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So who’s more cursed these days: the Chicago Cubs or their star shortstop, former Red Soxer Nomar Garciaparra? Garciaparra stumbled out of the batter’s box en route to a 6-4-3 twin killing against the Cardinals on Wednesday, and the initial diagnosis is that he tore his left groin and will be out of action for two to three months. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Let’s see now: former Rookie-of-the-Year Garciaparra claimed a pair of batting titles before reaching the age of 28, and despite missing all but 21 games of the 2001 season with a sprained wrist, was offered a four-year, $60 million contract extension prior to the 2003 season. Instead of accepting it, he counter-offered in the hopes of approaching Derek Jeter–type money ($17 million per); the Red Sox ignored the proposal, and after Nomar hit just a shade over .300 in 2003 as he headed into the final year of his contract, the team brass made an effort to acquire A-Rod in trade from Texas. That fell through, Nomar was ticked that he was seemingly no longer wanted, then (supposedly) suffered a mystifying Achilles injury in spring training and didn’t play again until June 10. Convinced that Garciaparra would bolt the team when the year was up, the Sox dealt him to the Cubs at the trading deadline. Garciaparra, occasionally hampered by the heel injury and later by a (right) groin injury, still managed to hit .297, but the Cubs folded down the stretch and missed the playoffs. During the off-season, Nomar subsequently found himself viewed as damaged goods, and no team was willing to pony up the kind of money that Boston had offered two years prior. He took the Cubs’ one-year, $8.25 million contract offer, and arrived at his first-ever NL camp in great shape and high spirits. That didn’t translate to his on-field performance, however; the 31-year-old struggled right out of the gate, hitting all of .157 when he crumbled in a heap at Busch Stadium. In 14 games played this season, Garciaparra was hitless in eight, with just one double and seven singles among his 51 at-bats. On the sidelines, Nomar now joins his former Sox teammate Todd Walker, who will be out until June with a knee injury. Since when did Garciaparra — a noted fitness guru and muscle-bound embodiment of the male gender — become so fragile? The wrist injury, which was coincidentally (or not) suffered shortly after his infamous Sports Illustrated cover shoot (above) in March 2001, usually takes a long time to heal (and kept him off the field for four months). But what of the Achilles problem, which many whisper actually happened in the winter of 2003? Originally diagnosed as a minor setback that would sideline the Sox icon for just a week or so into the 2004 regular season, it took much longer to heal and kept him out of action until the campaign was 57 games old. And how does an exercise-conscious fanatic like Nomar get groin injuries on both sides within a nine-month period? Okay, let’s get it out in the open. Seeing the chiseled Garciaparra shirtless four years ago did start some speculation about the possibility of performance-enhancing drugs, but nobody around here really believed that could be true. Not our Nomar. He knows better, folks said. Well, all I know is that he’s had some injuries in recent years that have taken longer than usual to heal, and coincidentally or not, those kinds of nagging physical problems are often associated with steroid use. Those drugs have always carried inherent health risks, and while we’re not pointing the finger at Nomar and saying, "See? He’s guilty as well," the recent tribulations suffered by the dearly departed Number Five are nothing short of, how shall we say, mysterious. Garciaparra these days looks nothing like he did on SI’s cover four years ago (although who of us does?), but this has nothing to do with the magazine’s reputed "jinx." All we can say is that before that season — when he looked like that — he never missed any time to injury. Since then, he’s played but two full seasons and battled a variety of ailments, and his average has rarely topped .310 (after a .372 average in 2000). What’s going on? Is he getting old, or has he merely never been the same since the wrist injury? I don’t know. A lot of people I’ve encountered today, from the guy at the post office to the guy vacuuming the cubicles behind me, believe Nomar was on steroids and is only now suffering the consequences. I don’t want to believe that; I want to believe that it’s bad luck on a bad-luck team, combined with a taut body that just got stretched too much. But the fact is that Nomar won’t be in uniform when the Sox visit Wrigley in June for the first time since 1918, and that the Cubs’ chances of reversing their own long history of futility are severely hampered by Garciaparra’s absence. For now, we’ll give Nomar the benefit of the doubt, wish him a speedy recovery, and leave it at that. "Sporting Eye" runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com |
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Issue Date: April 22, 2005 "Sporting Eye" archives: 2005 | 2004 | 2003 |2002 For more News & Features, click here |
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