Why Johnny Damon, one of MLB’s most innovative leadoff hitters, was drawn to his new retirement venture

Johnny Damon spent parts of 18 seasons as a Major League Baseball, putting together a career that is just about as good as it can get without getting a player into the Hall of Fame. He won World Series titles with both the Red Sox and Yankees while amassing 2,769 hits, 1,668 runs, 408 stolen bases and much more. 

He was one of the greatest leadoff hitters in MLB history and he took pride in doing more than you’d see on the stat sheet. 

“Some guys in the leadoff spot go up there and start hacking right away,” Damon recently told CBS Sports. “Well, your team hasn’t learned anything. But I learned.” 

Damon was toward the forefront of wearing pitchers down. A talent evaluator recently noted that Damon was one of the greatest grinders at the plate in history. Damon said he took pride in hitting well with two strikes and often fouled pitches off on purpose just to see more from the starter. 

Specifically, from his one year in Oakland, his takeaway from the way the A’s organization operated under Billy Beane — famously the “Moneyball” days — was to see as many pitches as possible early in the game from starting pitchers in order to eventually wear out the bullpen. 

“What we wanted to do was see as many pitches as we could early in the game. See if we could get that starter to 30 pitches in the first inning or get him to 50 in the next inning or maybe 70 in the third and now they’re getting their bullpen ready,” he said. “And if you can wear out their bullpen in the first game of the series, it could be shot for the whole series.

“I got to learn that through Moneyball and that’s what I really took to heart, because I was like, ‘man, if we can get this stud pitcher off the mound, whether it’s [Roger] Clemens or Pedro [Martinez], if you get that pitch count up, you can get past them and get that bullpen tired.”

Damon said he knew he was only going to be in Oakland for the one year, as he was hitting free agency after that 2001 season and wanted to be on the East coast due to family ties. And though he said he believed some of the “Moneyball” concepts are a bit overrated, overworking starting pitchers early in the game shaped him as one of the great leadoff hitters and helped form gameplans that we still see in 2025. 

He carried that approach to leading off with him to Boston.

“Everyday, just grinding these at-bats to make Big Papi’s and Manny’s jobs a lot easier, I would wear down these pitchers and these guys would be like, ‘OK, it’s time for us to do our thing.’ And they had monster years every season I was there.

“I did want to see a lot of pitches, but mostly for my teammates. I was always a team guy.” 

Damon put together a career that impacted the leadoff spot in the batting order in a big way as one of the best leadoff men there was. It isn’t just leadoff men these days, either. There’s a big emphasis on tiring out the starting pitcher and getting into the bullpen as soon as possible, which starts with working the pitcher hard by seeing a lot of pitches. 

Somewhat an innovator on where the leadoff spot was going, Damon in retirement is looking to impact the sports drink industry in a similar fashion with a new hydration beverage called A-GAME.

Damon, an Orlando, Fla. native, founded the company and was originally inspired to get into the hydration drink business after hearing news of multiple high school athletes in Florida dying due to dehydration. 

“A lot of kids were falling over,” Damon said last year to Fox Business. “It was a very hot summer here in central Florida, and we lost a few kids. I mean, they died from being dehydrated. You can blame it on the weather. You can blame it on the coaches telling them to go run. But if they don’t put the right ingredients in their body, it’s not going to work.”

The calling card for the drink will be “no fake stuff.” Honey, sea salt and essential vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates. A-GAME also carries zero-sugar options. 

Damon’s team at A-GAME features big sports names like Bo Jackson, Tim Hardaway and current U.S. Men’s National Team player Tyler Adams. Also on board are celebrity chef Scott Conant and country music singer Tracy Lawrence.  

“We are going to continue to try to push and to have the best possible sports drink out there,” he said. “We want to have the absolute best for these young athletes, these weekend warriors, for everybody.”