It's been a loong day.

I knocked down two finals, turned in one that had three pages of calculations, covered a baseball game, a girls soccer game, watched bits of the Pistons-Cavaliers and in the process I've consumed two cans of Pepsi and 44 oz. of Dr. Pepper.

I'm wired.

So what better way to fight off this caffeine rush than to hammer out an entry. "But what?" I ask myself. The only hot topics are the playoffs, Barry Bonds and Barry Bonds. I've already made my obligatory rant against the four-letter network. What else is there?

I scoured the internet and found this.

You remember Nomar right? Studly shortstop that came up with Boston, was considered one of the top three shortstops in the game? I'm not a Red Sox fan, but I was/am a Nomar fan. His quirky mannerisms and nice guy persona connected with me.

Then, they traded him to the Cubs in July of 2004, and all of a sudden, I was not a Nomar fan anymore. His mannerisms were now annoying, his new name was Nosemar and that "Thanks, beautiful"? Barf...

Last year at Busch II, Nosemar tore something. It was routine--par for the course. I wasn't shocked, only saddened. How could a guy with Hall-of-Fame potential be more cursed than the sad and pathetic franchise that employs him? Even though he was a Cub, I felt bad for him. For a moment I stopped hating the guy and prayed that he would leave Chicago so that I could go back to rooting for him.

Well, he left Chicago after 2005 when they declined to re-sign him and after Los Angeles inked him to a mysterious deal where he would play first base, I willfully jumped back on the Nomar Bandwagon. Destination: LA.

The journey got off to a slow start. He was injured in Spring Training to no one's shock, not even my own. I didn't think it was possible for one person to be this unlucky, but Nomar was. He managed to make it back, and did it in a huge way.

That was just Nomar's second game back. The man is on a tear. He's batting .354 with a .416 on base percentage and he's slugging .684. Tonight was the 10th straight game he has hit in. He's playing at his '99-00 levels where he posted an OPS over 1.000. I don't expect Nomar to make it back to that level of 2000. He's 32 now and as he gets older, his health becomes a bigger question mark. When's the next rolled ankle, or ruptured spleen going to happen? Sooner than we think I'm sure.

It's awful to see one of the game's most talented players unable to achieve his highest potential because of injuries. He is a forgotten hero. How many people remember Nomar anymore? Admit it, when you hear or read Nomar's name, you immediately think that he's probably disabled. Unlike Just Disabled Drew, his Dodger teammate, Nomar cares, but Nomar has been sacked because of a fragile body, not because of a fragile heart. Garciaparra was a hero to me in my early teen years when I had no one to root for besides the Red Sox, and I hope and pray that he can go the distance.

But I'm not holding my breath.