Thoughts on Marriage- Testicles- Breaking Up- and Nomar

By Ryan McGowan

I’ve been thinking of metaphors over the last few days, searching for an elusive analogy of universal experience so I could begin to understand the complex four-team deal at the trade deadline that sent long-time Red Sox shortstop, five-time All-Star, two-time batting champion, and franchise icon Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs, in exchange for Orlando Cabrera, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Dave Roberts.
Each time I explain my comparison to someone, I preface the conversation by admitting that the ensuing analogy may seem a little too weighty for the situation at hand.  I can’t help it, though, because how else does one describe a monumental, watershed transaction that has forever changed (however unavoidably) the Red Sox franchise, its fans, and the shortstop himself?  

As sad as it might seem to the sports atheist, anyone who is truly passionate about a sport and/or a specific team thinks in some way that his or her fandom is the athletic equivalent of a marriage.  Since I have never been married, I can’t comment on the authenticity of that metaphor, but it seems to be accurate.  Fandom of a particular team is lifelong (or at least it is in the case of true fans) and therefore suffers through a neverending sine curve of ups and downs.  These frauds who became Chicago Bulls fans in the 1990’s, who are Lakers fans or newfound Yankee fans today, or any non-Texan Dallas Cowboys fan don’t count.  These fans don’t understand the dynamics of being a loyal fan because they jump right off the bandwagon as soon as the team’s fortunes go south.  Red Sox fans, Phillies fans, long-time Patriots fans, Eagles fans, Packers fans, etc; these are true fans.  (I am leaving many fan populations out; don’t be offended.  The list can only be so long.) The love affair between the fan and the franchise is a perpetual waltz where the two will be sporadically locked in an amorous embrace, and while one dancer smiles contentedly and relishes the feeling of security and love, the other methodically knees him in the balls.  And then of course the dance continues, uninterrupted.

The groinal pain we in Red Sox Nation are feeling right now is complex.  Both today’s Boston Globe and Boston Herald contain multiple color photos of Garciaparra wearing a Cubs uniform, smiling like a Cheshire cat, apparently freed from the bondage that was (to Nomar) manifested in soaking up unconditional love from an adoring fan base in the same Fenway Park where all of us, as kids, dreamed of one day playing ball.  It was difficult to look at the once-unthinkable apparition of Nomar – OUR Nomar, OUR great home-grown talent, OUR superstar shortstop, OUR Rookie of the Year – wearing pinstripes.  Not THOSE pinstripes, at least… but bad enough.  That’s when I realized that the marriage metaphor works perfectly.

If the lifelong connection between the franchise and the fan is a testicularly-obstacled marriage, then the bonds between the fan and the individual players are best analogized by seeing them all as lesser relationships: the ones that end, usually badly, in sometimes heartbreaking, often difficult, occasionally phone-throwing and cheek-slapping breakups with transient girlfriends.  Seeing Nomar in a Cubs uniform is like bumping into an ex-girlfriend on the street, looking more beautiful than you remember she ever looked with you, her hair done differently, modeling her outfit with a little more flair and confidence than she had before, strolling hand-in-hand with her new boyfriend.  You knew they were dating, you knew it was over between you, you frankly didn’t even particularly WANT it to continue… but it still hurts a little bit to see her – and especially to see her so much happier than you ever made her.

It hurts a little bit because seeing her blissfulness makes you recall better times with her, before things went from fresh milk to weeks-old, congealed whey.  The Globe ran a picture yesterday of Nomar in his Rookie of the Year season of 1997, bringing back memories for me of almost eight seasons of daring off-balance throws, courageous dives into the hole, and unblinking, clutch, game-winning hits.  I thought of all the spring, summer, and autumn days and nights I had spent watching the Red Sox in general and Nomar in particular, and how I wouldn’t see him again on those NESN telecasts.  I thought of those life-size Nomar cardboard cutouts found in countless basements in New England, those  hundreds of Nomar jerseys in the stands at every game (including the one I own and which has earned a regular spot in my wardrobe rotation), and of those legions of devoted Little Leaguers on sixty-foot diamonds across the northeast, not yet cursed with the depressing cynicism that characterizes many an adult Sox fan, tugging at their batting gloves and ritually tapping their shoes, imitating their hero much as I imitated Jim Rice’s batting stance and Roger Clemens’ pitching motion while playing in the Little North Attleboro League in the 1980’s.  

Those great times in the beginning, the playoff runs, the batting titles… they are included in the Nation’s collective memory right there with his abysmal performance in September and October of 2003, his squabbles with management after the A-Rod trade fiasco, the mysterious Achilles injury and subsequent absence from 57 games at the start of the season, and the unhappy, brooding, uncharacteristically joyless manner in which he has played in ’04.  As any relationship deteriorates, one might tend to ignore the warning signs of decay, thinking of them as fluky or trivial, focusing instead on the memories of the past.  And occasionally, even as the relationship fades before our oblivious stares, there are hints of the past, such as Nomar’s grand slam earlier this year, or the ball he smacked high off the Wall against the Padres in only his second game back.  Such ephemeral moments only prolonged the inevitable: it was already over between Nomar Garciaparra and all of Red Sox Nation.

