Nomahhh

    When I was in high school, one of my favorite sketches on Saturday Night Live was the "Boston Teen" sketch.  That was the one with Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon as oversexed, trashy teens from the greater Boston area.  The writing was brilliant with the word "retahded" probably featured close to 30 times, and always a way to incorporate "Nomah!!" into one of the skits.  It was so popular that Nomar himself even made a cameo on it. 

The late 90s were awesome for Nomar.  He was one of the best shortstops in baseball, (maybe the best depending on what paper you read) had a rabid fanbase in New England, A Rookie of the Year Award, and an A.L. batting award.  He even started the new century off on the right foot, hitting .372 in the year 2000. 

   All that would become a thing of the past, just as quickly as he rose, he fell.

While his  Sports Illustrated Cover in February of 2001 made girls from Providence to Portland  something to think about during those formative years, it also about gave hope to scrawny and awkward New England teenage boys.  That with hard work, determination,  and the right pharmacist you can add 35 extra lbs of unnatural muscle to your frame. 

   To be 100% honest, I was thinking that guy was on the juice back then, my only gripe with Nomar was that he was constantly being compared to Jeter.  The Jeter-Nomar debate was in some ways the continuation of the Williams-DiMaggio debate that my grandparent's generation experienced.  The immediate successor of the Fisk-Munson debate that was enjoyed by my parents. 

     My early days at Marist, and my first real exposure to Red Sox fans were spent trying to perfect my case for Jeter.  The Sox fans my age loved their Nomahh, it was disgusting.  He was probably the first *pink hat type player that the Red Sox have ever had. 

*Note, a "pink hat" player is the player that the majority of female fans find ascetically pleasing.  They are the girls who put on make up and turn a night at the ball park into a night of drunken prostitots.  I will definitely write about this subject later

  Anyway, here were are.  I am going to be 5 years out of college, Garciaparra has  just retired and Jeter has just won his 5th World Series.  Nomar's fall from grace was ugly, I will let you read more about that, he even lost his ice cream flavor at J.P. Licks. (replaced by another potential candidate for the Sports Icon Fall From Grace Hall of Fame, Mr. David Ortiz.) 

   He was an extremely talented player who self-destructed.  Tragically (and I sincerely mean that) his ambition and greed was his downfall. He bulked up so much that his body could not handle it, and became injury prone.  With the loss of swing, his numbers sunk lower and lower.  He saw himself making the type of money that Jeter and A-Rod were making and refused to re-sign with the Red Sox.   Writers and players have cast him as an almost villainous  role in the Red Sox clubhouse.   

 

  Oddly enough It was Nomar who opened the door for me to date Liz.  I kind of knew who Liz was our freshman year of college, we were in the same dorm.  She was not hard to miss that spring, decked out in Red Sox gear.

    In my Religions in America class we had this project to create our own religion. By a 4-1 vpte, the group I was in decided to make a religion based on the Boston Red Sox. 

  So, I ended up interviewing Red Sox fans to try and get testimonials for our presentation, and I interviewed Liz.  (Yeah, that was the first time I was on her bed) The way she spoke about her love of the team was so full of passion, and sincere, it kind of hit me.  She told me this story of how her dad got seats that were on the Red Sox dugout and after every inning she was screaming for Nomah and pointing to her Garciaparra shirt, hoping he would make eye contact with her.  Halfway through the story I had  a giant crush on her, One year later we were dating.