February

The folks around town who scolded Red Sox fans for daring to boo Johnny Damon upon his return in May just didn’t get it.

The reaction that the crowd had stemmed back to February, when Damon, who two months earlier signed on to play for the rival Yankees, would tell anyone with a set of ears how special it was to be a Yankee, despite the fact that he had yet to play as much of an exhibition inning for New York.

“I’m starting to think that I’m a Yankee,” Damon told the Bergen Record in early February. “It took a little while, but it feels right now.”

Oh, the drama, Johnny. It had been a grand total of 44 days since he inked his deal.
Later in the month, Damon waxed poetic about how inspired he was over a speech Joe Torre gave at the start of Yankees training camp. Apparently, no other manager had ever told him the seemingly obvious goal was a World Series title.
“There is no reason to celebrate getting into the postseason,” Damon said.
Mind you, one of Boston’s final images of Damon was in a champagne-soaked locker room party at Fenway in October, 2005, as the Sox clinched the wild card, the day after losing the AL East to the Yankees.
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