What do the Texas Rangers, Mike Lowell, and the Boston Red Sox have in common?

The answer is nothing. Apparently, a deal (and in inherently bad one at that) struck that involved shipping the ancient (and perennially sad. Have you seen his headshot?) to the Texas Rangers, plus a cool $3 mill, for catching prospect Max Ramirez is off. Seems the fates have stepped in and intervened on the Rangers behalf.

Mike Lowell has a torn radial collateral ligament in his right thumb, and it looks like he's going to need surgery. Which not only removes him from the game for six to eight weeks, it also seems he'll be missing out on any potential Call of Duty'ing (ha, dutying) all of us so thoroughly enjoy.

Though the Rangers are loaded on offense on both sides of the plate, they're still in the hunt for a right handed bat that can split time at multiple positions, spelling the every day players like Michael Young (third baseman), and Chris Davis (first baseman/DH/strikeout machine). A valiant search, but one that most definitely did not need to end at the front door of the Boston Red Sox, nor the porch of Mike Lowell.

In the world of Major League Baseball today, there is none a more valuable commodity than a MLB-ready catcher. And what Texas has is a dearth of them. Which makes you the center of many a team's attention. This, however, isn't an excuse to make a simply bad decision. Lowell - as productive as he's been through out his career - is facing a rough one-two combo that no player - on the trading block or not - never wants to deal with: His age, and his injury. One or the other is enough to make teams wary of a deal, both is enough to downright terrify them. If I'm the Red Sox, I'm kicking myself right now for missing out on this. Ramirez is a top catching prospect, someone they can groom behind V-Mart (and someone whom a lot of people are comparing Max Ramirez to) while Varitek maybe catches the bullpen staff. Or anything other than striking out a ton and not throwing out any runners. Sad day for Carl Crawford, who no longer can run willy-nilly against the Red Sox.

But we digress.

Texas, listen to the Baseball Gods. They've deemed this trade dumb. Obviously, money is very tight right now, but there are right handed, multi-positional players out there in the Free Agent pool that could come on the cheap.

Jerry Hairston Jr., maybe? Fernando Tatis? Someone you could sign without having to give up a precious commodity you could otherwise - down the road - deal for players that could be potentially impact players.