The first comes from Buster Olney, who describes how Johnny said no to every offer he got from the Yanks, offers that will likely be better than anything he'll eventually get. Nick Cafardo also wrote about Damon this morning.
The sthird link comes from Peter Botte of the Daily News, who writes that many of Johnny's former teammates are sad to see Damon go. Here's some of the quotes from the article:
Brett Gardner said Damon was "one of the older guys who's helped me a lot the last two years," and then added that "Johnny means a lot to the team, and you hate to see people like that go." For some reason, I really don't think Gardner is that upset. After all, nobody gains more from Damon leaving than Gardner, but good job sounding like you care."Obviously, any of the guys we lose from last year, you hate to see that. We wanted to keep that team intact," Andy Pettitte said Saturday... "It doesn't look like we're going to sign Johnny back ... and that's a big loss, but I think we're excited about the additions, too. Every year your team is going to make changes.
"But I know Johnny loved it here and wanted to come back, and I'm sure if there's another chance in the future that he'd love to come back. Obviously it was a money situation."
"It's not my call, but obviously Johnny's a great friend and was my locker mate from spring training on," Swisher said. "But Curtis is a great player, too, and Randy Winn, same thing. So I think this year is going to be tremendous."Hopefully this is the last Damon post until he signs somewhere.
