Well, folks, they’re at it again.  The Yankee haters are out in full force.  I’m not talking about the completely insane Sons of Sam Horn, or the drunks at the Cask ‘n Flagon, I’m talking about journalists…columnists in the national media.  I’m talking about writers like the USA Today’s Ian O’Connor.  Who, in his column, begrudgingly admits that the Yankees made a smart move signing Johnny Damon, but then tries to throw water on the Yankee fan base with this brilliant paragraph.

“Frankly, I would've preferred a 20-something like Aaron Rowand or Juan Pierre. The good news is that Damon never gets hurt. The bad news is that he's overdue to get hurt.”

What?  This is journalism?  I would expect that kind of nonsense out of some of the innumerable Boston-area bloggers on this site, but from a contributing writer of the USA Today?  Horrible.  Let’s attack his paragraph from 2 angles.

O’Connor would have preferred a 20-something like Aaron Rowand or Juan Pierre.

Wow, you don’t say.  I’m thinking the Yankees thought the same thing.  Why do you think they didn’t sign Damon until after both of those players were moved?  Another problem here is that neither was a free agent, and on the trade front the asking price was too high.  The Yankee farm system is decimated, so any package for either of those players would have required Robinson Cano, Chien-Ming Wang, or both.  Yankee GM Brian Cashman (rightly) decided that overpaying with cash for Johnny Damon was much smarter than overpaying with players for Rowand or Pierre.  O’Connor might as well blast the Damon trade because he’d rather have signed Andruw Jones or Torii Hunter.  Was his statement correct?  Yes.  Was it relevant?  Not even close.

O’Connor states Damon has remained injury free, but claims that he’s “overdue” for an injury.

Damon played in more than 92% of the Red Sox games while he was a member of the team, but according to O’Connor, he’s overdue to get hurt.  How did he slip this bunk past his editors?  According to his logic, I’m overdue to win the lottery, Jenna Jamison is overdue to win an Academy Award, and Josh Beckett is overdue to have an injury-free season.  It’s just nonsense.

While the convoluted logic of O’Connor is classic, it’s nothing compared to foxsports.com’s own Kevin Hench.  Hench wastes entirely too many words comparing Damon to the Biblical Samson, hoping that the loss of his hair somehow equals the loss of his skills. 

Sure, that’s rational. 

In the rest of the column Hench lays out the reasons why the Damon signing was bad for the Yankees.  Calling out Damon for his lack of a strong throwing arm, comparing him to Juan Encarnacion, Coco Crisp and Shea Hillenbrand, and describing him as a madman with a penchant for getting into collisions.  But, take a look at this article from the capricious Hench.  Only 6 months earlier he was praising Damon, describing him thusly:

“How are the Red Sox in first place…It starts at the top of the order, where Johnny Damon rides a 25-game hitting streak into the break. Damon is hitting .343 with 65 runs scored and earns himself more dough every time he lashes another line drive in this mother of all option years.”

A few months before the annual Red Sox collapse he describes how Damon, along with four other players, have carried the Red Sox to first place, and how these players have not just been good, but have indeed been “awesome”.

So how does Johnny Damon go from being an awesome, team carrying centerfielder to a spaghetti armed, overrated leadoff hitter with diminishing power (power is a necessity for a quality leadoff hitter since…when?) in less than half a season?  I don’t know, but it may have something to do with the Red Sox #### glasses Hench has been known to wear around town.  According to his bio, Hench is the head writer for the "Too Late with Adam Carolla" show on Comedy Central.  Just a suggestion, Kevin, but maybe Adam’s ratings will increase if the jokes you write for him are as comical as the stuff you write for foxsports.com.

You can file these 2 columns under ‘W’ for “Wishful Thinking”.  The truth is, the Red Sox were dealt a fatal blow by losing their leadoff hitter, centerfielder and golden boy.  Unless the train wreck that is the Red Sox front office can get their #### together and pull off some sort of Festivus miracle, you can also file the Red Sox...under ‘D’, for “D-E-A-D”.