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I'll admit it right here and now; I'm a Yankees fan, so this is the last book I ever thought I would be reading. However, being that Damon is now an established and respected Yankees player, I figured I'd give this book a read just to see what Damon was like when he was on "the other side," so to speak. Honestly, I was surprised at some of the negative reviews that I've read on here about this book; people complained that Damon came off as arrogant, they complained that he totally cheated on his first wife, and openly talked about having a cell phone exculsively for one-night stands (which I found hilarious, but I'll get to that in a minute). I don't mean to be rude here at all, but I think that several of the negative reviews on this book came from disgruntled Red Sox fans who were furious at Damon for signing with the Yankees, and were looking for an excuse to judge this book negatively. Don't get me wrong; I dont' blame them, and if I were a Sox fan, I'd probably do the same thing, but seeing as many comments here come from the year 2005 or after (Damon signed with the Yankees in 2005), the reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt. I had to ask myself; If Damon were still a beloved member of the Red Sox today, would some of these Sox fans be calling the book "boring" and "stupid"? It's worth considering. Because if, say, Carl Pavano wrote a book, I know I'd be first in line to read it and then slam it, no matter what. Because Carl Pavano sucks. But moving on. Personally, I found this book to be fun, enjoyable, and interesting; it's a quick read, so I finished it in about 3 days. I was laughing at certain parts, cringing at others (like when Damon gives a play-by-play of the 2004 ALCS disaster...like I said, I'm a Yankees fan, so certain parts were hard for me to read), and actually learning from other parts (Damon just a great job explaining just what goes on during player "arbitration," something I didn't know about before).
I figure I'll just go through some of the complaints/issues/comments people have had on this book and give me own two cents, for what it's worth.
Debate Issue #1: Damon comes off as really taken with himself>>> I disagree. Honestly, it's actually really refreshing to have a baseball player just come out and tell the truth for once. What I mean is this: to get to play MLB ball, you have to be really freakin' talented. And you have had to be really freakin' talented since you were a kid. Damon isn't trying to sell himself to anyone; he's just telling it the way it is, like "I knew I had special talent as a kid because of reasons x, y, and z and yea, I knew that I was really good and could make it to the majors." Damon gives several examples of why he was special at the game, and he leaves it at that. It's not arrogance; he's just telling it the way it is. I wouldn't want him to be so unendlingly modest that the reader never quite knows why Damon made it to the majors; Damon tells us that he had a rifle throwing arm, a great batting eye, and impressive athleticism. Interestingly enough, one of the things that Damon is criticized for today is for having a weak throwing arm; as it turns out, Damon used to have a cannon for an arm, but he fell onto his shoulder during his school-ball days, and he injured it permanantly, and had to learn a whole new way to throw. So that explains his "weak" arm today.
I call Damon's honesty about his talent "refreshing," because I'm so tired of ballplayers downplaying their obvious talent; I don't want some steroid slob to be all "I'm the greatest in the world," but when players hit .350 with 40 home runs and 100 RBIs and say things like "Oh i just got lucky" or "oh i owe it all to my teammates" or "oh I"m really not that good," I just want to strangle them. It's like listening to a supermodel say "oh you should see me without makeup" or "I'm really just a dork!" It's enough to make you scream. Damon is honest about why he is good enough to be in the majors, and he leaves it at that.
Another reason why he's not arrogant? He is constantly self-deprecating; he chides himself on making bad plays or a bad out more than once. When he was with the Sox, he makes it a point to say that everyone had a career year one season "except me." He takes the blame for stretching out the 2004 ALCS as long as it did, because he wasn't hitting and he was the leadoff man. Damon is constantly praising and admiring other players as well; it's always "this guy was a monster" or "this guy was the best pitcher I ever saw," and "so and so was remarkable", etc. Damon praises other players and teammates much more than he praises himself. All of the "praise" Damon gives himself is early in the book, when he's explaining why he was good enough to get to the majors. Other than that, he's more likely to praise teammates.
Damon mentions a few good plays that he has, once he says "this was the best catch I ever made" and so on, but he mostly talks about other guys' big hits, their walk-off wins, etc. In fact, Damon's huge grand slam that all but won the 2004 ALCS was so glossed over in the book, I had to go back and read it a few times to verify that Damon was talking about THE grand slam, one of his biggest moments as a BoSox player. Had Damon been arrogant, he would have focused much more time and energy on his biggest hit of the season, but he kind of rushes through it and focuses more on the pitching and the other guys' plays.
