Oh the pain, William, the pain

It’s now official -- the Red Sox are going to suck next year, and we’re right back to where we were despair-wise before they won the World Series. I refer of course to the defection of Johnny Damon to the Yankees. The worst part isn’t that they gave him lots more money, which is SOP for Steinbrenner. It’s bad that, if you believe JD, the pathetically disorganized Sox management didn’t pursue him aggressively. It’s worse that JD we’ll have to see one of our favorite players in home whites in Yankee Stadium, quite possibly playing in another World Series while the Sox are catching up on sleep and golfing. We went through this before with Boggs and Clemens, though we didn’t love them as much as we love Johnny. The worst part is that he will, presumably with no qualms, adhere to the Yankee rule about hair: short on the head and none on the face. So now not only must we see Johnny in pinstripes, but also shorn of his very identity, willingly transformed into a girly-man for the sake of cash. I just can’t bear to look.

As fans, we have three choices: take the moral high ground and root for Johnny to do well individually, hate his guts for sleeping with the enemy and hope for a poor year from him as well as his loathsome team, or simply turn away in sorrow and become fans of curling. It’s just another blow of bitter irony that as a surprise Hanukkah present, I got T-shirts for Ben and me with Johnny’s image rendered to resemble Che Guevara with this wording: "Resist Yankee Hegemony! Wage Relentless Struggle Against the Steinbrenner Clique! Strive to Emulate Comrade Johnny!" (courtesy of the New York-based Benevolent Loyal Order of the Honorable Ancient Redsox Diehard Sufferers, a.k.a. BLOHARDS). I’m not sure what he’ll say when he opens it next week, but I’m sure it will be memorable.