It's the JR Sport Reshow here with you coast to coast on the Infinity Sports Network. And right now we're being joined by someone who is very familiar with the springtime. He's very familiar with baseball. He's very familiar with World Series Championships. He has two of them. Right now we got a legend on.
It's Johnny Damon. Johnny, how are you, man? I'm doing fantastic.
Thank you for having me. And yeah, everything is going great down here in Florida. Spring training is on the way. And these guys are getting ready for that long, grueling season. So it's going to be a nice and fun season. And right now I've got the Dodgers and the Yankees getting back to the World Series.
Oh my good. Johnny is already hitting us with a little bit of a prediction. We're going to get into what you got going on with a game as well. Why do you feel so confident when we see what the Dodgers have? They just saw in the entire world. Why do you feel confident that we're going to see a rematch, Johnny? Well, I believe the Dodgers obviously were the best team last year. I believe they may have improved as well. It seems like they have depth.
They have confidence. And the Yankees, I feel like they added more depth as well. I know they lose the great Juan Soto, but they add other pieces that can help get them through a bunch of tough games. I know they blew a bunch of saves last year. Hopefully this year it won't be the same. And hopefully that grind during the 162-game season doesn't catch up to them.
And hopefully they'll be fresh for the postseason. Baseball legend Johnny Damon here with us on the JR Sport Brief Show. Before we get to Juan Soto, we know you're a former Yankee. You went from the Red Sox to the Yankees, had to shave off that beard. Did you have to go a little bit, hey, why is this 20 years too late for me? What are your thoughts there?
You know, my thoughts? Whenever the Hal Steinbrenner wants now, for sure, he makes the rules. But I respected George Steinbrenner.
He was a great boss. Respect his rules. I had an appearance a couple days ago at George Steinbrenner Field, and I shaved. I made sure I kept up with tradition. It was a no-brainer for me when I made the move that I was going to cut my hair and not fuss about it, because the boss wanted me. The boss has his rules.
And if he wants to pay me a lot of money to abide by his rules, absolutely. I'm going to follow his orders and go out there and play some winning baseball. Johnny Damon here with us. You mentioned the Yankees losing Juan Soto.
You know, the Mets have always been little brother in New York City, without a shadow of a doubt. What do you think this does for the organization moving forward? Steve Cohen has certainly shown that he'll spend. Yeah, that's the kind of owner that us players really like.
He's going to go out and get the very best. I mean, even the year before, he went out and got Scherzer and Verlander. He said, I'm going to get two of the top pitchers in the game.
Didn't work out for them last year, but guess what? This year, he says, I'm going to go all in for Soto. Yeah, we like it as players and we want to play hard for him because he's going to do everything to give us an opportunity to win the World Series. And that's all you can ask for from an owner. And I know the guys are very happy that he's out there throwing his money around and putting a great team together. Johnny Damon here with us on the JR Sport Reshow Coast to Coast. When you think about teams that spend, there's always a conversation about now the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Mets, there's teams that spend hundreds of millions and there's teams where you go.
How are they doing that? What are your thoughts on on that balance? Nobody's guaranteed a championship, but there's a discrepancy on how some team owners spend.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, L.A. and New York, two biggest markets. They're going to have that extra money in their pockets. It is unfair for the small market teams. And what happens, the small market teams fall into last place or whatnot.
And then they have to rely on the draft and they can't get the draft wrong because they can't live in free agencies. So the Tampa Bay Rays got very good in a short time because they did have a lot of top pitchers who came out of the draft and they were able to use them in the big leagues instead of wasting their time in the minor leagues. They brought them straight to the big leagues and these guys dominated exactly what the Oakland A's did back in the day. They had Mulder, Hudson and Zito, three of the top 10 pitchers in the game. So does Moneyball work?
It's yet to be seen. Oakland hasn't won. There's a lot of people who said I brought it over to Boston, but at the end of the day, we had Big Papi and we had a strong team that loved each other. So it's really difficult to say if it's a Moneyball thing. But these small market teams, they develop their players and then they're going to lose out on them when they turn into their prime, going to the Dodgers, going to the Yankees.
And it happened with me. I mean, the outfield we had in Kansas City, you had Carlos Beltran, Jermaine Dye and myself, possibly the best threesome out there. Oh, yeah. The defense was elite, Johnny. Yeah. Yeah.
Tough to beat. And we all ended up winning championships, unfortunately, outside of Kansas City. Well, Johnny, you talk about your time in Kansas City.
I remember you also had that year out in Oakland. And to think about that team having to go play in Sacramento and go to Vegas and just all the sports that's been taken out of Oakland. How does that make you feel seeing what the fans have had to go through?
Yeah, I think it's awful for the fans. I mean, you lose out on the Raiders, you lose out on the A's and the city is not great. I mean, the politicians need to try to clean it up, clean up the streets. There's a lot of crime and a lot of these big market or big league teams, they don't want to be around that. So, I mean, we have to look towards our government officials to make sure they do everything possible for the people who live in their cities.
And unfortunately, Oakland, they're not being taken care of at all. Johnny Damien here with us, the JR Sport Brief Show. Well, let's talk about how you're helping to take care of the people, keeping people fit and hydrated. Tell us about A-game.
What's the latest? Yeah, absolutely. So A-game is a clean hydration drink, no unofficial flavors, coloring, no forever chemicals, just only the good stuff in here. You got to bring your A-game every single moment of every single day, whether you're an athlete, a teacher, a parent, a doctor. We have a strong team with us. We got Bo Jackson involved. We have Tyler Adams with the World Cup coming next year to the Americans, Americas. And, you know, we also had Caleb Downs. He just won the national championship.
Just a lot of great people. And we also have one of the biggest health nuts in the world with Gary Brekka. He loves our ingredients. He's part of that Make America Healthy philosophy. And here we are.
This is very clean and it tastes great. And as I mentioned, you always got to bring your A-game. Well, listen, Johnny, man, you don't look like you've you've aged a day. Is A-game putting you back out onto the field? Are you going to get that call? Oh, man, I've been playing soccer on Sundays for the past 12 years and my team's looking really good this year. I've got Melissa Griffey on the team. Ken comes out sometimes and takes pictures of us. But we have a blast out there. We call it Sunday Fun Day. And just the way us older folks can go out there and get a sweat and get a nice workout in and have some fun and stay somewhat athletic. But it's it's been a fun 12 years since I've been retired and I'm going to continue to play soccer until I can't walk anymore.
And that might be next week. Hey, listen, Johnny Damon, keeping up everybody on his toes, including himself. Tell everybody where they can follow you and then keep up with A-game too.
Johnny, go ahead. Yeah, you can follow me at Johnny Damon on Instagram. You can follow at Drink A-game on Instagram. Drink A-game dot com. You can find out about us and you can go to Amazon as well. So hopefully we'll be everywhere soon.
