Johnny Damon

I would have if I wasn't sick the first time he returned to Fenway), neither cheered nor booed for Johnny Damon, cheered Pedro Martinez and stood to applaud Roger Clemens as we walked off the mound for what we all assumed would be his last appearance at Fenway Park.  The closest I ever came to booing a player is every time Kevin Millar came to bat once he began to play for the Baltimore Orioles (For the record, I think I almost booed him when he played with the Sox!  I couldn't stand him when he was with the Red Sox, and still can't stand him now).  I will boo some players:  Barry Bonds got an earful from me (along with 37,000 other fans) each time he came to bat when the Giants came to Boston.  But I have never been one to complain when players choose to play somewhere else.  If someone offered me a 30% raise to do the same job I do now in another city, I would jump at the chance.

Continue reading "Finally...the Playoffs!!!"

In recent years alone such logic has claimed the Red Sox lives of fan favorites Trot Nixon, Johnny Damon, Pedro Martinez, Doug Mirabelli and Derek Lowe, any of whom would have been retained if sentiment and sentiment alone drove personnel decisions.

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ents that he could never replace Manny, but don't tell that to Coco Crisp, who was slotted in to be Johnny Damon's replacement in centerfield.  I feel for this guy, who is certainly an above (maybe way above?) average hitter and could do very well playing for a team his father has always cherished.

Continue reading "Manny We Hardly Knew Ye"

give ARod and Giambi protection in the five or six hole, and is needed more than ever in left with Johnny Damon's shoulder issues. Posada can hit pretty well, but can't throw, so even when he was in the game, other teams ran rampant--Jose Molina and Chad Moeller are decent defensive replacements, but can't match Jorge's bat.

Continue reading "Two Yankees, Toughing it Out"

talent surrounding him argument holds less water than a sieve.  As good as Ortiz, Trot Nixon, Johnny Damon, Mike Lowell and Manny's other Red Sox teammates are or have been, the group of guys surrounding A-Rod (Jeter, Matsui, Giambi, Damon, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Bobby Abreu) is just as good if not better than Manny's supporting cast.

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But its his arm (the arm that makes Johnny Damon’s look like a howitzer by comparison) that puts Coco in a class by himself. If there were a stat for runners-that-would-have-been-thrown-out-had-not-the-centerfielder-possessed-the-arm-of-a-pre-pubescent-girl, Coco would be the run-away league-leader. Seriously, we are talking about a probable 20-30 run differential.

Continue reading "Baseball's All-Underachieving Squad"

Oh, the game...it may have featured one of the most unusual plays in left field (How appropriate Johnny Damon was involved!).  It reminded me of the Tiger Woods putt a few years ago when the Nike symbol slowly rolled into the cup as television cameras captured the greatest unpaid advertisement ever witnessed on television.

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sed-door meeting among coaches and players—reportedly, manager Joe Girardi spoke, followed by Johnny Damon and captain Derek Jeter. In a postgame news conference, Girardi repeatedly (and sometimes heatedly) refused to reveal what was said in the meeting, although the gist of the discussion was obvious: the can’t-lose Yankees have been losing.

Continue reading "More Bad Yankee Luck"

g hitters at 320.

The funniest thing I've read all week is how Jacoby Ellsbury dressed up as Johnny Damon for Halloween--though it didn't specify which Damon, the long haired leading idi

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een managing NL style and AL style and just about every time he tries something it backfires.  Johnny Damon up, 1st and 2nd, no one out and he doesn’t bunt the runners over and take 2 chances at tying the game with Cano and Abreu up next?  That’s terrible.  Of course last night he called a hit and run that worked perfectly and pinch-hit Cano in the 8th and he won the game so things look OK now but still, he was awful over the weekend.

Continue reading "Early Season Observations of Yanks and Sox"

Caught my first Boston Red Sox spring training game today on MLB.TV and truth be told, it was a yawner. Ended up 8-4, Yanks; a score that was on the board by the bottom of the fourth inning, rendering the remainder of the broadcast something of an exercise for the announcers, Michael O'Kay and John O'Flaherty (it being St. Patrick's Day, they both added "O"s to the front of their last names.). Having lived in New York for the last 15 years or so, I heard and saw a lot of these two (Flaherty, less. Kay is usually teamed with Paul O'Neill or Al Leiter). Every time the Sox and Yankees got together, I'd be listening to them instead of Joe Castglione and Jerry Remy. Kay and Flaherty are Yankee partisans, of course, but they're also professionals and Michael Kay, in particular, is a first class announcer. He used to do 'color' with John Sterling on New York radio. Sterling is more of an obvious Yankee fan than Kay, with an annoying habit of making routine plays into headline news with phony rhymes. Matsui hits a home run and we hear "A Thrilla from Godzilla." Alex Rodriguez hits a home run and we get "An A-Bomb from A-Rod." And when the Yankees win, he has this annoying habit of saying "The -ah-ah-ah-ah-ah Yankees win."

Continue reading "And so it begins. . .Boston Red Sox ..."