Remember: Everything anyone ever says about a baseball-contract negotiation is rubbish. The team is lying, the player is lying, the agent is really lying. Everyone is trying to pressure the other side through the media, and the stories and rumors you read are merely negotiation stances. We all play along because talking about baseball in December is the only way to make it through December. So: Johnny Damon.
Johnny Damon, still reeling a bit from the Yankees’ power move of trading for Curtis Granderson, moving Damon an inch closer to leaving town, is making his thoughts known to the Post. Kind of. Not really.
“My friends and family are calling to tell me about this offer and what I want, and it’s all wrong,” Damon told The Post yesterday. “The Yankees haven’t made an offer and I haven’t told them what I want. Everything else is not true.”
What Damon is referring to, we think, are the repeated reports that he and agent Scott Boras want longer than a two-year deal for Damon, more than the Yankees are willing to pay. (Smartly, if you ask us.) Damon, who points out in the piece that he’s pretty much hanging out with his family in Arizona trying not to think about it, was surely instructed by Boras to call the Post and check in, letting them know he’s a reasonable fellow and just wants to go out there and play ball, or something. Then he’ll go back to his family in Arizona and stop thinking about it until Boras calls him back.
Every December baseball story is a lie.