My Game: A Cut Above
With baseball season right around the corner, On The Couch Sports presents My Game, a series depicting our writers’ favorite baseball games and how they have shaped our fanhoods. The goal here is not to rehash championship games and walk-offs, though you may see some of those. Instead, we hope to share the moments that solidified our love of the game. Many of us here at OTCS share a passion for baseball. Through My Game, we hope to convey how the seeds for that passion were sewn.
As a Red Sox fan, there are plenty of games I could have chosen for this series. Pennant clinchers. No hitters. World Series matchups. So it might seem a little surprising that I’m going with a meaningless game in the middle of July. For most, it was another game on ESPN’s BottomLine the next morning. For Red Sox Nation, though, it was a chance to say “Thank you.”
Growing up in a Boston suburb during the late ’90s, there was one athlete who stood head and shoulders above the rest. That athlete? Nomar Garciaparra. Everything about Nomar was electric. The leaping throws, the good looks, the pre-pitch batting ritual. Even his name was perfect, a combination of length and vowels tailor-made for the city of Boston. No-mah Gah-cia-pahra. Above all, he mashed the hell out of the ball. From 1997–2003, there wasn’t a better hitter in baseball than Nomar. He was beloved in Boston, and yours truly was no exception. I can’t even begin to count how many times I recited entire Garciaparra at-bats, starting with the PA announcement and culminating with a rocket into The Monster (which came on the first pitch, like so many of Nomar’s hits).
By the time Nomar was traded to Chicago, I had grown up a lot as a sports fan. The 2003 postseason was my one experience as a “tortured” Red Sox. Aaron Boone’s home run had me thinking I would live my life like my grandfather, never tasting a World Series. The ARod deal-that-never-was hammered home the fact that baseball was a business and money played a major role. When Nomar got traded, 14-year-old me sat on my friend’s deck and rationalized how it might make the team better. Ten-year-old me would have been distraught. Even as that trade helped bring an end to The Curse of The Bambino, I made a pledge to attend the first game Nomar played at Fenway Park as a visitor.
Fast forward five years. I had gone from a high school freshman to a freshman in college. The Red Sox had added a second World Series championship. All was well, except for the fact that Boston had still not had the opportunity to receive Nomar. He had had an up-and-down career in the National League for the Cubs and Dodgers. Nomar battled his share of injuries, played through pain. But every so often, he would pop one over the fence, just to let you know he still had it in him. Finally, Nomar signed with Oakland prior to the 2009 season. Before the ink was dry, my friend Dan and I had tickets for July 6th, Oakland’s first trip to Boston.
Going to a game at Fenway is always fun. Since taking over in 2002, the Henry regime has transformed the game day experience for fans. This day, however, was different. The Garciaparra shirseys were out in full force. Kids held signs thanking Nomar. Fans couldn’t wait til he came to bat. Dan and I sat through a listless first inning, patiently awaiting his emergence. In the top of the second, we got our moment.
As much as I would like to continue about the game, there wasn’t really much to see. The Red Sox lost 6–0, succumbing to a 2-hit, complete game shutout tossed by Brett Anderson. John Smoltz pitched that evening for the Sox, a start emblematic of his short tenure in Boston. But hey, it was July. There were 80 games before it, and there were 80 more after it. On that night, however, baseball was something other than a sport. It was a vehicle, an intermediary that reunited a man and a Nation. Baseball brought the Red Sox and Nomar Garciaparra full circle, and for that reason, July 6th, 2009 is My Game.
