2009 Yankees: Johnny Damon Went From Villain to Hero in New York

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Johnny Damon made a tough career decision moving from Boston to New York, but in the end it paid off. Lets get to it.

NEW YORK (Aug. 30, 2009) - Johnny Damon has a rather unique place in the storied history of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

He is one of only 12 players to have won a World Series for each side, but he’s one of only four to do so since 1932 when Babe Ruth and Herb Pennock won their last titles in the Bronx.

And among the other three - Ramiro Mendoza (1998-2000 Yankees, 2004 Red Sox); Kevin Cash (2007 Red Sox, 2009 Yankees); and Eric Hinske (2007 Red Sox, 2009 Yankees) - Damon was far and away the biggest contributor to each team.

But who do you associate Damon with more, the Red Sox or the Yankees? He spent four years with each team, and his overall profile is nearly identical, better in some areas with the Yankees, better in some with the Red Sox.

However, I would opine that he is probably better known for the time he spent in Boston, and that would have a lot to do with the fact that in Boston, Damon became known as the crown prince of the self-proclaimed idiots, the nickname he personally attached to the team in spring training before the 2004 season, a season that no one in New England - or New York, for that matter - will ever forget.

“Everyone calls themselves an idiot every now and then but the whole (idiot) thing was just saying we didn’t care what happened to those teams of the past,” Damon once recalled to mlb .com explaining how that group of Red Sox went into 2004 not caring a lick about the demonic 86-year World Series drought the Red Sox were still mired in.

This all came bubbling to the surface in October 2003 when they lost Game 7 of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium when Aaron Boone walked off the series with his epic 11th-inning home run. At that point, Boston fans probably believed the drought was never going to end, and the pressure on Terry Francona’s wonderfully-talented team was enormous.

That was outside pressure, though, because the players themselves simply did not feel responsible for hardly any of the eight-plus decades of angst.

“We were our own team, we had our own identity,” Damon continued. “Well, shoot, we weren’t even around (all those years). Why do we feel this pressure? That’s why I was like, ‘We’re a bunch of idiots, we don’t care about any of the stuff that’s happened before.’ We knew then that our job was to go out and win right now. But yeah, it caught on.”

As part of the idiot persona, the Red Sox became the most unkempt team in baseball history - long hair, beards, disheveled uniforms - and no one leaned into that more than Damon. He looked like Jesus Christ that season with his shoulder-length hair and bushy beard, and when the Red Sox played the Yankees in that horrifying ALCS, they looked like the rowdy prison team in Burt Reynolds’ football movie The Longest Yard going against the neat and tidy prison guard Yankees.

Boston exorcized the drought demons by historically rallying from a three games to none deficit to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, and then steamrolling the Cardinals for their first championship since 1918. And it was Damon who delivered what proved to be the final dagger in Game 7 of the ALCS as he hit a third-inning grand slam that gave the Red Sox a 6-0 lead in Game 7, and later hit a two-run homer to cap Boston’s 10-3 blowout.

So yes, while Damon did some very good things in New York, including playing great when the Yankees defeated the Phillies in the 2009 World Series, it’s tough for me to remember him more as a Yankee hero than a Red Sox hero.

Believe me, Red Sox fans feel the same way. Nearly 20 years have passed since Damon left Boston after the 2005 season to sign with New York, and Beantown still hasn’t forgiven him. He has long been known as a traitor who looked like Jesus and acted like Judas. If you thought Bucky Dent was the only guy whose middle name was “fucking” you are wrong because that also happens to be Damon’s middle name among Red Sox nation.

How quickly the Tommy Boys forgot his heroics, not only during that 2004 season but the other three years he spent at the top of the batting order igniting one of the best offenses the sport has ever seen. Nope, once he traded in the cap with the B for the one with the interlocking NY, he was dead in the Hub.

It’s funny how fandom works, and it recalls the famous Jerry Seinfeld line about how in the end, sports fans don’t really cheer for athletes, they cheer for the laundry they wear. And when Damon changed uniforms, he became persona non grata in one town and a cause celebre in the other.

In 2024, Alex Verdugo hopped on the Boston to New York highway when he signed with the Yankees, and back in the spring, Damon shared his experience.

“I was a fan favorite up in Boston. Coming to New York, it’s tough, but I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Damon said. “Just don’t pay attention to anything. I always like to tell people, ‘I’ve been loved and hated everywhere I’ve been.’ I’m doing OK right now. It took years, but I’m doing OK now.”

Damon began his MLB career in Kansas City, six fine seasons where he hit .292, stole 156 bases, and in his last year there in 2000 he led the AL with 46 steals and 136 runs scored. He was then part of a three-team, seven-player trade that landed him in Oakland for the 2001 season, and those A’s took a two games to none lead in the ALDS against the three-time defending champion Yankees before collapsing to lose three straight.

