Lupica Is At It Again...

And by "it", I mean being a sniveling malcontent and finding things to criticize about the Yankees, lest they forget that they play in New York, where the media is notoriously tough on it's teams - mainly because of smarmy, self-righteous whiners like Lupica. To wit:

But for now the story, and the Yankees are sticking to it, is that they've got a by-God budget. That they couldn't afford what they say Damon wanted. Or what they thought he wanted. Or what they were afraid Damon's agent, Scott Boras, might try to weasel out of them, because nobody can out-weasel Boras.

Really? Johnny Damon turns out to be the one guy the Yankees can't afford? It would be like finding the one bar girl Tiger Woods didn't want to take home with him.

Topical! But something tells me that if Tiger were in rehab for drugs or alcohol, Lupica wouldn't be a cracking joke about the line he didn't want to snort of the gin and tonic he didn't want to chug.

For now, though, [the Yankees] desperately want Damon's departure to be somebody else's fault. Damon's. Boras'. Anybody but theirs. At the same time, Boras is out there selling his own version of things, door to door if he has to, the same way he peddled his own self-serving version on Carlos Beltran's knee surgery.

I really don't think the Yankees care whose fault it is that Damon isn't coming back. They didn't fire him. They didn't trade or release him. His contract expired and he became a free agent. This would be like trying assign blame for my departure from college because I didn't go back to Bentley for grad school.

But does anybody believe that Johnny Damon, who helped beat the Yankees in 2004 when he was with the Red Sox and played such a spectacular World Series for the Yankees five years later against the Phillies, has to go because of money? Or because Boras made Brian Cashman mad?

Yes, how could the Yankees let Damon go when he made one play against them five years ago, and then another one for them last year? How stupid can the Yankees be, not giving Damon all the money he wants because he played well in two World Series five years apart?!?1

Cashman might be a little perturbed by this situation, but it's not like he did something irrational because he was angry at Scott Boras. He was keenly aware that the Yankees had the upper hand in the situation and Boras (and to a lesser extend, Damon) refused to give in. Now those two are free to roam the open market and find a one year deal like the one Bobby Abreu had to settle for last year. Sometimes when you play hard to get, you don't get got.

Cashman 1, Boras 0, Lupica -10.

[Update: TYU has a much more thorough takedown of the piece and Craig from CTB has a much more efficient one. But guess who couldn't agree more with Lupica!]