Oh Johnny Damon!

I've been keeping my feelings to myself on the whole Johnny Damon thing, but now that he's signed with Detroit for $8 million, I can finally say what I'm thinking.

Somebody once told me that there's a word in German for when you take pleasure in the misfortune of others. I had thought it was something like "shodden-froddy", but I asked Moe Berg about it, and Moe told me I was right that there is a word for it but I didn't have the word right. He told me and I had him write it down: "ich-bin-ein-berliner." I said, are you sure? And he insists that's the word. If anyone would know, it would be him.*

*You know what they said about Moe: "He knows 8 languages and can't hit in any of them." I don't really know what that means. You don't hit in languages. But people think it's funny, I guess.

So anyway, I sense that out there in the blogosphere there's a lot of ich-bin-ein-berliner toward Johnny Damon. Apparently he turned down a 2-year deal from the Yankees for $14 million, thinking he deserved 3 years for $24 million. The Yanks dumped him and signed Randy Winn instead, and the best Johnny could get is one year from Detroit.

Johnny clearly made a mistake. Some people say he should fire his agent, but c'mon, it was Johnny's decision. He's gonna have to live with it. He probably will never play in another World Series again, let alone win one. That's his punishment for dissing the Yankees.

I don't personally feel any ich-bin-ein-berliner toward Johnny, and I don't think you should either. Just be glad the Yankees are still on track to win another Series, and leave the ich-bin-ein-berliner crap for the people who really deserve it.