open letter from a fan

For my regular readers, I hope you'll pardon the somewhat out of the ordinary subject. For anyone else new, welcome!

An open letter to Johnny Damon

Johnny,

I watched Monday night's game, which brought about a number of momentous events: the return of Doug Mirabelli to the Red Sox, just in time to catch for Tim Wakefield once again; and your return to Fenway Park, in the uniform of the archrival. These events sparked a polar opposite set of feelings for me, joy at the return of a valuable player, and a bittersweet reminder that a valuable player is truly gone.

I must confess, while I understand the overwhelming majority reaction you did get, baseball being a competitive spectator sport at times, I felt you were given an undeserved hard time. From what I understand in following the off season reports, it's not like you left because you didn't want to be part of the Red Sox anymore. You were the unfortunate casualty of the business of baseball. With the mission to rebuild a championship team based on defense, speed, and long term staying power (i.e. young, fresh players), your desire for a long term contract that reflected your continual contributions to the team didn't fit the mission unfortunately. You continue to be one of the best lead-off hitters in the game, you have the speed to be a threat to steal, and you can cover a lot of ground in center field. However, I can understand from a business side of things the concerns with a long term contract: you are not getting any younger and last season saw you battling shoulder issues.

That being said, I want to thank you. Thank you for hustling every day and giving the Red Sox everything you had on the field. Thank you for your endurance and ability to play through the pain. Thank you for your constant smile and love of the game. You have been one of my favorite players these past few years, and if I actually still collected baseball cards I might even consider adding your 2006 card to the mix. I wish you luck in this season and continued success. However, I hope you understand if that luck and success is only extended when you are NOT playing against the Red Sox, in which case I'd rather you not be a factor in the game. I wouldn't want you to play horribly or be useless at the plate, but I also wouldn't want you to be the one driving in the winning runs - which turns bittersweet to sour.

Thank you Johnny, you are missed.

Sincerely,
A life-long Red Sox fan