With the MLB trade deadline just over ten days away, we’re kicking off a two-week series covering both trades of yesteryear as well as current trades that may happen along with those that do happen before the deadline. The first two articles will focus on blockbuster deals from past seasons which involved three teams I follow closely: the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Red Sox, and Chicago White Sox. The first trade we will look back at involved the Cubs and Red Sox was was architected to spark a deep playoff runs for the Red Sox as well as a playoff berth for the Cubs. After that, we’ll shift our attention to the major moves happening this season as they unfold.
Do you remember where you were on July 31, 2004? It’s one of those questions that triggers a visceral memory for any New Englander. It was a day thick with the humid anxiety of a summer afternoon and the even thicker tension of an 86-year championship drought. The 4 p.m. trade deadline was ticking down, and in that pre-smartphone world, news traveled through crackling radios tuned to sports talk shows and frantic word-of-mouth. Then, the bombshell dropped, a shockwave that felt personal to every kid who ever mimicked his batting glove ritual in their backyard. Nomar Garciaparra, our Nomar, the man whose name was synonymous with the Red Sox, was gone. Traded. It felt impossible, a gut punch to a city that had already endured so much.
For years, Nomar Garciaparra wasn’t just the face of the franchise; he was its soul. From the moment he burst onto the scene as the 1997 Rookie of the Year, he was everything. He was the back-to-back batting champion in 1999 and 2000, hitting a ridiculous .357 and then .372, numbers that put him in the company of legends like Joe DiMaggio. He was the perennial All-Star, the MVP candidate, the guy Ted Williams himself said could hit .400. He was “Nomah,” a Boston institution. But that relationship, that deep bond between player and city, had begun to fracture long before that July afternoon.
The poison seeped in during the previous offseason, with the audacious, four year $60 million offer the Red Sox made to Nomar. He rejected it saying it was a lowball offer compared to his rivals, Jeter and A-Rod. And the love affair was over.
The 2004 season felt like the slow, painful end of a marriage. An Achilles injury sidelined him for the first two months, and the whispers started. Was he milking it to punish the team? Then came the moment that sealed his fate. On July 1, against the Yankees, Derek Jeter made a spectacular, head-first dive into the stands for a catch. The cameras, cruelly, kept cutting to Nomar, sitting alone and stone-faced in the dugout. The narrative was set. Jeter was the gritty winner; Nomar was the disgruntled and injured star. It was unfair, a gross oversimplification, but in the pressure cooker of the Boston sports media, it stuck. The relationship had become toxic, and a divorce felt inevitable.
That’s when the Red Sox’s young general manager, Theo Epstein, made the coldest, bravest, and most important decision of his career. It was Epstein’s first true blockbuster move as the head of baseball operations, a high-stakes gamble that would define his legacy. He saw the situation not with sentiment, but with a lot of precision. He identified the team’s defense as its “fatal flaw,” the one thing that would prevent them from winning a championship.
And so, he pulled the trigger on a dizzying four-team trade. Nomar was sent to the Chicago Cubs. In his place arrived two players who were, to many of us, relative unknowns: Gold Glove-winning shortstop Orlando Cabrera from the Montreal Expos and sure-handed first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz from the Minnesota Twins, who the Red Sox were playing on trade deadline day! The fan reaction was a mix of heartbreak and relief. Younger fans cried, their hero ripped away. Older fans, weary of the drama, understood it had to be done.
Here’s the thing, folks: That day at Wrigley Field, when Alex Gonzalez got pulled from the game against the Phillies, there was only one fan sitting on the left field side who really understood what had happened because they had a Walkman on, listening to the live broadcast—just like Steve Bartman during Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. Aware of the situation, that fan stayed quiet at the urging of his brother, who felt many fans were still blaming Gonzalez for the Cubs missing the World Series nine months earlier.
With that… This blockbuster trade was an upgrade for all four teams where they had needs at that time and that is what trade deadline deals are suppose to be about.
If you cannot play with them, then root for them!