no-more number 5

renee's 10-yr. high school reunion was yesterday, so i was either driving to the coast or getting ready for the reunion all day. only after the reunion, @ the after-party, did i hear the sox had pulled the trigger and traded nomar. i knew it was coming, and i think it was the right move, but it'll still be hard to watch him play for a team besides the sox (even if it is one of my favorite teams of all time). another reason theo's move doesn't irk me is that this trade made baseball sense, not just financial sense, not just financial non-sense a la a certain pinstriped empire that will remain nameless. the sox would've won a handful of games this year w/ better defense, including a couple of head-to-heads w/ the yank . . . er, those guys, and some on days the "guys" lost, which would've put us closer than 8.5 back w/ a shot in the east, not just playing for the wild card. and w/ cabrera @ short we're automatically better up the middle (today's boot notwithstanding), and mientkiewicz is a former gold glover @ first.

if you trust peter gammons (and i do, especially when he talks about his beloved sox), this is a risky move but one epstein had to make. it seems to me that it makes the starters better, bellhorn better and the rest of the defense better, thereby making the 'pen better, too (i do realize, as i type this, that the bullpen fell apart in today's 4-3 loss to the frickin' twins -- they'll always be on my short-list of most hated teams after the amazing world series in '91). this was a real trade, not a free-agent aquisition or a shameless buyout of some aging superstar's contract so he could play out the season and then sign a 2-year deal w/ the dodgers. in short, we knew he was leaving @ season's end, no matter how often nomar told the press he wanted to stay in boston. this was a bold move, but the right one nonetheless.

i have tons of memories of no. 5 playing for the old towne team: his roy, batting titles in '99 and '00, five- and six-hit games, riding on a bus in swampscott listening to him hit 3 home runs on his birthday, the echoes of no-maaaah! every @ bat @ fenway, the snl skits, even the forgotten but emmy-worthy turn playing himself on the belated two guys and a girl. even shaughnessy, who has never been the biggest nomar fan, recognized that we lost an "offensive force" yesterday, a player who "could have been our dimaggio." but he wasn't cut out to be a dimaggio. he wasn't our leader, and now he's gone. i wish him good luck w/ the northsiders, but, strange as it is to type this (and in full recognition of the fact that he'll probably win the nl triple crown next year), we're probably better off as a team today than yesterday. simply put, nomar was bitter, and this trade makes us better.