No one ever is going to suggest he was a great ballplayer, but around here we loved our Trot.
People here loved his dirty Pigpen hat, his all-out effort, and his general spunk. No Lou Grants around here. In these here parts, spunk is good.
"He's a good player," Terry Francona was saying before last night's game. "I liked the way he approached the game, his willingness to run into the wall. He played hard. He got down and dirty.
"He had that wrinkled hat in his back pocket. He's a throwback. I'm sure he's going to get a great ovation -- as he should."
Last night, Trot Nixon got four ovations, actually. There was one when PA man Carl Beane announced the Cleveland starting lineup, standing ovations both when he took the field in the bottom of the first and when he came to bat in the top of the second, and yet another ovation earlier when he and wife Kathryn were given a plaque honoring their Jimmy Fund service in a pregame ceremony at home plate.
"Everyone was mentioning to me all week about what would happen," Nixon mused during a pregame interview. "I didn't know what to expect."
Aw, we Knights of the Keyboard did. It was pretty evident over the years that Trot Nixon was a fan fave.
From the minute he signed with the Red Sox as the seventh pick of the 1993 draft, Trot came to play, and people love guys who come to play. He made it through the organization in very orderly fashion, going through Lynchburg, Sarasota, and Trenton before making his major league debut at the tail end of the 1996 season.
He was sent to Pawtucket for some good old-fashioned Mondorization in 1997 and 1998 before making it to stay in 1999.
Not really a big guy (the books laughably put him over 6 feet, but don't buy it), he is sturdy, and there always has been some pop in his bat. Truth be told, Fenway was probably not the best place for him. He was not a guy to make much use of The Wall, and he's not Big Papi, so there were a lot of mighty "9's" and "8's" on the scorecard over the years.
But there were a lot of big hits, too. Never forget that it was Trot Nixon who decided the classic Pedro-Roger duel in 2000 with that home run, or that it was his dramatic Labor Day grand slam in Philadelphia that triggered the September stretch run in 2003, or that Trot saved the 2003 postseason from ending prematurely with his 11th-inning pinch-hit homer off Rich Harden when the Sox were down two games to the A's or that Trot had three doubles and a pair of RBIs in the game that officially made the Red Sox world champions after that much-discussed 86-year hiatus.
A few of you might also recall that on July 24, 1999, Trot Nixon became the last man to hit three home runs in a game at Tiger Stadium. I just happened to be there, so I'm not likely to forget any time soon.