Johnny Damon Needs to Follow A-Rod's Lead

As a veteran observer of all things Yankee, I don’t believe reports that the team’s divorce from Johnny Damon is final.

General manager Brian Cashman says the Yankees won’t resign the 36-year-old outfielder because the club needs to get younger and more athletic and keep the 2010 payroll under $200 million.

I’m not buying it.

When has payroll mattered to the New York Yankees?

The Yanks have never cared about paying a luxury tax (not even this season’s $25 million tax) for exceeding baseball’s salary threshold as long as they’re getting maximum bang for their bucks.

And a 27th World Series championship certainly qualifies as money well-spent.

During the Steinbrenner Era, the Yankees have always tried to field the best team money can buy.

The Yankees can achieve that again in 2010 if Damon takes the initiative and follows a strategy already executed by Alex Rodriguez.

No, that doesn’t mean Damon should divorce his wife and date free-agent starlet Kate Hudson.

Instead, Damon should tell agent Scott Boras exactly what A-Rod told him after negotiations with the Yankees had been severed following the ’07 season:

Butt out.

If Damon himself tells Cashman and the Steinbrenner boys, Hank and Hal, that he wants to stay, then they’ll make a deal.

Boras, in typically nauseating fashion, alienated the Yankees by saying publicly the club should give Damon the kind of multi-year deal it gave catcher Jorge Posada at age 36 and relief ace Mariano Rivera at age 39 and will give shortstop Derek Jeter who turns 36 in June.

That is not going to happen. Nor should it happen.

Jeter, Rivera and Posada have become Yankee icons. Along with southpaw Andy Pettitte, they’re the only on-field links to the dynastic Yankee teams of the late 1990s-early 2000s.

Those players have earned special treatment.

Boras also used the media to tell the Yankees not to make an offer to Damon unless it’s a three-year deal.

The Yankees essentially told Boras to take a flying leap.

The Yankees then traded for former Tigers All-Star Curtis Granderson—at 29, a superior athlete and outfielder to Damon—and signed free agent Nick Johnson, an ex-Yankee whose on-base percentage is one of baseball’s best.

Damon should remind Boras that he works for the player, not the other way around.

The Yankees would offer Damon a two-year, $16-million deal if he wants it. I’ve followed this club long enough to know that.

A-Rod is a Yankee today—with a world championship on his resume, finally—because he personally told the club he wanted to stay and he muzzled Boras.

There may be more upfront money elsewhere for Damon, or even a three-year deal, but he wouldn’t be a Yankee. He wouldn’t be playing for the reigning world champions, the most celebrated franchise in professional sports, in the media capital of the world.

It can’t make more sense to Damon to finish his career with the White Sox, Orioles or Royals.

Would the Red Sox offer him a return to Beantown?

Maybe. But only to try to tweak the Yankees, the team that tweaked them when Damon signed his four-year, $52 million deal after the ’05 season.

But that move wouldn’t make sense for the Sox, who need to get younger and more athletic just like the Yankee team they’re now chasing.

Damon should want to be part of the 2010 Yankees, part of what would be one of baseball’s most potent lineups ever:

SS Derek Jeter

LF Johnny Damon

1B Mark Teixeira

3B Alex Rodriguez

C Jorge Posada

CF Curtis Granderson

2B Robinson Cano

RF Nick Swisher

DH Nick Johnson

You could quibble with the batting order. You could even bat Granderson ninth (if he’s not insulted), but this lineup coupled with the Yankees’ pitching staff would be favored to win another world championship.

Damon should want a piece of that action.

But first he needs to follow A-Rod’s lead and check his agent at the door.

For the Yankees, it's all up to A-Rod

So much for the theory that actress Kate Hudson is the key to Alex Rodriguez’s dramatically improved hitting in the 2009 postseason.

No, A-Rod’s romance with Hudson was not the reason the New York Yankees third baseman hit as well during the American League Division Series win over the Twins and the AL Championship Series triumph over the Angels as he did in a 30-home run, 100-RBI regular season.

If Hudson had had anything to do with A-Rod’s offensive exploits, then they wouldn’t have ended so abruptly in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series.

A-Rod reached a historic low by going 0-for-8 with six strikeouts against the Phillies at Yankee Stadium.

Never before had any player gone 0-for-8 with 6Ks in his first two World Series games.

Were George Steinbrenner still the megalomaniacal Yankees owner of old, he surely would have fired Hudson by now.

"Hey, Alex, what about that gal from 'Friends?'" Steinbrenner would have asked. "The blonde gal with the hair? What’s her name?"

"Jennifer Aniston," a Yankees minion would have responded.

"Yeah, that’s her," Steinbrenner would have said. "She’s always looking for a man. It’s kind of pitiful, really. How about if I pull Kate’s tickets and invite Jennifer for the rest of the World Series? Would that help you, Alex?"

Truth is, nobody but A-Rod can help himself out of this slump. No one can stop A-Rod from lunging at pitches out of the strike zone and getting himself out, as he had done in postseason games from 2004 ALCS through 2007.

The A-Rod who looked so "locked in," as today’s players say, with every at-bat against the Twins and Angels, the A-Rod who, to borrow another jock cliché, "let the game come to him," now looks confused as he takes fastballs down the middle and gives up on off-speed pitches that break over the plate.

