Today, Trot Nixon's 13-year run with the Boston Red Sox organization came to an end, as he signed with the Native Ohioan Peoples.

I want to bring up something that no one has yet, as far as I know. Take a look at the above perfectly accurate depiction of Fenway Park's main seating bowl. ("Seating bowl" is the funniest term in sports. Besides "puck." I use it whenever I can.) See the pine-tar colored area with the little Ts? What do these people have in common? That's right, the closest Red Sox fielder to their seat, for the better part of the last eight years, has been Christopher Trotman Nixon.

Now realize how big that portion of the crowd is in relation to the rest of the park. That's a good third of the paying customers. One in every three Sox fans at Fenway on any given day takes more pictures of Trot Nixon than any other guy. Out of nine guys.

The center fielder gets a nice chunk of the bleachers, but they start 18 feet above field level. Manny gets the Monster Seats, plus that whole side of the left field grandstand. Maybe you could say the first and third basemen have little rooting sections, and the people by the dugouts get to cheer everybody up close. But there may not be another player in the four major sports who has a bigger exclusive rooting section relative to the rest of the crowd than the right fielder at Fenway Park.

What else do all the people in Trot's area have in common? Just that. They're the common fan. i.e. shitty seats! He's got the bleacher bums. The college kids who say "woo!" a lot. The upper bleacher, "I can't even afford food because this was my last 12 bucks" crowd. The "Dunkin Dugout" aka "poor kids" crew. The "I thought row one would be good but the bullpen fence is directly in my line of sight" schlubs. The "ooh, right field box! Box=good, right?" folks who end up with home plate directly to their left and have to look over their shoulder, craning their neck while staring directly into the sun or some stranger's ear for four hours. The people who get stuck behind Pesky's Pole. The young families who get talked into grandstand seats that not only don't face the field, and are not only a hundred feet away from it, and about 500 from home plate, but are made of wood and were constructed in 1933. The ones who think everything's okay because their section's pole is not in front of them when they face forward, but when they turn 45 degrees to the left, another pole is right in the way of home plate.

These are Trot's people. I have a ten-game plan, and those seats are in Trot's zone. We kinda like this guy, is what I'm sayin'. I wonder if the front office thought of this. How can you replace Trot? He was the perfect guy for this segment of Fenway's population. Can JD Drew fill these shoes? I guess he could come out strong, hit a lot of massive dongs, and we'll cheer him out there. But he's never gonna be Trot Nixon. Wait, do we even have Drew yet? Who knows at this point...

New England will miss you, Trot. See you on Memorial Day--sadly, in a gray jersey, with a horrible stereotype on your filthy, filthy hat. That will be some ovation.

Now, we all know there's that whole white guilt thing with scrappy guys who get credit, seemingly because of their "normal" looks. I know this is a real problem, but sometimes you gotta realize that a guy is loved because he's just that awesome. I'd hope if Trot were black, he'd be just as loved. I know that in America, terribly, it wouldn't be that way. But as a person who doesn't judge people by the tone of their skin, I'm proud to say I love Trot. He'll be an inspiration to dirty hat wearers like myself for years after he's gone.


Above: The T-Zone. Below: Trot walks off the Fenway field for the last time in a Red Sox uniform.