I liked baseball and the Red Sox pretty well as a kid, peaking in 1986 when they went to the World Series (a bigger tale than needs belaboring here), and then more or less tuned out for a while. Years later I think Zack and I watched some baseball (when not watching OJ and the other Simpsons or arguing over whether to watch Northern Exposure or Star Trek) in our roach infested shithole on Hemenway Street in Boston, and as I started to get back into it those bums went on strike and I tuned out again. A few years later I was living in Jamaica Plain (then a scrappily up-and-coming Boston neghborhood, now (as I understand it) a fabulously-expensive Boston neighborhood) with my then-girlfriend Heather and I found myself, while on the T to work, reading the box scores now and then. Next thing you know I got sucked back in. Deeply. Nomar Garcaiparra was a rookie. Heather and I watched quite a few games the next few years, both on TV and at Fenway Park just a few miles from our house, long walking distance (A note: part of what makes Boston so ridiculously Red Sox obsessed is how integrated into the city Fenway Park is. If you are thinking of starting up a Major League baseball team I highly recommmend putting the ballpark right in the thick of things. It'll be a super-expensive hassle, some people will hate it, there'll be horrible traffic and such on gamedays, but the team will be *literally* a part of the city. An organ (or perhaps a tumor) that the people will love and hate, and know as their own, and be physically unable to not care about. This strategy will only work well with baseball (due to the amount of games and people: 20 - 30 thousand people every day for two weeks, every two weeks from April to September (and perhaps October), as opposed to Football (100,000 people once every two or three weeks in the Winter.) and it only works with an open stadium. No goddamn domes. I guess a retractable roof is OK so long as you only close it when you really have to.) You can pay my consultancy fee for this advice via check or money order.) and, although Heather thought Reggie Jefferson had some nice assets, we both loved that twitchy, first-pitch swinging kid with the big nose and the bigger name. Since then Nomar has been, despite a few injuries, an amazingly consistent, classy, old-fashioned baseball player. He won the batting title a couple of times, he's been an All-Star repeatedly, he hit two grand slams in one game, married Mia Hamm, had a monster hitting streak, flirted with .400, won games with walk-off hits and walk off defensive plays, made a bunch of twirling, diving, in-the-hole and sidearm throw defensive plays without needing to run and dive into the grandstand for no reason. He has been, arguably, one of the best fin-de-mille players in baseball and has certainly been a (if not the) face of Red Sox baseball. Yesterday, the trade deadline, I was at a BBQ at my friend Heather's house (different Heather) and I saw on my cellphone that I had missed a call from Zack. I knew then Nomar had been traded. If you follow baseball even a little (and likely even if you don't) you heard it too. Yesterday Nomar Garciaparra was traded from the Boston Red Sox, in a hugely complex deal involving four teams, to the Chicago Cubs. The Red Sox recieved a couple of pretty good players in the trade. It was likely inevitable, after the bad blood between Nomar and the Red Sox front office (the office tried to unload Manny Ramirez and get Alex Rodriguez in the offseason, leaving Nomar, through no fault of his own, as the odd man out. They also offered him a deal that was, at the time, well-below market value and he declined but wanted to negotiate. The market has changed and he likely would've accepted this same deal now, but who knows? This all was complicated by the fact that Nomar is a different kind of baseball player than the Sox tend to be these days. At any rate: the damage was severe.) It is said that in baseball you root for the laundry. The specific players are somewhat secondary to the team. This is, I think, largely true. There are and have been players on the Red Sox that I am not all that fond of but still root for, and there are and have been players on other teams that I like but root heartily against when they play the Red Sox. That's baseball. That being said: I'll miss Nomar, I'll root for him and the Cubs (actually, I already root for the Cubbies), I'll continue to follow his career and I really and truly wish him all the best and feel priveliged to have been able to see him play. I may even send him a thank-you card. He really is a great player and I hope he is able to make the transition to Chicago smoothly and is able to thrive. Cubs/Red Sox World Series. Coming soon.