Watching Nomar play this season was like going through the last two months of high school, after you have gotten accepted into college.  You still continued to go every day, and it was familiar and even mostly fun, but everything had changed; something just didn’t feel right.  You just didn’t feel like you belonged there anymore; you felt as if you had outgrown the place, that your time as a high school student was part of some distant, forgotten past, and every day was now just an opaque illusion.  It was nice to have the familiar faces around, and hold on to a little more of the past before everything changed for good that fall.  But both sides knew that neither had anything more to offer; neither you as a student nor the school from which you were about to graduate had anything worthwhile left for one another.

It was like that with Nomar.  I admit now in hindsight that I was a little too optimistic about his return.  (See my archives for “Pokeymania”.)  With Nomar, I was the stubborn boyfriend who didn’t want to believe that the relationship was for all intents and purposes over.  Fans such as Tom (OMiz) O’Malley and myself wanted to believe that all the criticism would blow over, all the bruised egos would be soothed, all the bridges that had been burned, General Sherman-style, between Nomar and management would all be built back up again.  We held out hope (against our more rational judgment, and every indicator that was available to us as fans) that Nomar would re-sign in the offseason, finish his career in Boston, lead us to a World Series title, and after his Hall of Fame induction have his #5 hanging in right field at Fenway alongside Doerr, Cronin, Yaz, Ted, and Fisk.  We thought Nomar could have been the best Red Sox player of them all, and there was still a chance to salvage that dream we held for him.  

Maybe the A-Rod deal really crushed him, mentally and emotionally.  Maybe he couldn’t understand what the seemingly witless Manny Ramirez picked up on all too well: that the front office’s pursuit of A-Rod over the winter was strictly a business deal, a refreshing move in a business that is too often dominated by romantic, idealistic notions of “hometown discounts” and an expected selflessness that is reciprocated by neither player nor management to the other.  It wasn’t that we hated Nomar.  It’s just that we wanted to ship Manny out of town, along with his pharyngitis, his mother’s annual All-Star break illness, his “tight hamstring”, his propensity to forget such trivial details as the count and the number of outs, and his aloof, disaffected manner of playing the game.  The only way to do that was to swap him for Rodriguez, but the Sox (unlike the Yankees) couldn’t keep both A-Rod and Nomar on the same side of the infield.  Unfortunately, Nomar would have to be the sacrificial lamb, the baseball equivalent of a Christ figure, laying down his life (or, in this case, his status as Red Sox shortstop) for the good of the team.  It was, apparently, too much for him to do.  

No one ever questioned Nomar’s heart, desire, or work ethic.  You would have to go back to the 24-year career of Carl Yastrzemski to find a Red Sox player who played with as much energy, intensity, hustle, and guts as Garciaparra did, every day.  He ran out every ground ball and he played every game like it was the last one of his life.  Sure, he swung at a lot of first pitches that weren’t strikes, but that was his style, and it wasn’t something to be messed around with.  He was everything we ever wanted in a ballplayer, and the fans repaid him with adoring love and admiration… and it still wasn’t enough in the end.  

The trade was not only necessary, it was inevitable.  Not to say GM Theo Epstein is anything less than masculine, but on the day of the trade deadline, he was the realistic girlfriend who finally broke off the dead relationship, admitting freely what we in the Nation had known for a while: that the rift between Nomar and the front office on Yawkey Way was irreparable.  Theo knew that there was no way that Nomar was going to re-sign with the Sox after the season.  He also knew that Nomar’s aching Achilles was threatening to land him on the disabled list at some point in August, just to allow him to finish the season.  With glovemaster Pokey Reese also on the DL with a rib injury, that would have left the Sox with shortstop options of Ricky (Don’t call me Jackie) Gutierrez, Bill Mueller, Johnny Pesky, and a mulleted circus midget to be named later.  Given that crew, I might be tempted to give the midget some innings.  Dealing Nomar was the only choice he had.

Theo made the right move.  He did exactly what he is paid to do, and showed why he is, even at age 31, already one of the most respected GM’s in baseball: he acted with a coolly detached objectivity (almost Bill Belichick-esque in his thinking) and made a decision that reflected the best interests of the ballclub, improved their defense, added some depth and speed, yet at the same time was sensitive to the inevitably emotional task of trading the one man who is most identified with the Red Sox over the past decade.  And there had to be sentimentality involved; it is unthinkable that emotion could have been completely removed from the equation in this case.  Even Theo Epstein couldn’t be fully Mr. Spock with this one.  

But in the end, he did his job.  Just because a breakup is inevitable and appropriate doesn’t mean it is going to be easy.  The good memories are always going to make the usually ugly, occasionally phone-throwing ending that much harder to accomplish.  But it is a part of life. Eventually, we really do forget about all the old girlfriends; months and sometimes years of our lives become reduced to fleeting snippets of passing images, faint scents, and vague recollections of the way things used to be.  The Sox have lost hundreds of players in the past (including You-Know-Who to that team from the Bronx).  They have gotten hundreds more in return, and will have still more players in the future.

To paraphrase the narrator of “Stand by Me,” ballplayers come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant.  But the fans are not married to the names on the back of the jerseys, rather to the one on the front.  The faded ex-girlfriend, Nomar Garciaparra, is gone, but the waltz continues.  And we’re still waiting for the season that ends in the amorous embrace rather than the violent boot to the testicles.