Some people also had issues with the fact that Damon talks about his hair too much; he mentions it twice, and I think you have to understand Damon's sense of humor. If you've ever seen him interviewed, you know how awkward he can come across. He says "what can I say, I have good hair, my hair is my strength" but the tone is oozing with humor; he's not entirely serious. He also mentions ripping off his batting helmet once to let his good hair "flow," and I was just laughing; he's just joking folks. He's like "yeah, yeah, it's all the hair, the hair is the reason I'm a good ballplayer!" He laughs at how his hair became such a big thing, how ESPN came to watch him get his hair cut, and he plays along like a good sport. But he's laughing all the way, he sees it as a kind of joke/karma. I think people are taking him way too seriously when they accuse him of being obsessed with his hair; rather, everyone else was obsessed with it, and he just gave the people what they wanted. In reality, he was just too lazy to cut it!
Debate Issue #2: Damon is a Man-Whore who Cheated on His Wife>>>>> This one is a bit more difficult, but here's the thing: there are two sides to every story. Damon characterizes his ex-wife Angie as a jealous, demanding, needy nag who was very insecure, and constantly accussed Damon of cheating on her, especially when Damon's baseball career began to take off. She was obviously no fool; she knew how women are with hot, young baseball players, and she was not secure enough in her relationship to trust her husband. So i can see her side of it, being a bit insecure. However, if Damon's portrayal of Angie is accurate, then wow, she sounds like a nightmare. Damon says that Angie would accuse him of cheating nearly everyday, for really no reason. Damon says that he wasn't cheating on her until much later, when he knew that their realtionship was going to end, and he had fallen out of love with Angie. I can understand Damon's perspective as well; it's never fun to be accused of cheating constantly, and Damon also brings up the fact that Angie was not very supportive of his baseball career; Damon says that when he returned home after a long season, he would just want to "surf, fish, relax" and "not pick out furniture." I get the feeling that Damon, in other words, just wanted to kick back and have fun and Angie was one of those "oh good, not that you're back you can do this, this, this, and this." It's can't be easy being the wife of a pro-ballplayer, but Angie chose not to move to Oakland with Damon, and she routinely stayed behind.
Damon goes on to say that once he had finally been pushed to the point of not loving Angie anymore, he did cheat on her. He doesn't try to justify it, nor does he seem particularly proud of it, but he's just telling it like it is. Yes, he does mention that he had a separate cell-phone exclusively for women, and I was lauging my head off. Why? Because Damon's tone sounds like he was just in awe of this whole thing, that suddenly because he was young, handsome, and a major-league ballplayer, every woman in town wanted a piece of him. He does have some pretty funny stories about how he would have a one-night stand and then he would hear on the radio the next day that the woman had said she was his "girlfriend" and blah blah blah. Damon would just be like "oh my god, this is insane" and marvel at this new, crazy lifestyle. At some point, he also met his future-now wife Michelle, and he did start dating her when he was still technically married to Angie.
Was Damon wrong to cheat? Sure. But it's a difficult situation; Damon says that he only stayed with Angie "so I would get to see my kids" (he had two with Angie). That's hard; divorce means that one parent is going to get to see the kids more often, and Damon obviously loves his kids. Like I said, I can't be on a high-horse about this because I don't know the whole story and I obviously wasn't there. Damon is very honest about how he felt about his marriage towards the end, and I really don't think he adds in the womanizing thing to show off; I think he's just trying to give people a sense of the temptations that are out there when you're a pro ballplayer.
Debate Issue #3: Book is Repetitive, etc>>> To a certain extent, yes I agree. In fact, unless you really kind of already know the game of baseball, you might get a bit lost in the translation. Damon goes really in-depth into certain games, and gives play-by-plays of others, and he throws around a lot of player names, dates, and statistics that might be lost on some people. Like I said, I enjoyed it, but I'm a huge baseball fan who's played the game and seen my fair share of MLB matchups; if you just like Damon but don't really know much about baseball technicalities, you might become a bit bored. I found myself skimming a couple of times, mostly when Damon is going play-by-play over games that I've already watched, such as the 2004 ALCS; a couple of times I was like "dude, I was THERE! I don't need such a detailed recap!!"
