You can make the case both ways for Damon, on one hand, he did rack up 2,789 career hits, finished with more than 200 home runs and 400 stolen bases, a feat only 10 other major leaguers have accomplished. On the other hand, Damon collected those hits over an 18-year career and was only voted to the All-Star team on two occasions and never finished in the top-10 in MVP voting. My personal take away is that Johnny Damon always played around a bigger group of more well-known stars and despite his durability, he never put up the gaudy stats that you see from guys that make it in. Johnny is one of the guys that most people would put into the infamous, "Hall of Very Good," not the Hall of Fame.
Damon joined the guys from The Drive on Wednesday and was asked about the Hall of Fame, particularly in regards to what hat he would wear if he was ever to make it to Cooperstown. "Yeah I've thought about that, I felt like the sportswriters really didn't do their job. Here I am, a clean player, played the game the right way, won some big championships and my numbers surprise a lot of people. People ask me and I tell them that I'd like to wear the Kansas City Royals hat. It was my team, unfortunately I didn't win a championship with them but I always wanted to come back, always wanted to put that Royals jersey back on but they had their young guys coming up and I was just getting older, they ended up doing a fantastic job. If not the Royals, I guess it would be Boston because I went to two All-Star games with Boston and won the big championship."
"It makes it really tough because there were a lot of years where I should have made the All-Star team but it's a fan vote and I'm going up against a lot of guys who, you know, cheated the game and those were the guys who I needed to have a better first half than and it was really tough," Damon said. "Even though I'd lead the league in hits and runs scored, around the All-Star break, I didn't really get that call to get to too many All-Star games."