Peter Gammons has a column defending Theo Epstein and Paul DePodesta’s acquisitions and trades. It’s funny how Gammons likes to begin paragraphs with “Understand”. It’s like a subconscious tic, as though he’s trying to get people to believe him. But ignoring the practical criticism aspect of reading Gammons, the scary quote in the column is this:
veteran teammates constantly made private comments like “he is the biggest disappointment of my playing career – I never knew what he was like.”
This suggests: someone who’s new to the team, but who’s a veteran. My guess is #38, but hey… yours is as good as mine. (Reese? Foulke?) Or SoSH’s, apparently - just checked the site and they’re talking about the same thing.
But enough of finger-pointing and conspiracy theories, there’s too many of them emerging out of the Nomar trade. People either blame Nomar for supposedly pouting and threatening to go on the DL, or blame the management for supposedly running him out of town and smearing his name. I guess people can’t believe that Nomar for Mientkiewicz and Cabrera would be a pure baseball trade. I don’t know the truth, and perhaps from this distance it doesn’t matter. All I can say is this: I became a Sox fan in the late ’90s and Nomar (along with Pedro) was a big part of that time period. I’ll miss seeing “Garciaparra 5” on the uniform, but maybe I just miss being in my early 20s in Boston in the halcyon heady days of the late-90s boom.
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Actually, now that we’ve got the Gammons, here’s the probable reactions to Nomar’s departure by the other ESPN columnists:
Rob Neyer - People keep saying the Sox traded a Hall of Fame shortstop in Nomar. Is he really? Let’s look at his OPS and Win Shares and factor the probable decline. Oh, and I’ll also deconstruct what Gammons meant by his column.
Jayson Stark - Is Garciaparra to Grudzielanek the longest number of letters by a middle infield? Our friends at the Elias Sports Bureau say so.
John Kruk - Clubhouse chemistry is everything. By the way, here’s what I think about all the TV shows I watch.
Joe Morgan - I spoke to Garciaparra at the Hall of Fame dinner. But while he has great numbers, he can’t beat Concepcion. Because I played with Concepcion. I hope this is the end of the obsession with Billy Beane’s book Moneyball.