Ramon Has Retired

Mr. Mia Hamm has hung up his cleats for the final time after signing a one day contract with the Boston Red Sox. After a 14-year career in which he was a six-time All-Star and two-time batting champion he has decided to hit the mic as an analyst for ESPN.

Nomar Garciaparra was the 1997 rookie of the year and had many good seasons with Boston until his departure in 2004 when he was traded mid-season to the Cubs. Nomar rejected a four-year, $60 million offer from the Red Sox that helped Boston GM Theo Epstine make the decision to ship him out of town. Nomar left town and the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918.

- SI Cover from 2001 -

I was never a big No-Mah fan and never understood why people thought he was as good as they did. He put up some god numbers for a short span but I never would put him in the league with ARod and Derek Jeter. He was a good player, not a great player. When the 3 of them were the big 3 shortstops in the game I saw a big drop off between DJ and ARod to Ramon. Maybe it was the way he carried himself, maybe it was that redonkulous finicky gimmick/superstition that he had at the plate with his gloves and toe-tapping. After he left Boston it seemed that he was never 100% healthy again and never was able to reach the numbers that people rightly or wrongly expected for him to produce. Is seemed like he was always injured and just kept getting rewarded with big contracts that I didn’t think he deserved in the first place let alone after his string of injuries. It seemed like he should be wearing a mask because he was stealing money from the teams that were paying him.

It was good of the Red Sox to sign him to the minor league deal and show that there were no hard feelings between the two parties. If nothing else the divorce between themselves and Nomar seemed amicable and this is a nice send off to a players that was popular with Red Sox Nation (just remember it became "Nomar Who" as soon as that last out was made on that groundout to Keith Foulke)