The madness begins -

6 days until Red Sox pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training at City of Palms Park in Florida. Will this be the year that our beloved team will go all the way and "reverse the curse"? One can only hope! Of course it would be nice to find out whether the brain trust on Yawkey Way will be keeping veteran shortstop Nomar Garciaparra around for the upcoming season, after having humiliated him by fishing around for a trade (in a complicated deal that would have landed Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers as his replacement) while he was on his honeymoon with soccer phenom Mia Hamm. Although I have nothing against A-Rod, I was aghast at the new owners' treatment of a player who has given so much not only to the team and the fans but the community as well - it was as if the Lucchino-Henry-Trilateral Commission had taken a page right out of Dan Duquette and John Harrington's playbook for getting rid of star players, such as Mo Vaughn, who locked horns with Upper Management back in 1998 only to find himself playing for the Angels the following season.

I understand that A-Rod has better numbers than Nomar, who hasn't quite hit as well since undergoing wrist surgery a couple of years back, but what the owners and the win-at-all-costs fans have to understand is that sometimes it takes more than just good numbers to build a winning offense. Now this isn't a rah-rah celebration of teamwork, but a simple acknowledgement that despite Garciaparra's "subpar" batting average of .301, the Red Sox managed to send to the plate one of the most dangerous assemblages of hitters in baseball history. Why on Earth would anyone want monkey with the basic ingredients of this potent mix? And yet our owners were so convinced that A-Rod (and only A-Rod) could deliver us from evil that they were willing not only to lose Garciaparra but to trade away Manny Ramirez - a player whose antics I cannot stand, but whose bat is an undeniable force in the Red Sox lineup - as well? How jettisoning two All-Star hitters for only one in return makes any sense at all is a mystery for the ages, but let's not forget that the people calling the shots for Boston are the same Einsteins who fired the last coach (Grady Little) for getting their team further into the 2003 postseason than anyone else in decades.

Still, hope springs eternal, especially in Florida. Maybe I should go buy Andriana a toddler-sized Nomar Garciaparra jersey for good luck!