In a list of greatest players in the history of one of baseball’s most storied franchise, the names at the top of Boston’s list are Hall of Famers.
Williams. Yastrzemski. Rice. Doerr. Young.
So it is not every day that a player comes along with enough caliber to crack the top part of such a list.
One such player did emerge in the summer of 1997.
Nomar Garciaparra’s emerging talent preceded him. During the mid-'90s, the Red Sox had a more than decent option at shortstop in John Valentin. But the prospects of Garciaparra’s bright future earned him the job for Opening Day 1997.
Garciaparra, who signed with the Sox for the purpose of retiring with the team earlier this week, spent parts of nine seasons in Boston from his debut in 1996. Due to an injury in 2001 and being traded in 2004, though, he accumulated only six full seasons. So how can he be considered among the greats of a franchise that has been around for more than a century?
As will likely be the case for sometime, the impact of player like Garciaparra may not be completely recognized until a later point because he played during the steroid era. At the time he was an excellent contact hitter and the star player on a star franchise.
In retrospect, he may have been the most dominant hitter in the game during his tenure in Boston.
Garciaparra’s numbers over that time certainly paint an impressive picture—.323/.370/.553, 178 home runs, and 279 doubles during his time in Boston. But it is his versatility as a hitter that made him the best during that time.
Garciaparra was most naturally a gap, line-drive hitter. But he changed his offensive approach so the team could get the most out of him.
During his first two seasons with the club he hit 30 and 35 home runs, respectively, a feat that at the time had been accomplished only four other times in the history of baseball (and two, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, have been linked to steroids).
He set records for RBI by a leadoff hitter and home runs by a rookie shortstop on his way to the Rookie of the Year award.
After those seasons of great power numbers, Garciaparra changed to still be able to put up good power numbers but increase his on-base percentage and cut down on strikeouts. By his fourth season, the Sox had signed a rather well-known power hitter by the name of Manny Ramirez, which took some of the burden of being a power hitter off of Garciaparra.
After that transition, Nomar, named after the reverse spelling of his father Ramon, became a much more balanced hitter. He crossed the 50-doubles plateau twice, and also twice pulled off the very rare accomplishment of recording more doubles than strikeouts.
He cemented his legacy as one of the most dangerous hitters by leading the league in hitting in back-to-back seasons in ’99 and ’00, at .357 and .372, respectively (nobody has finished the season in the AL with an average above .372 since George Brett in 1980).
Garciaparra had the ability to do whatever he wanted as a hitter. If he wanted to hit 40 to 45 home runs, he could have. There were times where it seemed like he could take every single pitch he was given and bang it off of the Green Monster, something he did better than maybe any player in Red Sox history.
Ted Williams, in an interview during the 1999 All-Star Game festivities in Boston, said that if any player were to ever hit .400 again, it would be Garciaparra.
Red Sox fans are well aware of the impact that Garciaparra had on the diamond for Boston’s teams in the late '90s and early 2000s. But his impact stretched much further than just that. He was drafted and signed by John Harrington and Dan Duquette, the predecessors of the John Henry/Larry Luccino/Tom Werner ownership and Theo Epstein at general manager.
The current Sox ownership saw what affect drafting quality players and revamping the minor league system could have on a franchise. In Garciaparra, the Sox not only got a great player, but someone who was taken as the fan favorite and face of the franchise.
No matter where you rank him among Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter in the “Trinity of Shortstops” of the late '90s and early 2000s (to say nothing of Miguel Tejada, Omar Vizquel, and others), Garciaparra will get some votes for the Hall of Fame—and deservedly so. A player like Garciaparra exemplifies the reason why players remain on the ballot for 15 years. He is not a first-ballot player, but he will be there eventually.
He was a dominant, versatile hitter, and it is in Boston where he deserved to end his career.
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