Nomar’s Return: Are Sawx Fans Getting Sawft?
Boston baseball fans will tell you they have a sixth sense about their brethren. They’ll tell you they have inside information of their beloved team and the players connected to it that is otherwise unavailable to those foreign to Red Sox Nation. They’ll tell you they patiently waited out David Ortiz‘s horrific spring slump without boos or jeers because they knew – they just knew – Papi would turn it around. Without telling you that they know more than you, Sawx fans will tell you they know more than you.
These formerly nasty and hardened baseball elitists are melting faster than Greenland’s glaciers. They’re softening up like campfire marshmallows and they’re doing it twice as quickly. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the ovation Fenway Pahk gave their former Rookie of the Year, Nomar Garciaparra, in his return to the place he spent 8 1/2 years being the face of the franchise.
“Backwards ramoN” earned two batting titles in 1999 and 2000 for the Red Sox, hit .323 for the team and .377 at Fenway, the highest average in that park of any active player with at least 1,000 at-bats. And for that, on Monday night, the Boston faithful were faithful to something besides Boston. Garciaparra tapped his chest, tipped his cap and looked around the familiar field as Bostonians showered one of the most popular Red Sox in the last 20 years with a one-minute standing ovation.
But this is Boston. Short of New York and Philadelphia fans, are there any more brutal louts crashing the games these days? There didn’t used to be. And Garciaparra is different than Ortiz’s struggles. For starters, he’s still on the team. Garciaparra left town a villain, right?
Remember?
Two months after sending Garciaparra to the Cubs in 2004, the Red Sox won the franchise’s first World Series in 86 years. His former teammates voted to give him a World Series ring. Curt Schilling noted that if it were not for Nomar, the Sox may not have been in a position to win at all that year. At the time, the decision to give Garciaparra a ring felt like a parent deciding not to ground their child for missing curfew for no other reason that they’re just relieved the kid is home safe. It’s over. Let’s do all we can to put it behind us. Even just two months after his departure, No-mah’s history with Boston was being rewritten.
So let’s rewrite the rewritten parts and look at the end of Garciaparra’s run in Beantown:
- After initially agreeing on a four-year, $60 million deal, Garciaparra wanted an $8 million signing bonus that would bring the total value to a Derek Jeter-ish $17 million per year. The Red Sox weren’t feeling it.
- In the offseason prior to 2004, Boston tried to get Alex Rodriguez, who at the time still played the same position as Garciaparra. Ain’t nothin’ quite as maddening as the guy you’re dating eyeballin’ another woman.
- Stories were written claiming Garciaparra felt that throughout the 2003 season management instructed the grounds crew to rough up the dirt at shortstop so it would be tougher for him to make plays.
- Because of his impending marriage, he refused to shave his head with most of his teammates during the 2003 ALCS (this one seems reasonable, but it’s just another example of the erosion that went on between Nomar and Red Sox fans).
- During a 13-inning grudge match with the Yankees in July 2004 (weeks before he’d be traded to Chicago), Garciaparra poutingly sat on the bench while teammate Pokey Reese made a number of crackerjack plays in his place.
But there he was on Monday, almost five years later, decked in Oakland’s gold and green stepping out of the batter’s box to acknowledge a throng of fans acting as if he retired in July 2004 instead of being catapulted the hell out of town. I’d expect that nonsense in San Diego or Kansas City or any place else that has easygoing fans satisfied with just having ever had a good player, even for a fleeting moment. But Boston? This isn’t the Boston I know. Where were the “NoMore Garciaparra” or “Mr. Mia Hamm” signs? Something … anything. A 60-second standing O? That’s soft. Wicked soft.
“They’re crazy fans,” Terry Francona, manager of the Red Sox said on Monday. “But they’re so wrapped up emotionally in their team and people that have been a part of their teams.”
Francona’s right – to a point. They’re appreciative of the “good guys” of Boston’s past. But by the time Garciaparra left, he wasn’t considered one. And he’s never been back since. With Garciaparra, nothing about his situation with Boston changed except time.
And apparently it’s precisely that which has softened up Red Sox Nation.
Go HERE for the video of Garciaparra’s return to Fenway.
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