Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Yankees have several questions to answer

Johnny Damon soaked it all in, not any more than his teammates but maybe with a little different perspective.

CC Sabathia, after Friday's parade, said, given so much of the Yankees' championship nucleus is intact that "hopefully we can [win a title] sometime again."

But Damon realized his run with the Yankees very well may have come to an end, giving Friday's proceedings an added meaning.

"I think I probably think about it more than a lot of other guys because I know . . . I know how teams change quite a bit during the offseason," Damon said. "This team was good enough to win the whole thing and that's the memory that I'm always going to take with me. We're champions. You can't take that away. It's going to be that way for history. And I'm happy about it."

Damon would also be happy if things can work contractually with the Yankees.

The 36-year-old outfielder was unambiguous throughout the season, probably to the slight irritation of his agent, Scott Boras, that his desire was to stay with the Yankees.

Damon had a good regular season and, after a rough division series against the Twins, a productive postseason.

"Obviously I'm going to have a lot of options and I think what it comes down to what kind of option the Yankees want to give me or not give me," Damon said.

Damon, who typically brings blunt honesty to any interview session with reporters, then lapsed into the kind of talk that makes an agent trying to negotiate terms throw up the stop sign.

"Why wouldn't I want to come back?" Damon said. "We have the best owners in baseball, we have the best team. We have the most revenue and the biggest payroll. So who wouldn't want to be a part of the Yankee tradition? And I would like to continue mine and I feel like I can come back and do a great job again."

Manager Joe Girardi said Friday that he would likely be sitting down with general manager Brian Cashman over the weekend to begin planning for next season.

Neither has given any signals as to what their desires are in regard to Damon and the two other big names who are free agents -- Andy Pettitte and Hideki Matsui.

Matsui would seem to be the longest shot of the trio to be brought back.

"You start with what you have and what you feel you might need next year," Girardi said of the early discussions that will take place relating to 2010. "I think you start looking at everything from the rotation to the bullpen to positions . . . infield, outfield. You look at everything."

The season couldn't have ended better from the Yankees' perspective, though Girardi said there was a bittersweet quality to Friday being probably the final time he would see his team this way.

"I talked about it the last couple days how abruptly the season really ends," Girardi said. "You play every day, you go to work every day, then it just stops. There's no wind-down period. There's nothing. Some of the guys, we probably won't see them next year."

Damon said if he's not one of them, he couldn't think of a better way for his tenure in pinstripes to end.

"It took me my fourth and possibly my final year," Damon said of winning a championship. "I am so overjoyed because you don't know how many times you're going to get this opportunity. To be in a ticker tape parade in New York City, it's amazing."