In that series Damon went 9-for-22 with three runs and two stolen bases, and perhaps seeing that, the Red Sox wooed him in free agency and signed him to a four-year deal prior to 2002 hoping he’d continue to torment the Yankees.

Damon gave Boston tremendous production, a slash line of .295/.362/.441 for an OPS of .803 with 461 runs scored, 730 hits including 29 triples, 56 homers, 299 RBI plus 98 steals. And on those teams with David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Millar, and Jason Varitek, he was the perfect leadoff man.

But when his contract expired, the Yankees saw an opportunity to make the enemy their friend. Their own center fielder, Bernie Williams, was going into his age 37 season in 2006 and the time had come to start limiting his playing time. Also, Derek Jeter was going to be 32 and he wasn’t as effective in the leadoff spot as Damon, but hitting No. 2 behind Damon with Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi to follow made a lot of sense.

“Sad to say bye to some of the greatest fans in the world,” said Damon when he signed a four-year, $52 million contract, a commitment that was $12 million for than Boston was willing to go. “Unfortunately they had to see this day, but it’s time for me to move forward. They were coming after me aggressively. We know George Steinbrenner’s reputation. He always wants to have the best players, and I think he showed that. He and Brian Cashman came after me hard.”

As expected, it was a tough ask for Yankees fans to welcome Damon into their collective bosom, but once he began doing the same things he once did for the Red Sox, they came around. In his first season, he slashed .285/.349/.482 for an OPS of .841 with 24 homers, 80 RBI, 115 runs and 25 stolen bases.

After two solid years in 2007 and 2008, Damon, at age 35, produced his best Yankee season in his last in 2009 - .282/.365/.489 for an .854 OPS, 36 doubles, 24 homers, 82 RBI, and 107 runs.

On Aug. 1 the Yankees were up just a half-game on the Red Sox. By the time they beat the White Sox 8-3 on Aug. 30 in a game where Damon hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the third inning, the lead had ballooned to six games, and Damon was one of the biggest reasons why.

He was enjoying a perfectly fine season through July, but in August, Damon shifted into a higher gear. He played 24 games and hit .327 with a .994 OPS and the homer against Chicago was his seventh of the month. “My swing has been pretty good all season; I feel like I should have a few more,” he said.

That day, he was asked about his impending free agency, and he made it clear what he wanted to do.

“Everyone knows I love playing in New York,” he said. “I love these teammates, but I understand how things works. They have (Brett) Gardner, Melky (Cabrera), (Nick) Swisher, Austin Jackson (prospect) coming up, and there will be other free agents. Hopefully we’ll go out and win the World Series and then hopefully if they want me back, then sure (he wanted to return).”

Well, the Yankees did win the World Series, but they decided to move on. They signed free agent Curtis Granderson as their new center fielder in 2010 and the Grandy Man as John Sterling referred to him had three excellent years, two of which he belted more than 40 homers. But unlike Damon in 2009, what Granderson didn’t do was help lead the Yankees to a championship.

“We had to win that year,” Damon said of 2009. “If we didn’t win that year, it was my last year there, so making that move from Boston would not have been the right one.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 20 went for the Yankees:

• Aug. 25: The Yankees welcomed the Rangers in for the start of a three-game series, and Texas won the opener 10-9, a crazy game where the Yankees scored four in the first and four in the last, but in between saw Joba Chamberlain and Chad Gaudin get pummeled for 10. In the ninth, after scoring four, the Yankees had the winning runs on base with one out but Cabrera lined into a game-ending double play.

• Aug. 26: Andy Pettitte pitched seven strong innings and was clinging to a 4-2 lead in the seventh on the strength of Jorge Posada’s three-run homer when the Yankees broke it open with four runs on the way to a 9-2 victory.

• Aug. 27: The Yankees saw a streak of six consecutive series victories end as Texas took the rubber match 7-2 as Ian Kinsler hit homers off A.J. Burnett and David Robertson to drive in four runs.

• Aug. 28: The start of a three-game sweep of the White Sox was pretty dramatic as Nick Swisher and Alex Rodriguez drew two-out walks and Robinson Cano hit a three-run homer in the 10th for a walkoff 5-2 victory.

• Aug. 29: Sergio Mitre retired the first 13 men he faced before a double by Jim Thome in the fifth, and that turned out to be Chicago’s only hit as Mitre and Gaudin combined on a one-hit 10-0 shutout. A-Rod homered, Cano and Jeter had three hits, and Cano, A-Rod, Damon and Hairston all had two RBI.

NEXT SATURDAY: Andy Pettitte came oh-so-close to immortality as he had a perfect game alive in the seventh inning before it ended, a magnificent eight-strikeout performance for the 37-year-old who remains the franchise’s all-time strikeout leader.