At Last, Our Long National Nightmare is Over
Because Trot Nixon was pardoned by the Indians, and Mark Shapiro is officially laying in state in Michigan.
Trot Nixon signing a 1 yr/$3 million contract with Cleveland effectively ends a Red Sox career that started back during the Lou Gorman Reign of Horror (Remember, Jeff Bagwell wasn’t my fault!!). He’s been a Sox player essentially since 1993, making 2006 the 14th year he was property of the baseballin’ Bostonians, and there has likely not been as polarizing player at the sub-superstar level. At least not since I was a wee lad.
Since he was ripped from the clutches of the Wolfpack (North Carolina State, not the WCW wrestling stable), he was tagged as a member of the overpaid potential club…stories of Nixon’s future greatness were drowned out by inconsistent minor league performance and injury.
When he was required by CBA to stick with the big club in 1999, he was routinely booed as Jimy Williams stuck with him despite a miniscule batting average over the first six weeks of the season. Eventually, he got hot and made a late run at American League Rookie of the Year (he finished 9th, eventually won by career mediocrity Carlos Beltran). Nixon developed into a fan favorite, creating offense at a highish level, and being the quiet, intense, gritty player that fans fall in love with. Nixon left it all on the field.
By the way, Carlos Beltran is one of my favorite players in baseball. The career mediocrity is tongue in cheek. Save the e-mails.
Nixon created a career out of hitting the crap out of right-handed pitching and then suffering from muscle pulls and missing 40 games a year. Between 2001 and 2005, he never had a slightly above average year with the bat…always being among the best hitting right fielders in the American League providing two criteria are met. The pitcher was a northpaw and he was actually able to play.
It wasn’t until 2001 where his niche was secured. He was the non-nonsense yin to Manny Ramirez’s disengaged yang. He wanted to be in Boston. He worked hard. He just shut up and played. There was no “Trade me or don’t, man” crap with Nixon. Of course people that paid attention to such things noticed that Nixon obviously bought into his own hype on the field. Against the Angels in 2003, he tossed the ball into the stands thinking it was the 3rd out of the inning. It was only the 2nd. Against the Royals in 2004, he dove for a ball rather than play it on the hop at Fenway, and laid there as it rolled into the corner to let Johnny Damon chase it down. In 2001, his heads-down base running got Carl Everett eliminated on the paths in the 9th inning with the Sox down one. And the seemingly endless parade of seemingly minor injuries that never quite healed on schedule. Only twice, 2001 and 2002, he had over 600 plate appearances. The contrast between the two got to the point where every Manny negative was then compared to a Nixon positive, and then the positive was countered by a Nixon negative.
After 1999, he was never booed, but he wasn’t revered anymore. Nixon was the Red Sox that got the injury ball rolling in 2006, pulling his oblique muscle in July. When he returned, he was sapped of his power, and there was some clamoring on sports talk radio and message boards that maybe it was time to send Trot to pasture. His death warrant was signed by Theo Epstein with the acquisition of JD Drew (yes, I understand the irony there).
Nixon had some tremendous moments for the Red Sox, from being the only player who played hard during the entire 2001 campaign to the Memorial Day homer off Clemens, to the ALDS Game 3 homer to the double he ripped in the 2004 World Series. For this, he should never be forgotten. But the legacy of Nixon is a little bit more dark. He was an obviously flawed player whose deficiencies were ignored because he fit the mold of what a baseball player should be. It wasn’t until he became a disaster in the field in September when the perceived good was outweighed by the obvious bad that most fans resigned themselves to welcome the era of Nixon. In that way, he was kind of like the ex-president, supported until the contrary evidence became overwhelming.