Where this book really sparkles is the personal stories that Damon shares about his teammates and the inner-goings-on of the clubhouse; Damon's sunny demeanor really shines through when he talks about the fun times he's had with Boston teammates, such as running across the street to a bar with his teammates in full uniform to celebrate a big win, getting called up onstage to sing with his favorite bands at concerts, and playing pranks on newbies (there is a pretty hilarious gem Damon and the BoSox pulled on Kevin Youkilos). Damon talks about how Kevin Millar would crack jokes about guys' bodies when they would shower, and how certain teammates would throw a football around the clubhouse and you had to watch your back if you "didn't want to get smoked with it." Damon's free-spirited nature that most Boston, and now Yankee fans, are familiar with shines through as he talks about doing pull-ups completely naked, or how Kevin Youkilos would set up a dozen chairs for Damon to knock over. I love reading about things like this, like the commaraderie that comes from being on a team, and the funny things like the above mentioned that guys do to loosen up. Apparently, David Ortiz would yell "you're all a bunch of bitches" and then laugh while everyone else had no idea what brought that up. Manny Ramirez would pit his Reebok rep against Damon's Puma rep and threaten to switch right then and there.
There is also a pretty funny story involving Damon, a pot of mums, and a pumpkin, but I won't spoil anything. Honestly, Damon is the type of guy who is like "Wow, they are paying me millions just to play ball?? SWEET!!" He's just a guy who loves the game and loves to have fun; he says a couple of times that he would be happy just playing in a beer-league. He's very laid-back, but serious about his personal game. He comes across as someone who really revived what was a tired, bitter Boston clubhouse. Damon didn't do it single-handedly, nor does he claim that he does, but he basically says "this is why we were special this year." Any boastful quotes that Damon has have to be taken with a grain of salt; it's a guy thing, and it's a ballplayer thing, so I didn't have an issue with it.
The book isn't perfect; I have certain issues with it. For example, Damon's portrayal of the Yankees is very biased, at best. He really does paint the Yankees out to be "the Evil Empire," and he makes Boston out to be the scrappy, good-guy underdogs while the Yankees are the overpaid, uptight, classless millionaires who just keep stealing Boston's championship hopes away. He calls Alex Rodriguez out for slapping the ball out of a Boston player's hand, and calls it a "disgrace" and "cheating." Interesting, because Damon is quick to say that he does not think that steroids are cheating when he talks about how his good friend Jason Giambi got busted. So Alex alledgedly swiping a ball away is an absolute disgrace, but steroids aren't? Hmmmm. To be fair, I don't consider steroids cheating either, but I think Damon poured on the "Yankee evil" a little strongly at times. Also, he mentions that after the Yankees took a 3-0 ALCS lead in 2004, Mariano said that Boston was "finished" and Gary Sheffield called them "a walking disaster." I dont' ever remember these quotes. First of all, I highly doubt that Mariano would have said anything like that, and if he said anything it all, it was misconstrued by the Boston press. Sheffield would say something stupid like that, so I have no doubt that he did, but not Mo. He's too smart to say something so jinx-worthy. Damon is quick to jump all over that, and portray the Yankees as classless, arrogant a-holes. So it was pretty one-sided at times, and like I said, the play-by-play that Damon gives can get a little tiring when you've already seen the games. I would rather have Damon's perspective as the games are going on, or what was being said in the dugout during those games.
On a final note, it was interesting to read this because there is some foreshadowing; there were already clear signs that Joe Torre, Damon's future manager, did not care for him. Though Damon had the numbers two years running, Torre failed to select him for the All-Star team (and there were rumors around the Yankees that Torre thought Damon was a clown). Damon is clearly miffed about that in the book, and we now know that Torre had some less than flattering things to say about Damon in his book "The Yankee Years." In addition, at the end of the book, Damon sounds like he wants to be a Red Sox forever; we all know that it didn't turn out that way because, well, he plays left field for the Yankees now and we're more than happy to have him. It's just strange because Damon was clearly really into being a Red Sox when he wrote this book, and you have to wonder what exactly changed to make Damon sign for the Sox's arch-enemy. We know that the Sox refused to offer Damon a 5-year contract like he wanted, and would only offer him a 3-year. Damon comes across as the type of player who is affable and cheerful, but also someone who can be sensitive and get hurt feelings; Damon was probably hurt by the Sox's offer and felt that he wasn't being valued enough in Boston, and so he went to the team that offered him a longer contract. Who knows. All I know is that this book is a fun, interesting read and it's humorous tone is perfect for the baseball enthusiast or Damon fan. I had fun with it (except for the Boston winning parts). If you already don't like Johnny Damon, then you're not going to like this book. It's very Damon-esque; slightly awkward in some parts, slightly crazy in others, very funny, and almost unendingly friendly; rarely does Damon talk about anyone negatively, except for his ex-wife and occasionally A-Rod (but who didn't have a problem with A Rod a few years ago?). I enjoyed this book, and I enjoy watching Johnny Damon play ball.
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