And on the third day, Pete Rose again

To be honest, I have no real unifying theme to synch up with the title. It's just one of those things. Sure, I could talk about the dangers of arrogance and vanity, but I think it's apples and oranges. Johnny Damon is not Pete Rose. Johnny Damon might be Captain Caveman, and Johnny Damon certainly looks like Christ(this really inspired the title), but JD is not, I dare say, betting on games he plays in, in large part due to the mathematics involved. Depending on who you talk to - either Alanis Morrissette or any other literate human - Johnny's "idiot" commentary was not necessarily ironic.

Christ is now a Yankee. This statement is wrong to me on nearly every level, but deep down it has a sort of allegorical fit. Christ moves to New York, shaves his beard, cuts his hair, and in essence converts. The only true religion in Manhattan, of course, is money, and Johnny has been baptized by their John, Scott Boras.

A lot of people in marketing-victim Red Sox Nation are disturbed tonight, wondering how the Red Sox management could possibly have let JD get away. How could they not have jumped at the opportunity to pay Johnny Damon more money per year than Vlad Guerrero!!??!! Yes, I am only partially joking. No, wait, I was joking just there, in the previous sentence I was totally serious. Furious George is going to pay JD more money than Vlad Guerrero (and Miguel Tejada for that matter).

Listen people. Captain Christman is a consistently good ballplayer. In certain games he is a great, even transcendant ballplayer (for reference see Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS). But he is 32 years old. He throws like Bill Gates. He has had a litany of injuries that on my softball team would guarantee him starting status as reward for all-out play until we were propping up his corpse at third, but which do not make me give him a four year deal at YES network money.

He is a liability in a multi-year deal due to his age, niggling dings, and propensity toward what I like to call "Southern craziness". His second half stats in 2005 were not great, generously speaking. His BABIP was unnaturally high at .343 for the season in 2005 - he was essentially "using the Force" on many of his ground balls and soft bloopers. This statistic is very unlikely to be repeated (although Rod Carew says hi).

The real issues here are twofold:

1) Christ left the Sox for the Spankies. Ordinarily, this would be insufferable, tragic, but honestly - has ever a retard groomed himself for that team more than JD? The low IQ, the self-absorption, the purely evil agent, the waxed chest, the wife with fake tits - he has been playing for NYC off the field for years. It's time he went home. Let him go.

2) We have no Centerfielder. This is an actual problem, rather than an hysterical reaction. The two names on the table at this point are Jeremy Reed and Coco Crisp, both of whom I would much rather have than Cavechrist. But now the cost has gone up. Arroyo is a certain goner if we trade for either player, and the semi-accomplished Crisp will cost more; a bitter pill to swallow in spite of the additional revenue realized from breakfast-related marketing tie-ins.

Overall, I still have faith in the hydra that represents the Boston Red Sox. But they've got a lot of work to do, and unfortunately for them, everyone on earth knows exactly what they need and what they have to get it with. This is not what is generally referred to as "bargaining from a position of strength", but luckily there are teams out there whose fans are only coming to see games on "Molotov Cocktail Night", and this levels the field a teensy bit (I mean you Seattle and KC).

There is a lot of hot stove left, and I for one would like to see some cooking. Until April, it's all I have left.