A lot of people in the national media are making Johnny Damon’s move to the Yankees into a larger-than-life event. It shifts the balance of power in the American League, the pundits say, and that may very well be true. The lineup that Joe Torre will pencil in on Opening Day 2006 will probably be the most well-rounded lineup since the last work stoppage in 1994.        

But what the media lacks more and more in this age of instant information is the ability to look beyond tomorrow. Sure, Damon to the Yanks is a coup for the clean-shaven men in pinstripes this season, but what will it look like in 2008 or 2009, when Damon is 35 and making $13 million?

The most common comparison for Damon is Bernie Williams, and while some will write off the latter’s decline to injuries, age has also surely played an important role. The similarities between Damon and Williams are intriguing: in 1999 and 2000, when Bernie Baseball was in his 30- and 31-year old seasons, he averaged 155 games played, 183 hits, 32 doubles, 28 home runs, and 11 stolen bases. His batting average over those two seasons comes to about .330, and his slugging percentage was about .545. (Statistics like RBI are more reflective of a player’s role on his team, so the more significant differences between Williams’ and Damon’s statistics in those seasons is not as relevant to the comparison.)

Damon just turned 32 at the beginning of November, so his 30- and 31-year old seasons were 2004 and 2005. In those years, Damon averaged 149 games played, 194 hits, 35 doubles, 15 home runs and 19 stolen bases. He hit about .308 over those two years and slugged slightly north of .450.

I have not just cherry-picked statistics, either. If you look at Damon’s and Williams’ numbers across the board, in those two seasons, the only major differences come in home runs, RBIs and slugging percentage, in which categories Williams had the advantage. It is even fair to say that their defensive strengths (range) and weaknesses (arm strength) are very similar.

Why is it not reasonable, then, to anticipate that Damon’s decline will likely mirror Williams’? If anything, in their example seasons, Williams was the better player! And yet by 2003 and 2004, when Bernie was the same age Damon will be in the last two years of his recently-signed contract, Williams was hitting .262 with a slugging percentage more than 100 points lower than during his peak seasons.

The moral of the story is that, yes, the Yankees have gotten themselves a fantastic player for 2006 and, likely, 2007 as well. Damon’s performance over the next two seasons is not, however, the reason the Red Sox were unwilling to pony up the big bucks. While people rightly say that the Red Sox are still on a different salary structure than most of Major League Baseball, it is false to assume that there are only two tiers. The Yankees form a level all to themselves, where they can absorb $15 million mistakes like the Royals absorbed 9^th-inning losses in 2005.

It is still imperative that the Red Sox be more fiscally responsible than the Yankees. Letting Damon go to the Bronx in 2006 allows the Sox to make a trade for a player who in 2008 and 2009 will be closer to his peak years than his decline years, something that can not be said about Johnny Jesus. The “gaffe” that Sox co-GMs Hoyer and Cherington committed when they allowed Damon to go to the Yankees might not win the division for the boys from Beantown in 2006, but it could very well do that in 2008 and 2009.

Maybe I’m not a true fan; maybe I have an inferiority complex; maybe I just don’t like Coach K.

            Whatever the explanation is, I can’t stand it when people maintain that I should root for Duke (or North Carolina, or any other ACC team) when they play an out of conference game, simply because they are in the ACC. In Duke’s matchup with Memphis, for example, people told me that I should root for Duke because we need “ACC solidarity” or we need to make sure that “the ACC is the best conference.”

            Personally, I don’t care. I love Wake Forest basketball, and I love it more than I love our conference. Now, given that we are in the ACC, which is typically a very strong conference, I may lack the urgency of fans from the Pac-10, MAC or Atlantic 10, whose teams are constantly fighting for respect for their conferences.

            After all, shouldn’t I be concerned with keeping our reputation as one of the nation’s top basketball conferences? Isn’t the Big East going to step into our stead and replace us? What about the Big Ten, which basketball “purists” throughout the Heartland will claim, with a straight face, is the best conference in the nation?

            For me, though, it’s all about Wake Forest. Our biggest rivals are Duke and North Carolina (despite ESPN’s efforts to tell us that NC State and Georgia Tech fill those roles), and there are few things I enjoy less than seeing either of those teams win. Why should I do something I hate to do (root for them), just because my team happens to play in the same conference as our counterparts to the east?

            Whether Duke had beaten Memphis or not (nope), and whether or not North Carolina had choked against Santa Clara again (they didn’t), the Demon Deacons aren’t really affected. Those teams will be just as difficult to beat whether they come to Winston-Salem with zero losses or ten; either way, we will have to play a fantastic game each time to emerge victorious.

            And if, come Selection Sunday, we have played well enough to make the field of 65, we will make it. If we haven’t played well enough, we won’t. It’s pretty simple, really. Maybe being in the ACC will help us, or maybe it will hurt us, but either way, in the end it comes down to our team and how we perform. If Wake Forest leaves it up to the Selection Committee, then we probably don't deserve to make the tournament anyways, conference be darned.

           Call me naïve or stupid, but I’d rather not make the tournament and be successful in the NIT than make it undeservedly and flame out in the first round in an 8-9 game.

