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Johnny Damon

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Johnny Damon
New York Yankees – No. 18
Center field
Bats: Left
Throws: Left
debut
August 12, 1995, for the Kansas City Royals
Career statistics
(through October 2, 2006)
Batting average.289
Runs scored1188
Stolen bases306
Stats at Baseball Reference Edit this at Wikidata
Former teams

Johnny David Damon (born November 5, 1973 in Fort Riley, Kansas) is a Major League Baseball outfielder who plays center field for the New York Yankees.

Early life

His mother, Yome, is Thai and his father, Jimmy, is white American. They met while his father was serving as a staff sergeant in the United States Army. Johnny was born on an Army base and spent much of his early childhood as an "Army brat," moving to several bases before his father left the Army and settled the family in the Orlando area. [1]

Playing career

Damon was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the first round of the 1992 amateur draft out of Orlando's Dr. Phillips High School, where he had been teammates with A. J. Pierzynski; he was the 35th pick overall. He played for the Royals from 1995 to 2000, and spent 2001 with the Oakland Athletics. He spent 2002 to 2005 with the Boston Red Sox before signing as a free agent with the New York Yankees on December 20, 2005.

As a part of his exercise routine, Johnny admits to pursuing cars from one end of his block to the other on foot. "I live on a street (in the Orlando area) where the speed limit is 25 miles an hour and the police enforce it. At night, I'd wait out there and when a car came by I would race the car home, so I think I can go at least 25 miles an hour. I scared some of the people, seeing a caveman racing after cars," said Damon in a Providence newspaper article early in 2004. (Note that it is unlikely that Damon reached speeds of 25 miles per hour. Such speeds have been acheived by only a handful of world class sprinters.)

In the postseason, Damon hit .283 with 4 home runs and 13 RBI in 2001 and 2003-2005.

Boston Red Sox

On June 27, 2003, Damon joined a very exclusive group of Major League Baseball players by recording three base hits in the first inning of a game against the Florida Marlins. The Red Sox scored 14 runs in that inning, and 10 runs before a single out was recorded. The Red Sox won the game 25-8. [1]

Despite the impressive game, it was during the 2004 season when Damon began to re-establish himself among the premier lead-off hitters and center fielders in the game today. In arguably his best season as a Major Leaguer, Damon batted .304 with 20 home runs and 94 RBIs, and showed an improved patience at the plate. According to Damon's autobiography, he was only the 4th leadoff batter in the history of Major League Baseball to ever drive in more than 90 runs in a season.

Through his four-year career as a Red Sox (2002-2005), Johnny Damon appeared in 597 games (all of them as the center fielder, except for 7 as a designated hitter). [2] Of his 2476 at bats in a Boston uniform, 2259 of them were as the leadoff hitter. Damon batted 2nd in the lineup for 156 at bats in 2002, accounting for nearly all of the rest except for various pinch hitting appearances. Damon did start two games as the Red Sox' #3 hitter in 2004. In 2005, his final season with the Red Sox, Damon had 624 at bats, and all but three were as the leadoff hitter.[3]

Hairstyle

Damon gained some notoriety for the prominent beard and long, uncut hairstyle he brought with him to spring training in the 2004 season, contrasting with his previously clean-cut appearance. His long hair and beard actually came from an unlikely cause - his head on collision with Damian Jackson during the 2003 playoffs. Damon lay on the field unconscious for approximately five minutes. When he came to, Damon was completely disoriented, believing that he was still playing for his old team, the Oakland Athletics. For several weeks thereafter, Damon continued to be very disoriented, as even today, Damon has a "spotty" recollection of Game 3 of the 2003 Championship Series against former arch rivals the New York Yankees.[citation needed] For the entire offseason after this injury, Damon suffered extremely painful headaches, which he said came every afternoon around two o'clock.[citation needed] The headaches came to disrupt his life so much that he stopped shaving and having his hair cut. So by the beginning of the 2004 season, he had an uncharacteristic big bushy beard and shoulder length hair. His new look, probably coupled with the runaway success of the recently-released Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ, inspired fans and sportswriters to draw good-natured comparisons between his appearance and that of Jesus. (Some people also drew comparisons to the late Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, and to Charles Manson.)

On April 21, 2005, Johnny shaved his beard in a charity event sponsored by the Gillette razor company. The proceeds from the event went to benefit literacy programs in conjunction with the Boston Public Library. He regrew the beard and it remained for the rest of the season.

