Johnny Damon was a terrific ballplayer. He was memorable for his play on the field and his hair off the field. He also cares about health and is now an owner of a sports drink company called A-GAME.
“There are a lot of ingredients in our product that work for you. Sometimes you mix some vitamins and minerals and they counteract each other. Hydration has always been a huge issue because I always had calf issues,” said Damon. “The big reason we made this drink is back in 2012, it was so hot and a couple of football players died. We don’t want that ever. It can be coaches telling everyone to keep on running and to keep doing their thing. Make sure you’re a man. Unfortunately, if your body isn’t running properly it can fail you.”
Damon is a player who is close to being a baseball Hall of Famer even though he fell off the ballot with only a 1.9% vote from the baseball writers. He played with Carlos Beltran in Kansas City and if he makes it then that gives Damon a better chance down the road.
“It hurts knowing that I gave it my all. I won a couple of championships,” Damon stated. “If you look at my number compared to Ichiro, production-wise, there are going to be 300 more RBIs and 300 more runs scored. Those are what wins you baseball games. I was in a lot more playoffs than Ichiro. I only went to two All-Star games, but I could have gone to a lot more. A lot of times I had coaches ask me if it meant a lot for me to go. Or did I want four days off and I wanted four days off? Managers want to take their players. I am hoping the veterans can see the numbers I have compared to players getting in.”
Then we talked about his fielding and what I would term an underrated arm in the outfield.
“I feel like I should have won a couple of gold gloves. I had a couple of American League records. While I played and unfortunately when you don’t look pretty diving, you don’t get those accolades,” said Damon. “And we had tremendous outfielders like Torii Hunter, who deserved to win every single year. Andruw Jones. They played the outfield great. Hunter learned a lot by watching me play center field. His cousin Basil Shabaaz told him to look at this guy playing center field.
“They always talked crap about my arm when Manny (Ramirez) would cut the ball off. The perfect one-hopper to Bill Mueller. And then I hear it. Sometimes you have bad throws. Boston replaced me with Coco Crisp in the outfield and my arm was way better. Nick Swisher was our right fielder in New York and Brett Gardner said ‘How come they say you don’t have a strong arm? Because your arm is better than most I see and better than Swisher’. But unfortunately, you can’t fight those battles. Every team I was on nine-hole hitters or second-hole hitters had career years. Frankie Menechino had his only good year when I was hitting in front of him. Derek Jeter’s numbers started to spike again like the days when Chuck Knoblauch was doing a great job of leading off.”
My childhood friend is the one who created the drink, Ron Henry, and he needed some backers and some money to get this thing going. So I took the lead and we created an incredible drink with no artificial flavors or coloring. No forever chemicals. No red dyestuff. Clean. We are very happy with the movement to “Make America Healthy Again”.
When Damon was on the Red Sox. I wondered if the players believed in the “Curse of the Bambino”.
“We believed in it. In 2003, we had that nice lead going into Game 7 and when they came back against Pedro, It was deflating and we had a tough road ahead of us. Especially when Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time if not the great pitcher of all time, we knew it was tough,” Damon remembered. “We believed in the ghosts of Yankee Stadium. The Curse of the Bambino.
“We had a few breaks in 2004 that helped us finally erase that curse. But that curse wasn’t going to be erased until we won the World Series. And fortunately, we were on fire against the St. Louis Cardinals.”
There was a time when Damon wanted to play for the New York Mets.
“When the Yankees didn’t sign me I went to the Winter Meetings which were in Orlando. I was talking to a few of the Mets players and I was like I will take a one-year deal to stay in New York. They all kind of looked at me like really, you would take a one-year deal, but the next day they signed Jason Bay,” Damon said with a smile.
Damon is in one Hall of Fame.
“I was just inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame for my nine years with the Royals. I was so proud of the Royals when they won in 2015,” Damon added.
Buy his drink. It’s good. It feels good after a workout and the grape is my favorite flavor.
