Nomar's Heart Belongs to Bean-town

Edes: The Love Never Died for Nomar.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It had ended nearly six years ago with a long walk alone down a corridor in the basement of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, trailed by a single TV cameraman, his white dress shirt untucked over blue jeans, his face masking the shock, hurt and anger at this most bitter of partings. It was renewed again Wednesday morning in the very place it had all begun, this love affair twixt a town and a team, as Ken Coleman had once phrased it, this time with a smiling man surrounded by his wife and two daughters, his best pal from Boston, and his father, Ramon, whose name spelled backward is Nomar.

Irreconcilable differences? Not for Nomar Garciaparra. And not for the Boston Red Sox. "I don't want to speak for the man," said Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, who has known Garciaparra since they were teammates at Georgia Tech nearly 20 years ago, "but I know his heart has been here since he left."

I'd take a swipe at Nomar, but any man who was part of the famed 4+1 game deserves to be protected from all slings and arrows. Forever. Still, I have to ask: when the F did Nicholas ("A Walk to Remember," "The Notebook," and other awful future date movies) Sparks start writing for ESPN.com? "The Love Never Died for Nomar" is one degree of separation from...