Although the Yankees managed to beat Philadelphia 3-1 in Game 2 with nary a contribution from A-Rod, they simply cannot win this best-of-seven series without a hefty contribution from their cleanup hitter.

A-Rod hit .438 in the first two rounds of the postseason with 5 home runs and 12 RBI. That includes late-inning, game-tying homers in Games 2 and 3 against the Twins and Game 2 against the Angels.

Rodriguez tied a postseason record in the first two rounds, driving in runs in eight consecutive games. The Phillies haven't seen that player so far in the World Series.

Since there are no more than five games left, beginning with Game 3 tonight at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, A-Rod needs to put an indelible stamp on each game. He isn't being paid a major league-high $28 million this season for nothing.

And it’s not enough for people to point to Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard’s 0-for-4, four-strikeout horror show in Game 2 and say, "Both teams’ cleanup hitters are struggling."

Howard already has had a starring role in the series with two doubles in Philly’s 6-1 romp in Game 1.

A-Rod’s only impact on the series so far came when he failed to field Matt Stairs’s grounder, which gave the Phillies a short-lived 1-0 lead in Game 2.

While it’s true the Yankees have a lineup of All-Stars and former All-Stars, no player is as important to the team’s offense as A-Rod.

Remember how the Yankees, especially first baseman Mark Teixeira, floundered at the plate until A-Rod made his 2009 debut on May 8 in Baltimore — slugging a three-run homer on the first pitch he saw?

That was no accident. The Yankees have been the best team in Major League Baseball ever since.

But now, the Phillies have an edge in Games 3-5. That’s because the games will be played by National League roles.

No designated hitter. Hideki Matsui, who as the No. 5 hitter usually provides protection for A-Rod, will be on the bench while Yankees pitchers flail hopelessly at the plate.

To overcome that disadvantage, the Yankees need A-Rod to perform as he did against the Twins and Angels.

And neither Kate Hudson nor The Octomom will have anything to do with it. It is all up to A-Rod.

Yankees Exorcise Ghosts of Playoff Failures Past

When I covered the New York Yankees for Gannett Newspapers in the 1990s, the club treated an American League Division Series clinching as no big deal.

The goal was always higher: World Series or bust.

Although the 2009 Yankees are saying much the same publicly, their Division Series sweep of the Minnesota Twins was a big deal.

Very big.

Because these Yankees — from general manager Brian Cashman to manager Joe Girardi to the game’s highest-paid player Alex Rodriguez to veteran shortstop Derek Jeter to this year’s big free-agent acquisitions CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira — had much to prove.

A decade of postseason failure had turned the Yankees into an expensive baseball team of underachievers, much like the teams assembled by owner George Steinbrenner that missed the playoffs every year between 1982 and ’94.

The Yankees reached a crossroads in 2008 after finishing third in the AL East behind the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox. Questions abounded:

Had the Yankees erred by making Joe Torre an offer he could refuse, prompting the popular manager’s move to Los Angeles, where he has guided the Dodgers to two straight National League Championship Series?

Was Girardi, fired after one year as Florida Marlins manager, really the best man for the Yankees job?

Was Rodriguez on the decline after his spring-training outing as a drug cheat and subsequent hip deterioration (a possible result of repeated injections)?

Had Jeter so lost his range that he had become a defensive liability?

Could Sabathia and Burnett, with no previous postseason success, be counted on to win in New York?

The Yankees silenced those doubters in their Division Series sweep. Teixeira delivered the game-winning homer in the 11th inning in Game 2.

Jorge Posada, the gritty 38-year-old catcher, shook off a pride-wounding benching in Game 2 (because he and Burnett don’t mesh) to hit the game-winning homer in Game 3.

And then there’s A-Rod, a lightning rod for controversy in past years who has become bland in his interactions with the media and clutch on the field.

Before the Division Series, A-Rod in the playoffs had been 0-for-his-last-27 with runners on base and 0-for-29 with runners in scoring position and had just one RBI in 59 previous at-bats.

But Kate Hudson’s beau erupted against Minnesota, hitting .455 with 2 homers and five RBI, including a game-tying, two-run homer off Joe Nathan in the bottom of the ninth in Game 2 and a game-tying solo homer off Carl Pavano in the seventh inning of Game 3.

(If the Yanks win it all, does Kate get a ring. . .from A-Rod or the club?)

The Yankees’ pitching was superb. And the Yanks were far better on defense and in situational hitting than the Twins.

Despite Girardi’s penchant for pulling his pitchers too quickly, this Yankees team has the look of eagles. No longer does it resemble a postseason club in need of the Heimlich Maneuver.

There is still much work to be done. The Yankees don’t need to be reminded of how they have fared since winning their last world championship in 2000 against the Mets. But here’s the rundown anyway:

2001: Lost to Arizona Diamondbacks in World Series
2002: Lost to Anaheim Angels in Division Series
2003: Lost to Florida Marlins in World Series
2004: Lost to Boston Red Sox in League Championship Series
2005: Lost to Anaheim Angels in Division Series
2006: Lost to Detroit Tigers in Division Series
2007: Lost to Cleveland Indians in Division Series
2008: Failed to make playoffs
2009: ?

The Angels will be a formidable foe in the ALCS. So will the National League champion in the World Series. But the Yankees look like the class of Major League Baseball. Now it is up to them to continue to prove it.