SPORTS ILLUSTRASIAN: Johnny Is My Half-Thai Homeboy
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’ve had an ongoing battle with…
insomnia
slow drivers in the fast lane
waiter-slash-actors
my asshole neighbors
eating spaghetti late at night
owning a cellphone
red shoes
cleaning my closet.
Recently, I confronted my walk-in closet in an effort to contain the chaos mounting within it. What this meant was parting with clothing, shoes, bags, and several palpable reminders that PMS not only makes you fat and weepy, it also makes you buy ugly shit like plum-colored corset boots and cropped white silk waistcoats, shit that only belongs in Purple Rain the movie and does not, try as you might, make you look smoking hawt like Apollonia. One of the items I donated during this clean-up that wasn’t foolish so much as sentimental was my red “Johnny (Damon) Is My Homeboy” tee. I bought it online back when Johnny still played for the Red Sox. For a short while, the shirt was magic. It was the shirt that got me through The Comeback against the Yankees and the 2004 World Series that followed. It was the shirt that I wore at Fenway on Opening Day the next season when the team got their rings and Boston fans cheered Mariano Rivera for choking and the whole city forgot to be cold, cranky, and anxious for a day. It was a shirt soaked in sweat, fear, elation, and the pheromones I gave off every time I saw Johnny’s ass on TV.
But, as many of you know, Johnny Damon left the Red Sox after the 2005 season for the Yankees. He shaved his beard, cut his hair, and started looking like a grade-A dork. And since then, the man, the shirt, and even that fine ass, have been dead to me. Until today. When I found it that “homeboy” is actually my homeboy, half-Thai to be exact.
What?!
How come I’m the last person to find out?! Did y’all know this? (Of course you did.) I had always heard that he was Native American but…what?! How did this particular and very important factoid escape me? And, apparently he’s “active” in the Asian community. Huh?! I need to set up a Google Alert for people whom I’m going to call from this day forward asiancognitos–those who don’t look like or aren’t known to be members of the tribe but who, in fact, are (like Karen O, Eddie Van Halen, George Clooney’s girlfriend).
Somehow, the fact that Johnny Damon is Asian makes his being a Yankee hurt less. I can’t really explain why or how. I guess certain allegiances run deeper than others, than even my love for the Sox. Or that blood is thicker than Gatorade. All I really know is that I now kinda wish I hadn’t given away that stupid T-shirt.
Filed under: Asiancognitos, Boston Red Sox, Half-Thai Homeboys, Hot Ass, Johnny Damon, New York Yankees
