Johnny Damon has a more than fair offer on the table from Detroit: one year for $7 million. If that's not enough, he has a second offer from Detroit for an additional year and an additional $7 million. He's old, he has the arm strength of an eight-year-old girl, and yet he is still not signing on the dotted line. Detroit just isn't enough.
Ian Casselberry of Mlive suggests, as does Steve Kornacki, that it may be his wife's doing. It doesn't really matter to me. If you don't want to play in Detroit, you aren't welcome here. When there were no offers on the table, Johnny and his agent couldn't speak highly enough of the Tigers. But now it seems that was all a ruse to create a market for his services. The Detroit Tigers are better than this. They are better than you, Johnny Damon.
Moreover, they will not be used as doormats so that you can get another offer to play elsewhere. If I'm Dave Dombrowski I pull the offer now and tell Damon if he really wants to come to Detroit, he can play for the veterans minimum.
This isn't the same Detroit that had to pull off a coup to get "Pudge" to sign. And it's not the Detroit that had to give millions upon millions of dollars to an injured Magglio Ordonez. This is a team that has contended recently and last year was one win away from the AL Central pennant.
I'm sorry if this seems like I'm being unfairly cold to Johnny Damon and his agent. But the Detroit Tigers are not some second-class team that you can give the run-around to. Not anymore.
If Damon signs with Detroit tomorrow, so be it. I'll root for him and swallow everything I've written. But every day he lets this drag on, he loses fans in Detroit. If he doesn't sign soon, he won't be welcome anymore. I just hope Dave Dombrowski is man enough to pull the offer if it comes to that.
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