            Or maybe I just dislike Coach K that much…

            First of all, it will be very nice to follow football this weekend at a normal hour; it can really throw off your schedule when “early” games start at 6pm and you have to stay up (literally) all night if you want to watch Colts-Patriots on Monday night. And that coming from a guy who’s not even that big of a football fan; a fall semester abroad would be even tougher for someone who was a diehard!

            Bill Simmons wrote an article the other day entitled “Perpetual Putridity,” that delineated a number of reasons for the low-level of play that is plaguing the NFL. One of these reasons stuck out to me: the number of players getting injured for a significant amount of time. Granted, I’m only 21 and thus don’t really have any concept of what football was like in the 1970s and even the 1980s, but it seems logical that as guys get bigger, stronger and faster, they also become more likely to hurt each other.

            Injuries are part of the game, sure, and I also don’t want to be perceived as simply making excuses for the relative decline of my Pats this season. On the other hand, though, doesn’t it seem like every year there are more dings and nicks that cause players to miss a few games here and there? I’m not sure that there have been any more season-ending injuries this year than in previous ones, but it seems like we’re reaching the point where you are an “ironman” if you play 16 games in a season.

            The spate of injuries can probably be attributed to a variety of factors: advances in health and medicine have allowed players to return from previously career-ending injuries, but who’s to say that player’s body has really returned to 100% of its previous strength? Or perhaps new knowledge of the body and better strength training techniques have made players run faster and collide more violently? Maybe it’s a combination of those and other factors…

            No matter how it has happened, Simmons is right. While “parity” may have increased in the NFL, is it really that good if you have 8-8 teams making the playoffs? The fact that the Colts have a chance to go 16-0 probably says even more about the poor state of professional football than anything else; the Colts are a talented and well-coached team, but they are not invincible. I can’t help but feel that some of the Patriots teams of the recent past would have knocked off the 2005 Colts; last year’s Eagles probably would have also stood a good chance against Dungy’s boys, too.

            But those matchups won’t happen, and we won’t see the Colts face off against a team the caliber of the Patriots or Eagles of years past. Why not? Because the NFL has trained, supplemented and horse-collared itself into the “parity” that it so trumpets, and yet has managed to deliver an increasingly mediocre product every year.

    Most people in the United States wouldn’t envy the English for much: our former colonial controllers have a struggling higher education system, rising alcoholism and a decreasing role on the world political stage. One thing we should envy the Englishmen for, however, is their 2006 World Cup draw.

    As one of eight seeded teams, England was basically guaranteed that it would not have to play another of the world’s traditional powerhouses. And when all of the miniature soccer balls had been drawn by legends like Pele, Lothar Matthaus and Johan Cruyff, things went very well for England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side.

    Common sentiment around England is that this is the best team, on paper, that England has fielded in a very long time. They can start a world-class player at every position. Just imagine this lineup: Rooney and Owen up top, Gerrard and Lampard in the middle with Beckham and Joe Cole on the flanks, Ferdinand, Campbell, Ashley Cole and Terry in the back. You would be hard-pressed to find a squad this side of Brazil with more big-name talents.

    I talked to a couple of Englishmen in a pub Friday night after the draw was completed, and they were absolutely thrilled: Group B contains England, Paraguay, Sweden and World Cup newcomer Trinidad & Tobago. The Swedes could give England a run for its money for the group title, but those two teams should have little difficulty advancing to the second round.

    Football fans in England have very high expectations for their team this coming June: one said that he would be satisfied with nothing less than an appearance in the final match, and gave the team an honest shot at walking away with the hardware when all is said and done.

    The United States, on the other hand, had incredibly slim World Cup championship hopes before Friday’s draw, but anyone who was holding out hope would be foolish to think that way now. There were two non-seeded teams that nobody wanted to face: the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, ranked numbers 2 and 3, respectively, in the most recent FIFA world rankings. (Since World Cup seeds are based on a combination of the FIFA rankings and performance in the 2 most recent World Cups, those teams were left unseeded. Neither the Czech Republic nor the Netherlands qualified for World Cup 2002.)

    It was just Bruce Arena’s luck, though, that he would be drawn into one of two “groups of death:” Italy, the Czech Republic and Ghana (perhaps the best African team in the tournament) were all slotted into Group E, making the USA’s chances of advancing to the round of 8, as it did in 2002, slim. What’s more, if Landon Donovan and company could manage to sneak into the second round by taking second place in group E (the most likely scenario for advancement), their likely second-round opponent would be, you guessed it, world number one Brazil.

    It’s a shame that the draw fell out the way it did, not only for the US team’s chances, but for the overall good of soccer in the United States. The unexpected World Cup success in Korea and Japan in 2002 led to increased coverage for the Men’s National Team, including a Sports Illustrated cover and numerous appearances on major media outlets.

    The typical uninformed American sports fan, however, wants success and success only. It’s not worth getting into soccer if we aren’t going to be “world champions” at it, like we claim our league champions to be in basketball, baseball and football. Failure to advance to the second round of the upcoming World Cup will be seen as another reason to avoid learning more about soccer; the US team had momentum building after the run in 2002, but a loss will change that quickly.

    Sadly, though, most Americans will not take the time to realize that, while not the world’s preeminent soccer nation, the United States is a side on the rise, and by 2010 may be considered a challenger for the World Cup hardware. But that is another four years from now, four years for football, baseball and (most recently) lacrosse to glean athletes from the world’s most popular sport.

    It’s too bad we’re not England.