Johnny Damon, center, jokes with players before Spring Training game, 2005.

2004 Playoffs

During the 2004 ALCS, Damon was in a bit of a slump, getting on base much less often than he had been during the regular season and the ALDS. However, he redeemed himself in Game 7 on October 20 by hitting two home runs, including a grand slam in the 2nd inning, to help the Boston Red Sox become the first team in major league history (and just the third in the history of North American pro sports) to overcome a 3-0 postseason series deficit, in a 10-3 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 7.

In 2005, Damon wrote Idiot: Beating "The Curse" and Enjoying the Game of Life with Peter Golenbock, and also appeared on Late Night With Conan O'Brien in April during a series against the Yankees. On June 7, he appeared on the hit Bravo TV series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy with four of his Red Sox teammates (Jason Varitek, Kevin Millar, Doug Mirabelli, Tim Wakefield).

New York Yankees

On December 20, 2005, Damon signed a four-year, $52 million dollar contract with the New York Yankees. The deal made Damon hated in Boston because of his past loyalties to the city. As the Yankees have a strict dress code forbidding long hair and facial hair below the upper lip, Damon had his hair and beard cut on December 22. Damon is the third notable Red Sox player in the past 12 years to "switch sides" and sign a contract with the Yankees, following in the footsteps of Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens (though Clemens signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in between stints with the Red Sox and Yankees). Much like Boggs and Clemens (although Clemens was not offered a contract by Boston after his last season there), Damon has been vilified by Red Sox fans. He even was quoted as saying "There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they're going to come after me hard. It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."[2] He joined the Yankees months later.

During the first Yankee-Red Sox game of the 2006 season on May 1, Johnny Damon was repeatedly booed throughout the night by Fenway fans. Damon went 0-for-4. Fellow Yankee Mike Myers, formerly of the Red Sox, was "surprised at the reception". A notable minority of fans cheered Damon on when he tipped his hat off to his old team's dugout and to the rest of Fenway, but the majority of the park took part in various jeers when Damon was at bat and on the field.[3] Reflecting on his return to Fenway, Damon remarked "I love Boston and I always will. I'll always have terrific memories and great fans here," Damon said. "Those fans [that booed] are just the kind of people who wish they were in my spot -- they really do. They've got no class, but that only speaks for a few of them.[4]

In a 5 game series at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox Damon went 3-for-6 in each of the first 3 games, including a double header on Friday August 18, and a game on Saturday August 19. Damon hit two home runs, drove in eight runs and scored eight runs in the first three games as the Yankees won them by a combined score of 39-20. The second game of the double header went on to be the longest 9-inning game in baseball history, lasting 4 hours and 45 minutes.

Signing with the Yankees led Red Sox fans to call him "Johnny Demon" and "Judas Damon," and one to hold up a sign saying, "Johnny, you really are an Idiot." Yankee fans have countered with the suggestion that, by letting one of the key figures in the breaking of the Curse of the Bambino go to the Yankees, Red Sox management has created a new "curse," the Curse of the Caveman, even though, as a Yankee, Damon's former "caveman look" is gone.

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World Baseball Classic

Damon was announced part of the United States team in the World Baseball Classic on January 16, 2006. He went 1-7 and scored a run during the WBC, despite missing some time in second round games due to tendonitis in his left (throwing) shoulder.[citation needed]

Personal

Damon was once married to Angela Vannice, from 1992 - 2002, and they have twins together, Madelyn and Jackson, born April 22, 1999.[5] Damon has been married to Michelle Mangan since December 30, 2004.[6] The couple are expecting their first child together in late 2006. [4] It will be Damon's third child and Mangan's first.

Notable non-baseball appearances

Boston Red Sox

New York Yankees

Career Statistics

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0198934/bio
  2. ^ http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050501&content_id=1034754&vkey=news_bos&fext=.jsp&c_id=bos
  3. ^ http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/gameday_recap.jsp?ymd=20060501&content_id=1427623&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy
  4. ^ http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060502&content_id=1430558&vkey=news_nyy&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy
  5. ^ http://arod.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/team/player_career.jsp?player_id=113028
  6. ^ http://www.lovetripper.com/bridalstars/wedding-database/johnny-damon.html
Preceded by American League Player of the Month
July, 2000 		Succeeded by
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