* It's the economy, stupid.

Was anyone else bothered by this story on Johnny Damon in today’s New York Times?

Damon, one of the heroes of the 2009 World Series, is currently unemployed. A free agent, the Yankees have displayed little interest in resigning him and at the moment, there are no other takers as teams have filled their high-profile outfield needs.

According to the piece by Tyler Kepner, the Yankees

offered him only $14 million for two years because they saw no reason to bid higher. The Yankees – correctly, it seems – forecast a limited market for Damon as teams focus more on younger players and strong defenders. They did not want to bid against themselves, and they chose instead to spend money on Nick Johnson and Javier Vazquez.

Look at that again.

Can you guess the word in that paragraph I’m thinking of?

I’ll give you a hint: It’s spelled “o-n-l-y.”

“In this economy” is a phrase you hear a lot of these days. I don’t know if sports team owners are looking for excuses or are simply being thrifty, but I’m looking it at from a Joe Six-Pack point of view.

“Only $14 million for two years…”

Tyler goes on to ponder if Damon would “take a low base salary (say, $4 million or $5 million) plus incentives for one year?” I wish someone would offer me a low base salary like that. And before you start telling me that there are a relative handful of elite athletes and they deserve that kind of money, I’ll just borrow a phrase from a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live ‘s faux news segment.

Really? They really “deserve” that kind of money? Really?

(It’s even funnier with the Spanish subtitles. Warning: I would suggest turning off the video with about 15 seconds left. You’ll get the point by then and avoid a naughty word.)

And I’ll go back to the constant argument about utility: do athletes, regardless of their ability. Even the worst major leaguer gets a minimum salary of $400,000. And what I said about poor Sage Rosenfels in the previous entry? He’s getting $9 mil over two years. And he didn’t play a down all season. I’m not blaming him. It’s not like he was on the injury reserved list for some bogus reason.

Someone should get real (he said, naively). But the genie is out of the bottle. When the owners tried to keep salaries low in the 1980s, they called it collusion. Why they couldn’t come up with the lower salary idea as individuals, I don’t know.

Personally, I think all this Damon fuss is a slap at superagent Scott Boras.