By Pete Williams

Nomar Garciaparra officially retired today, concluding a once-promising career derailed by assorted injuries.

It was only 10 years ago when Garciaparra, now 36, was considered among the best shortstops in baseball, along with Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. No-mah won back-to-back American League batting titles. Ted Williams said Garciaparra reminded him of Joe DiMaggio.

I’ll always be grateful to Garciaparra for training with Mark Verstegen, whom he met at Georgia Tech when Nomar was a student-athlete and Mark was a trainer. In 2000, I wrote a story for USA Today Baseball Weekly on Nomar’s success training with Mark and his revolutionary “core” training program. A year later, Sports Illustrated wrote a more in-depth article. Those stories helped raise Mark’s profile to the point where Mark and I landed a book contract for “Core Performance,” one of the better selling fitness books of recent years. I’ve had the honor of writing several more books with Mark; our fifth – Core Performance Women – came out in January. (Nomar wrote the foreword to the original book and his now-wife Mia Hamm also contributed a column for the book.)

Nomar’s relationship with the media, especially in Boston, could be contentious but I always found him insightful. That’s why he’ll be terrific in his new gig as an analyst with ESPN, assuming the Worldwide Leader can find a spot for him among their ever-growing stable of analysts.

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