Last Sunday in April

Lenny2 Still wound up from last night’s game.  Lenny should be thanking his teammates for saving his cheese yet again (although he seemed to calm down the last couple of innings he pitched).  I really think (hope?) the team can capitalize on this with Schilling on the mound today.  The Rays are throwing Scott Kazmir out there and he always gives us trouble.  Then there’s all those hit batsmen this weekend.  I think (worry?) that Curt might want to retaliate a bit.

Although, a good basebrawl might help bring this team together, much like the comeback win last night hopefully did.

Johnny Damon is back in Fenway tomorrow.  There, I wrote it.  Everyone happy now?  I spent a good amount of time last week looking around for tickets to Monday’s game.  Finally decided that paying that kind of money to be in Fenway just to see the reaction Johnny gets was certainly not worth it.  Because, the truth is, I’ll be booing him at home.  Heck, I already do.  But to be IN Fenway and hear people booing him…well, I’m not sure how I would react to that.  When I found out how well he played yesterday – and then saw the box score, my reaction was "well, at least he wasn’t the reason they won"…as if it was okay he did well because it didn’t necessarily help the Yankees.

Don’t get me wrong.   I still think he’s a liar.  And I think he’s greedy and publicity hungry.  And there is a huge part of me that can’t wait for the fans to boo him.  I just don’t want to be in the middle of it.

Some interesting quotes today in the Boston Globe from Globe sportswriters.  Now, Chris Snow is a fine writer, but he has obviously no clue of what it is to be a Red Sox fan. 

"I expect Damon will be warmly received…He rather definitely and consistently has said he never wanted to leave, and had the Sox split the difference between their offer of $40 million and the Yankees’ offer of $52 million, he would have stayed. Whether he actually would have is immaterial now."

Guess what, Chris?  No it isn’t.

Gordon Edes, on the other hand, totally gets it. 

"He did what many of us would do: He took the best offer. And because it was from George Steinbrenner, and because he has talked so much about how he loves being a Yankee, I suspect he’ll get barbecued tomorrow night."

The most interesting quote, though, comes from the Curly-Haired Boyfriend himself (CHB to we Red Sox fans), Dan Shaughnessy.  Who begins his quote with:

"This is a tough one. Fans at the ballpark tend to be a lot more forgiving than those who call sports radio"

Seemingly indicating that Dan neither listens to sports radio, nor visits Fenway Park.

I have no way of knowing what will really happen, although the Globe (via the Boston Dirt Dogs site which I absolutely refuse to link here) seems to be on a big push to "cheer" Johnny.  Truth is, I’m truly starting to not care.  I want my team to do well; I want the Yankees to fail.  Pretty much black and white right there.

I have written about my four year-old niece Madison here many times before.  All winter long, and during spring training as well, she maintained that although he Johnnydamonjuly2005avalon"broke" her heart, she still loved Johnny Damon.  We did nothing to discourage her (and she would remind us that she still wouldn’t cheer for the Yankees, but she did like Johnny).  Last weekend she started doing something that surprised me a little.  The Yankees game was on and Johnny was up so my sister pointed him out to Madison.  Madison put her fingers to her nose (her symbol for what she thinks the Yankees ‘do’) and surprised everyone.  "You don’t like Johnny anymore?" my sister asked.  "Not if he’s on the Yankees", Madison replied.

Although, she made a point to tell me that she isn’t getting rid of any of her Johnny Damon stuff – and there is a LOT of it – because that was when he was "A Red Sox" so it’s "still good"!

(Both pictures today taken by me last year at Bronson Arroyo’s cd release party in Boston)

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