of the final regular-season game at Fenway. That was long BA–before A-Rod. Long before anyone had conceived of the remarkable notion that Nomar might actually be replaced by Alex Rodriguez, the best shortstop in the history of the game. This heresy occurred to me as the Red Sox clinched the wild-card spot in the American League playoffs. The Sox brass had staged a raucous, on-field celebratory romp for the players, punctuated by a little “thank you, Boston,” “you fans are the best,” “we love you” from them to the Fenway faithful.
The voice of the team that evening was first baseman Kevin Millar, who was the architect of the team’s “cowboy up” slogan, an unlikely bit of geographical legerdemain that somehow took hold here. It had also been Millar, in the form of an old video of a young Millar butchering “Born in the USA,” who had become the Red Sox’s unofficial version of the rally monkey. Still, it seemed decidedly strange that a guy in his very first year in Boston was at the mike delivering the simple words that should have been coming from the team captain, a man who had flourished at Fenway for most of the past decade.
But Nomar has repeatedly proved incapable of public speaking or public sentiment. And one belated call to talk radio, even from your Hawaiian honeymoon, doesn’t change that. It suggests that Garciaparra may be ill-suited for this new Red Sox era, one in which ownership is trying to assemble a team that relates to its fans and considers it a privilege to play in this baseball mecca. Kind of–and it pains me to say it–like the Yankees have been throughout the Joe Torre, Paul O’Neill, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte era. Nomar’s reluctance to engage the public is hardly a venal sin. But you can still be a problem without being a bad guy.
Nomar is a good guy. Still, the truth is that Nomar is a problem, particularly since Boston’s two other superstars haven’t been talking to the press either. (Pedro Martinez because he has been peeved about some slight; Manny Ramirez because he is eternally oblivious.) Yet neither of those guys has created as much palpable tension in that tiny, antiquated clubhouse as was generated by Garciaparra’s extreme skittishness. It was never personal and bore no real malice. But in the end it had the same line-in-the-sand effect as Jim Rice’s hostile glower once did. (I’m convinced it is that glower, or at least the memory of it among baseball writers, that has kept Rice, one of the most prodigious sluggers of his era, out of the Hall of Fame.)
It now seems inevitable that Nomar will be dealt out of Boston. It’s hard to believe, even though baseball is the most self-destructive of sports, that the A-Rod-for-Manny trade can be halted. Not when Boston wants it, Texas wants it, A-Rod wants it, his agent, Scott Boras, wants it and Bud Selig and Major League Baseball want it most of all. The trade would be a godsend for the game, an improbable rescue of baseball’s most attractive, young player from exile in Texas to stage center in the hottest rivalry in all of sports.
But even if the baseball union somehow derails the deal, denying A-Rod his freedom in the guise of serving his interests, the Nomar era in Boston appears inevitably over. Nomar claims to be quite miserable about that prospect. But then again, he’s a man who, to all appearances, is miserable much of the time. Maybe back home on the West Coast where things are a little mellower and “NOMAHHH” will never be heard, he can find a little happiness.
Or, at the very least, he can find himself blessedly alone, freed from those bothersome throngs after the games. Freed from the photographers demanding pictures of him and Mia, because out there they are B-list celebs, Freed from the mob of reporters demanding explanations–“Why did you swing at the first pitch?”–because baseball just isn’t all that important out there. Freed from fans clamoring for an autograph after the game because they all will have left the ballpark three innings early to beat the traffic. Free at last.
