Been there, done that. Johnny Damon has the World Series ring (2004 Boston Red Sox), the book ("Idiot: Beating the Curse and Enjoying the Game of Life") and the T-shirt. "Looks like Jesus, Acts like Judas, Throws like Mary," was a popular seller in Boston when he left the Red Sox for the New York Yankees.
Hard to imagine, then, that Damon has found redemption this postseason. Somebody who has spent his entire career earning his reputation as a good teammate, somebody who is unfailingly polite with fans and the media, has spent the 2009 season in a shadow cast by the book "The Yankee Years,'' written by Tom Verducci with former Yankees manager Joe Torre.
In that bestseller, Torre talks about Damon's unsettling 2007 season, the outfielder's second in New York, when a slow recovery from a foot fracture and the death of former teammate Cory Lidle left him contemplating retirement, to the point where he left the team for three days in spring training. But Torre also revealed a conversation with an unnamed Yankees player who says, "Let's get rid of him. The guys can't stand him."
Nobody seems to have much of an issue with Damon any more. Whether he'll get the type of contract his agent, Scott Boras, claims he'll get is another story but Damon's stock is high. His savvy base running opened the doors for the Yankees to win Game 4 against the Phillies and the outfielder has gone 6 for 9 with four runs scored in the last two games after opening the World Series on a 2 for 12 clip through the first three games. That's a continuation of a season in which, at 35, Damon tied a career high with 24 home runs and tied Derek Jeter for the team lead with 107 runs scored, giving him 10 consecutive seasons of 100-plus runs. Only Jeter and Alex Rodriguez can match that.
More to the point, the play by Damon -- he stole second with the Phillies playing the shift, then alertly ran to third when catcher Carlos Ruiz did not go over to cover third -- changed the complexion of the subsequent at-bats by Mark Teixeira, Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. Rodriguez doubled, Posada singled in two runs -- and that was the game.
"Great play," Yankees closer Mariano Rivera said. "When you play aggressive like that, and you know what you're doing out there, something's going to happen."
When the Yankees won their last World Series in 2000, it was a base-running blunder by Timo Perez of the New York Mets in Game 1 that put the Mets on their back heels. Perez failed to score from first with two outs in the sixth inning of a scoreless game on a line drive double by Todd Zeile. Thinking it was a homer, Perez thrust his hands in the air and ended up being thrown out at home plate on Jeter's relay throw.
Like those Yankees, the 2009 edition demonstrates an ability to crush an opponent when it makes a mistake. "After Johnny's play," Phillies closer Brad Lidge said, "we were out of sorts."
Damon has played in at least 140 games for 14 consecutive years, a feat exceeded only by Hank Aaron, Brooks Robinson and Pete Rose (16 years) and Willie Mays (15). He picked up his 600th Yankees hit on Aug. 13, and is just the third player in major-league history with at least 600 hits for three teams (Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics and Yankees), along with Wee Willie Keeler and Doc Cramer.
It was easy to think at the start of the year that Damon was playing out the string, especially in light of Torre's book. But few hitters prospered more than him from the new Yankee Stadium's short right-field porch. The stadium gave one of the game's most likable personalities a place for a renaissance, and he's taken it.
"I guess, when you're not pulling your weight, people tend to question it," Damon told Yankees reporters in a quiet moment this summer, when he was asked about Torre's book. "But ... see, I'm the type of person who never questions anyone."
When they were winning four World Series in a five-year span in the 1990s and then advancing to the Series but losing, the Yankees were not only the teams of Jeter, Rivera, Andy Pettitte, David Cone, Roger Clemens, Bernie Williams and Paul O'Neill. They were teams with texture, too.
Players went to the Yankees for redemption from off-field issues (Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, the latter of whom ended his career with a ring in 1998) or finally win a championship (Tim Raines in 1996) or find one or two magical moments in a steady yet unspectacular career (Scott Brosius, Aaron Boone). They were the cure-all for a career and while Damon may have been a charter member of the Red Sox's 2004 team known as the Idiots, this year he has been nobody's fool.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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