Damon in Detroit

Johnny Damon has landed with the Detroit Tigers.

I feel reasonably certain that this wasn't his top choice, but he and agent Scott Boras mucked up this journey into free agency from the get-go.

Damon is replacing Curtis Granderson in the Tigers lineup, as the leadoff man if not in center field. I'd rather have Granderson.

Damon makes the Tigers lineup a bit more difficult, but it's still hardly formidable. Miguel Cabrera's a beast, Magglio Ordonez did wind up above .300 last year after his awful start, and now they have Damon to plug into the top of the lineup, but that's pretty much it. Even if Carlos Guillen's career really isn't a rotting corpse, they're going to get subpar offense from second base, shortstop, third base, catcher and center field, and that's a lot of outs to concede.

Unless they do try to put Damon in center. But that's a lot of triples to concede.

It's a weird roster right now. The pitching could be good; the offense probably won't be. And the defense will lean heavily on a pair of up-the-middle rookies.

Spring fashion show

Curtis Granderson — former Detroit Tiger, even more former Mankato Masher and now a new member of the New York Yankees — combines his trademark high socks with the Yankees workout gear. Derek Jeter can't bear to look.

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It's been more than a week since my last post, a rare bit of on-line silence from me caused by a shortage of compelling baseball news and a bit of a virus.

But it's time to re-emerge. The first major league training camps officially open today.

Not the Twins. They're typically one of the last to open camp, and in their case pitchers and catchers don't report until Sunday with first workouts on Monday.

All that's official, of course. Unofficially, players are already throwing balls and swinging bats at the various spring training facilities — as seen in the above Granderson-Jeter pic.

Meanwhile ...

Johnny Damon remains without team. Various reports have the Tigers being the lead suitors for the alleged outfielder, although at this point it's difficult to imagine that Detroit has indeed offered him a two-year, $14 million deal. He and greed-master agent Scott Boras can't possibly imagine at this point that anybody else is going to surpass, or even match, that figure.

Boras got dumped last week by another unsigned player, Felipe Lopez. The (sarcastic phrase alert) always classy Boras responded: "We wish Felipe well. He's a fine player. We understand that a player gets frustrated when we contact all 30 teams numerous times and there is not a starting job for him."

Methinks there was a starting job for him — at a certain price point.

Just as there was a price point at which Damon would still be a Yankee.

Notes, quotes and comments

For all the chatter about all the suitors for Milton Bradley — that the Cubs could get the likes of Pat Burrell or Mike Lowell for the temperamental outfielder — when the deal came down, it was for Carlos Silva.

The former Twins mainstay went 5-18 with a 6.81 ERA in his two seasons with Seattle. Good luck with that, Cubbies.

* One of my minor delights this offseason has been the increasingly frequent times that an agent overplays his hand and winds up hurting his client. A couple of examples this week:

• Cliff Lee says he "thought we were working out an extension with the Phillies. I thought I would spend the rest of my career there." The Phillies GM, Ruben Amaro Jr., says: "We made what we thought was a pretty substantial offer ... Like I said before, I just didn't feel comfortable that we were going to be able to get to the finish line. And so we ended up moving toward the Halladay situation." Translation: Lee's agent asked for so much the Phillies ran away.

• Johnny Damon has said all offseason he wants to remain with the Yankees. But his agent — Scott Boras — has insisted on a three-year, $39 million deal, which was too long and too rich in the Yankees opinion. Now the Yanks have signed Nick Johnson to be their primary DH. Johnson replaces Hideki Matsui, and Curtis Granderson fills the outfield slot formerly held by Damon. And the Yankees get younger and cheaper. Upshot: Damon won't be where he wants to be, and — assuming Boras was dragging out the Damon talks to make it look as if the Yankees were a possible suitor for another LF client, Matt Holliday — that mirage appears to have faded also.

* Falling apart around their ears: Tony Oliva got trapped in a bathroom in the Twins' Metrodome offices Wednesday when the door handle came off. Moving day is next week. I bet they can't wait.

The Damon play

The official journalistic storyline of this World Series — heck, of the entire two-month postseason — is The Redemption of Alex Rodriguez. Look — the $30 million man drives in runs! Night after night, series after series, A-Rod leads the stories. As in this case, the AP story from Sunday's Game Four, which put the Yankees up 3-1.

But the play we're going to remember was Sunday night's audacious two-base steal by Johnny Damon, which set up Rodriguez's double.

We've seen A-Rod double before. But stealing second and third on the same pitch? That's stuff right out of Negro League legends of Cool Papa Bell.

It was not that long ago that I was writing in this very corner of the Internet that these Yankees are successful in no small part because they avoid the over-aggressive play. You couldn't ask for a more aggressive play than Damon's — and he picked his spot perfectly.

This wasn't spur-of-the-moment. It's something he's been think about pretty much all season. He hits in front of Mark Teixeira, and everybody plays their infield in an overshift on Teixiera. The third baseman, Pedro Feliz, was essentially playing shortstop for that at-bat. So third base is unoccupied.

Which makes it the pitcher's responsibility to get over there on a steal, or at least start in that direction — because if Brad Lidge is even halfway there, Damon's not going to try it. But Lidge is a power pitcher, and very few of them are programmed to do anything but heave baseballs toward home plate. It never occurred to Lidge that he has any responsibilities other than pitch.

So it was the perfect storm – the perfect brainstorm. Feliz can't catch the aging Damon, and Lidge is in a fog, and Damon takes third. And the Yankees take the game.

From the business side

The future of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles got a bit uglier Thursday as the pending divorce of Frank and Jamie McCourt (above, in happier times) got a bit nastier.

Frank McCourt is the official owner of the Dodgers; Jamie is the CEO, or had been. They announced their separation last week; on Thursday, the Dodgers announced that Jamie had been fired as CEO.

The experience of the San Diego Padres the past year or so is not an encouraging template for Dodgers fans. The divorce proceedings of John and Becky Moores first stripped the club of operating capital, resulting in the departures of, among other veterans, franchise icon Trevor Hoffman. Then it resulted in the sale of the franchise to a group headed by former superagent (and former Boras rival) Jeffery Moorad, who has since fired long-time GM Kevin Towers.

And that's a situation in which one of the divorcing spouses (Becky Moores) had no official role in the operation.

*I don't know that the Fox boys ever mentioned him — they probably didn't notice him, observant as they are — but baseball's Lucifer, Scott Boras, was in the field-level seats right behind home plate Thursday, a constant presence over plate umpire Fieldin Culbreth's right shoulder in the basic TV shot from left-center field.

He was dressed in black, and I kept thinking it should be red, and he should have a pitchfork. (The angle on AP's photos from the outfield is different, and Boras isn't in them.)

Boras is well represented in the ALCS — his clients include Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixiera and Johnny Damon of the the Yankees and Jered Weaver of the "Los Angeles" Angels of Anaheim.

And while the free agent season hasn't started yet, he (or his minons) have already started the public jockeying, feeding favored journalistic bobo Jon Heyman the line that free agent outfielder Matt Holliday prefers the Yankees to all others.

Damon, of course, is the current Yankees left fielder. Ah, the plight of Boras. Which client does he burn? Probable answer: Which one will bring him the smaller commission?