E-Mail This Article to a Friend A former Red Sox legend ponders his future BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Fenway Park has been winterized, and the tumbleweeds roll around its perimeter. The exterior banners are gone, masons are fixing the broken bricks in the park’s façade, and even the famed Citgo sign is enshrouded in scaffolding, hidden from view as it’s being renovated in time for Opening Day 2005. To prepare for that heady occasion, workers have ripped up the hallowed turf on which the Hub’s history-makers frolicked (scraps likely soon to appear on eBay) so that they can install a new drainage system.

No longer do the billboards across from the ballpark say BELIEVE and KEEP THE FAITH. Instead, they say simply THANKS.

The Souvenir Store across from Gate 1 no longer resembles Grand Central Station, but fans still mill around outside, taking photos and exulting in their proximity to the House of Despair/Redemption. It is an off-season like no other in recent memory, as Red Sox Nation continues to revel in its newfound status, not as woe-is-me spouters of "wait ’til next year" clichés, but as a fulfilled fandom brimming with contentment.

Meanwhile, far from the tumult created one month ago in these parts, a Red Sox icon considers his next move.

Nomar Garciaparra always wanted to play for a winner — and he did. He played hard, with his professed goal in life being the chance to win himself a World Series ring. Well, now he’s earned one, but not in a manner he could have imagined: his jewelry was clinched while he watched game four of the World Series play out on TV. He was not on the field at Busch Stadium when the Sox finished their four-game sweep of the Redbirds; he was not in a duck boat parading through the streets of Boston in celebration of that fact; and he likely won’t be on Fenway’s newly sodded field on April 11, 2005, when the World Series champs are presented with their hard-earned rings while the Yankees squirm in the visitors’ dugout. Garciaparra will have a champion’s ring with his name on it, but the gold band probably will never grace his finger. Instead, the free-agent shortstop, who will celebrate the first anniversary of a different kind of ring ceremony on Sunday, is in limbo while many of his former teammates bask in their roles as conquering heroes.

He must be wondering how it all went so wrong, professionally, in one year’s time. Number five was returning to a team that had improved itself drastically in the off-season, and with Pokey Reese manning the middle bag, the double-play duo would significantly improve the Sox’ defense. Instead, during either the off-season or spring training (depending on whom you believe), Garciaparra hurt his Achilles’ while nursing the rejection he felt as a result of the team’s pursuing A-Rod, and he didn’t return from that heel injury until June 9. Having never shaken off the feeling that the Sox brass had betrayed him, he made it clear — through his rejection of the team’s contract-extension offer and his persistent sulking — that 2004 would likely be his last season in Boston. Management expedited his exit by trading him at the deadline in late July, gaining players in that complicated deal who eventually would play key roles for the Sox as the season turned around in August.

In fact, when the final out of World Series game four was recorded on October 27, two of the three players for whom Nomar was swapped (Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera) were on the field, while speedster Dave Roberts had become a hero in his own right two weeks earlier by swiping the most important base in team history, when the Sox were left for dead in the ninth inning of ALCS game four.

What now for Nomar? He’s a free agent, all right, but the days of a Jeter-esque $17-mil-per-year paycheck are long gone, and hanging over his head is the reputation of being injury-prone and a pouter. Where does he go? His best route probably is to accept a one-year deal for about half the rejected salary proposal and rebuild his standing in the clubhouse and in the MLB statistical-leaders categories. Whether that chance lies with his newest team, the Cubs, remains to be seen, since his arrival on the North Side didn’t exactly ignite the Cubbies to stretch-run glory. Chicago went just 22-21 in games in which Garciaparra played, and the high-powered team gagged to the tune of a 2-7 spell in the season’s final 10 days to blow an almost-certain wild-card berth.

Either way, it’s sad to think how rapidly this Sox legend’s star fell, and what a waste it is for this hard-nosed player to have earned a ring that he will never appreciate, much less wear. And who knows? It may have been the 31-year-old’s last best chance at post-season glory.

And what may hurt him the most is not that his former team won the long-elusive title in his absence, but the knowledge that it probably wouldn’t have come to pass if he had stayed.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com