Nomar Garciaparra, Boston Red Sox shortstop from 1997 to 2004, signed a one-day contract with the team and promptly retired this morning. I don't write often here of my love of baseball and the Red Sox in particular, but this is such a poignant moment for me, and for Red Sox fans everywhere. First, a defense of this posts title...Nomar's actions today set an example for all.
Few of us are professional baseball players, but most of us are professionals at doing something. Unfortunately, not all of us act professionally all the time, and we all know that professional athletes are far from saints. But today, like on so many other days, Nomar was a professional, and he was rewarded by an organization he loves and fans that love him.
Why today's events restore my faith in humanity.
Not to say that my faith in humanity needed to be restored (I am a big believer in our collectively boundless potential), and not to say that (even if my faith was lacking) international aid workers in Haiti or any of the other heroes in our midst aren't doing a fine job, but... Five and a half years after being traded away, Nomar remembered where he came from, the people that made him "Nomaa!", and he came home to offer thanks and call it a career. In a world where loyalty is expensive and job hopping is sometimes cheap (though less cheap than it used to be), where athletes are paid millions while those that pay them (the fans?) are not, Nomar was a class act. Sometimes the little gestures really mean a lot.
And finally, why do I care so much?
I love baseball. It is truly one of the most enjoyable diversions I have in my life. I love to watch it, I love to go to the games, I love to follow the players, and (when I was in college) I even loved to play it... very badly, on an intramural softball team. I didn't always love it, though. I played little league as a kid, and what an awful experience that was! Not only was I terrible, but I didn't have many friends on the team, and those two realities combined in the form of a lot of lonely time spent on the bench watching the talented kids play. But as life went on and I aged further away from those terrible memories of being ten years old, I began to love baseball again. With so many other things in life to worry about, I really bought in to what Jimmy Fallon would later tell me (in the movie Fever Pitch) is the goodness of "believing in something you have no control over" (or something like that). Baseball, in a feeling, just makes me happy. Back when I was falling in love (with baseball), it was Nomar who dominated everything... the shortstop and best player on the team I loved, the pride of America's greatest city, that was Nomar Garciaparra. Just as I have come to love baseball, so too do I love this moment today, seeing my favorite player come home to my favorite team in such respectable fashion.
It's a good day to be a Red Sox fan, and I am not the only one who thinks so.
