In baseball life, it will become one of those moments where I will always remember where I was when I heard the news.

It was last Saturday night, about 10:30 p.m. in Bangor.

After a day of Class A swimming, I retreated to the friendly confines of Bangor Auditorium to write and file my story. After a tank of gas and a coffee at the Irving, I set out for the drive home. It had been a long day and I was tired, but in a mellow sort of way.

It was a fleeting feeling.

The words were delivered almost apologetically by a nameless announcer. He let everyone, who had been captive at the basketball tournament all day, know what was going on in the outside world. He was just doing his job. I was hoping that static on the AM station had garbled the words from their original intent.

A-Rod to the Yankees!

Excuse me?

The words cut through the night like the sound of Damien Jackson’s and Johnny Damon’s heads colliding, or Earnhardt’s No. 3 hitting the wall at Daytona. Or finding out the mortgage payment bounced.

A-Rod to the Yankees?

No way.

My reaction was immediate. It’s hard to be kicked in the stomach on I-95 at 65 miles per hour but that is exactly what happened. It was Bucky Dent all over again. It was Bill Buckner. It was Aaron Boone. It was Grady Little walking back to the dugout alone in Game 7.

Here we go again.

Suddenly spring, which seemed so tantalizingly close (forget the calendar and listen for the words “pitchers and catchers report”), is now light years away. It was Ground Hog Day all over again, but instead of a furry creature seeing his shadow, it was a snake. A snake named “The Boss.”

How could this happen.

The Red Sox have changed, I thought to myself. We now have ownership that cares. They actually act like they want people to litter their park. They act like they want the team to win. They’ve been the ones leaving the other city at a loss as they built one of the most exciting Sox teams in my lifetime.

I am not sure how I felt about bringing A-Rod to Boston. It’s not that I didn’t want him, but Nomar is about as much one of us as anyone can be from that far “away.” It would have been good to send Manny on his way, and that alone would have been a giant leap for mankind. Combine it all with Schilling and Foulke and I was more than ready to hear “Play Ball!”

There is no way being a Red Sox fan can be explained to anyone, even Cubs fans. True, they’ve had their share of heartache as well, and I don’t wish that on anyone, but their coronaries are fleeting, with plenty of time to recover in between.

For us who wear the blue and red, it is a mind-bending, never-ending trauma. Like the TwiLight Zone episode where the characters must repeat their experience over and over again because they can never seem to get it right.

A-Rod to the Yankees?

Pundits over the weekend seemed to nail down the difference (aside from the obvious Manny vs. Alfonso chasm) to about $20 million.

Twenty million?

I am sure there is more to it than that. There has to be. After all, we are dealing with numbers that exceed most third-world annual budgets and contracts that are more complex than the Treaty of Versailles. But regardless, it stinks.

Oh how I hope in the final details we as lovers of the Old Towne Team don’t come to realize that paltry sum was the cornerstone that kept the $225 million dollar man from making his home in Fenway. That would so fly in the face of this new ownership that appears to spend money like they really had some.

As usual, nothing bad ever seems to happen to the Red Sox without the Yankees being in there somewhere.

There was Dent. There was the melee on the mound that injured Bill Lee’s shoulder. There was the mess of a fight in last year’s playoffs and Pedro’s “Ole” of Don Zimmer.

Then there is Aaron Boone.

Boone has done it to us twice – first by hitting that knuckleball into the left field night last fall, and second by trying to play a game of basketball this winter. That injury put the Yanks in the position of needing a third baseman.

How much of this move is to solve that problem, and how much is it to stick it to the Red Sox?

The Evil Empire strikes again.

It’s time for the trucks to roll away from Lansdowne Street and head to Florida. It’s time to look at the snow in the yard and realize there is hope after all. It’s also time to repeat the mantra over and over that “good pitching will beat good hitting.”

I certainly hope so.

Peter Mullen is a staff writer who can be reached at pmullen@sunjournal.com

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