A-Rod
I have to say that, when the 5pm deadline passed and the Red Sox had not consumated the trade for A-Rod that I was dissapointed. More dissapointed than I thought I would be. Not as dissapointed as I was after Game 7, but fairly close.

Anyway, after some thought, and reading the comments that were made in the immediate aftermath, I felt a lot better. And I also feel fairly certain that this trade, one way or another, will in fact come to pass.

First of all, consider the Red Sox' point of view. What's the worst that could happen? No trade, Nomar comes back for one more year and then is gone. But is that so bad? You have to figure that he's going to give an A-Plus effort, the better to ensure a nice payday at the end. And with this management, you have to figure that, somehow, they'll manage to find a way to surmount the departure of Garciaparra, one way or another.

Second of all - and more important - is that the Red Sox have the hammer here. The Rangers NEED this trade a hell of a lot more than the Red Sox do. Think about it. The fact that A-Rod has gone as far as he has should be all the proof you need to know that he wants the hell out of Texas.

And then consider the Rangers' perspective. The bigger dollar years of A-Rod's contracts are yet to come. The team has already hamstrung itself with a number of bad deals (exhibit A, Chan Ho Park), a General Manager who is probably not best equipped to make the best out of this situation, and a barren farm system.

While it's always a sorry day when you have to trade your best player - and perhaps the best player in the major leagues - in Texas's situation it was something that they clearly, clearly had to do.

As to the Players' Association rejecting the "restructured" deal, I think this was a little bit of a red herring. I think the Red Sox HAD to know that the deal would not pass muster with the Players' Union, but put it through anyway, and held their breath that the fact that A-Rod was down with it would be good enough - which it was not.

That said, the only thing the deadline did, was end the Red Sox's opportunity to negotiate directly with A-Rod - which they normally couldn't do anyway. There was nothing stopping the Rangers from discussing the exact thing with A-Rod, and there's nothing stopping the Rangers from striking an agreement with the Red Sox where the Red Sox will have the exact same cash exposure, just from different sources.

And if not - like I said, it's not the end of the world.