A Good-Luck Feel to It

A few years ago, Amy and I were strolling along the beach in lovely Nahant, Mass., listening to the waves as they rolled in from the ocean. As we walked, I noticed a few intriguing rocks in the sand. I picked them up and inspected them. Three were round and thin like silver dollars, yet charcoal gray in color; the other one was pearl-white and more trapezoidal. All four, however, were smooth as a new marble countertop.

I rubbed them in my hands, and marveled at their texture. How many years had these rocks been tossed about in the Atlantic Ocean before finally landing in this little plot of sand? I cleaned them off and placed them inside the pocket of my leather jacket. It seemed a privilege to have found such beautiful stones; I couldn’t let them go.

It’s seven or eight years later, and I still have those rocks in the left pocket of my J. Crew jacket. I hold onto the stones as a collective good-luck charm, and I roll them around in my hands once in awhile as a stress reliever. I have never even considered taking them out; to do so would be to jinx myself for no good reason.

I was reaching into my jacket pocket for my gloves yesterday, and I felt the rocks briefly, as I always do. A little while later, I was reading about the Yankees. The story was explaining how New York still remains without a starting left fielder. The team has decided, it seems, that it can do without Johnny Damon next year. He remains unsigned. As I read this story, I saw no mention of rocks from Nahant. But I felt a connection here as strong as an August undertow.

Johnny Damon is getting older; he’s 36 now. He throws a baseball as weakly as any major-league outfielder in the game. He often looks overmatched against left-handed pitchers. You get the sense sometimes that he’s one pulled hamstring away from a long stint on the disabled list. And yet, when you try to find a team that has been worse because they had Johnny Damon in their lineup, you come up empty.

Amy and I moved back from Massachusetts in the summer of 2004, just in time to miss out on Damon and his Red Sox shocking the Yankees en route to their long-awaited World Series title. We were here in New Jersey when the Yanks shocked Boston by signing Damon before the 2006 season. We watched as Damon played terrific ball for all four of his seasons in New York. We listened as he became a willing spokesperson for the team, often doing the interview that somebody had to do, sparing his teammates the extra work. We watched in awe as he hit and ran his way into Yankees lore during the ’09 World Series, capped by his steal of two bases on one throw during Game 4.

The victory parade is long over, and the Yankees have already remade their team through some savvy trades and a risky free-agent signing. They’ve offered Johnny Damon a contract, and he’s asked for a bit more. There’s been an impasse for some time now. Reporters seem to be predicting that he’ll sign elsewhere.

If he does, the Yankees will go another route, most likely waiting a year and offering a nine-figure contract to Carl Crawford of the Tampa Bay Rays. Crawford is younger, stronger, faster and more electric than Damon is, no doubt. But there’s one major question mark I see with Carl Crawford: I don’t know if the Yankees can tuck him into their pockets like a rock from Nahant. I do know that they can do this with Johnny Damon.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to go with your gut, and hold onto your good-luck charms. They don’t wash up every day.