By Russ Smith

It could be that I was so distracted by liberal journalists calling for articles of impeachment against President Bush—an action that would almost certainly guarantee that the GOP expands its Congressional majorities next fall—that the full magnitude of the Yanks signing Johnny Damon escaped me.

Even though J.D. throws like a girl, the latest NYC celebrity is a huge plus for Joe Torre’s team, since he has few equals at running down fly balls in center field. His addition to an already packed lineup is ominous for the Red Sox and the resuscitated Blue Jays. It doesn’t really matter that he might resemble the Bernie Williams of 2005 in a few years since his addition has already made the Yankees the A.L. East favorite, at least according to most sportswriters. I’d be more chagrinned if Brian Cashman had landed a young, workhorse-starting pitcher, but there’s time for that, and time for Boston’s management to recover. At this point in Damon’s career, I’d rather have Cleveland’s Coco Crisp—and not just because he has the coolest name in baseball—leading off for the Sox.

My most immediate concern upon reading about Damon’s sensible nod to the club who offered him the most was breaking the news to my 11-year-old son Booker, who’s dreaded since last summer that Johnny, his favorite athlete, would leave the Sox. Though very disappointed, he took this turn of events in stride, saying, “I’ll always like Johnny, but I hope he pulls a hamstring on opening day and goes on the disabled list.” That’s the spirit, I thought, and was glad I didn’t order a Damon t-shirt for Christmas. The shirts are now being sold at a 60 percent discount.

There was a lot of nonsense printed last week about Damon’s $52 million deal, but nothing came close to “Steinbrenner’s folly,” a class-war editorial in the Dec. 24 Boston Globe condemning the Yanks’ owner for spending his bucks on the best players available. The Globe writer slammed Steinbrenner for “shelling out obscene sums of money for big-name players with bad backs” in the past four years and still “fail[ing] to win a championship or even reach the World Series.” This editorialist must’ve been hitting the brandy hard if he or she couldn’t remember that in 2003 the Yanks defeated Boston for the American League championship and then went on to the Series. Or that the Yankees have made the playoffs every year since 1995.

This excerpt is maddening: “The Boss has been replicating a familiar pattern of the filthy rich, who go from amassing a fortune in something they know to squandering it in pursuits, such as art collecting and horse racing, about which they know very little and for which they require insiders’ advice… They overpay for overblown reputations. They acquire the most fashionably bred yearling for auction-topping sums only to learn their Derby hopeful has bad ankles or shin splints or a severe case of the slows. And so it goes on the diamond as well, where Steinbrenner’s high-priced stars go on cashing checks for what they did in some other city, for some other team, in seasons past.”

Maybe like Roger Clemens, the one-time Sox star who, after a two-year detour in Toronto, signed with the Yanks and helped them win two World Series.

Never mind that the current Sox owner, the non-verbal John Henry, is worth more than his New York counterpart, or that the Red Sox have the second-highest payroll in baseball, or that last year St. Theo Epstein gave Edgar Renteria $10 million a year to rack up the most errors in the Majors. In reality, despite Steinbrenner’s well-documented tantrums and dozens of mistakes, at least he’s a proprietor who has always spent the money to make sure his franchise is a competitor. I think Minnesota Twins fans wouldn’t mind a less stingy owner. The Globe editorial suggests that Steinbrenner has wasted his fortune on flashy players, while the facts are plain: He bought a team now worth about $1 billion for $10 million in 1973.

There was another howler from the Times-owned Globe the day after Damon was signed. Reporter Lisa Wangsness did some shoe-leather investigation, interviewing the hairstylist in the Back Bay who attended to J.D.’s locks. “[Damon] gave Boston a new identity,” said Mario Russo, “a new hipness, a new style.” I had no idea Boston was in need of a “new identity”—its historic relevance, kooky politicians, despicable professors at Harvard and Pedro Martinez (before he left) and David Ortiz provided plenty of “style” in my opinion.

The Times’ Lee Jenkins earns a distant second place for silliness in the Damon signing—you’d think the Yanks had stolen Albert Pujols from the Cards—with his Dec. 23 article: “Somewhere deep inside Johnny Damon, hidden under all those layers of famous scruff, was a Yankee just waiting to get out… The way Damon handles difficult questions is revealing. He often turns them into jokes, dodging them with disarming smiles and playing them down with his glib sense of humor. It is a familiar method. It is what Yankees do.”

Sure. I remember last spring when Jason Giambi, pressed about his steroid use, was at ease and joked about the BALCO investigation. And Gary Sheffield is almost as charming and convivial with the press as Barry Bonds. Incidentally, isn’t it time for a moratorium on labeling the Yankees as baseball’s “corporate” team? Just because Steinbrenner, the military buff, insists that his players cut their hair and beards, that doesn’t turn them into men wearing gray flannel suits. Derek Jeter, for one, seems to enjoy his celebrity in restaurants and clubs around Manhattan, trolling for eager women as enthusiastically as a young Hollywood actor.

Anyway, by the time April rolls around, I’m confident the Sox will field a team that equals its recent incarnations and the rivalry with the Yanks won’t be threatened.

—December 26

More seriously, how can you explain Jonathan Alter’s unhinged online Dec. 19 Newsweek column, in which he thunders: “We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.” And Joe Conason, in last week’s New York Observer, was just as hysterical: “Recklessly and audaciously, George W. Bush is driving the nation whose laws he swore to uphold into a constitutional crisis. He has claimed the powers of a medieval monarch and defied the other two branches of government to deny him.”

You hear, from certain elements of the Bush-hating media, about Constitutional crises as often as the absurd cliché that the Yankee ballplayers are the embodiment of “class.” No wonder Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor who far prefers John McCain over Bush, to write in the magazine’s current issue: “What is one to say about these media—Democratic spokesmen for contemporary American liberalism? That they have embarrassed and discredited themselves. That they cannot be taken seriously as critics. It would be good to have a responsible opposition party in the United States today. It would be good to have a serious mainstream media. Too bad we have neither.”

But at least, as Alter and Conason point out, we do have a medieval dictator.