Sports legend Johnny Damon, 51, is pouring everything he learned on the baseball field into being an entrepreneur, but he will always remember his game days.
Damon is known for helping the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees win the World Series.
“As an athlete, you have to be a great teammate,” Damon told The Epoch Times. “You go to battle every single day, and if you all don’t get along, the team will suffer.”
His professional baseball career started in 1995 and ended in 2012. During that time, Damon is credited with helping break the “Curse of the Bambino,” a superstition of bad luck based on the late Babe Ruth being traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees in 1920.
“You should always bring your A-game and that’s whether you are an athlete, a parent, a teacher or anything else you do in life so that you won’t have any regrets or complaints,” Damon said. “Bring your best every single moment of every day and you will be happy and successful.”
Damon credits his teammates, including David Ortiz and the late Tim Wakefield, for the Red Sox team’s success.
Ortiz is a Dominican-American former professional baseball player who played primarily for the Red Sox, and Wakefield played for the Red Sox for 17 years from 1995 to 2012. Wakefield died in 2023. Each player contributed to the Red Sox’s World Series championship in 2004.
“I had a great team. We all pulled together. We were able to win four games in a row,” Damon said.
Damon and his Yankees teammate Mark Teixeira also broke Ruth and Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive home runs in a single season in 2009.
Damon takes his stellar MLB reputation in stride, and while his professional baseball career has ended, he’s launched an all-natural sports drink called A-Game. He said he named the drink A-Game because no one ever talks about bringing their B or C game to anything.
“A game means you’re bringing your very best, and you always hear the athletes on TV after they have one of their greatest games ever, say, ‘I brought my A game today’ so that’s why the drink is named A-Game,” Damon said.
Winning at being an entrepreneur requires the same dedication that professional baseball demands, he said.
“People have said I’ve been their best teammate and that’s what I’m trying to do with my sports drink business,” he said. “We have to be able to communicate. We have to get along and we all want people who are out there grinding.”
Damon was inspired to bring an additive-free sports drink to market after teen athletes died due to poor hydration and exhaustion.
Two 16-year-olds, Don’terio J. Searcy in Georgia and Isaiah Laurencin in Florida, died in 2011 after exerting themselves while playing sports in high temperatures.
“It was a very hot summer in central Florida, and it was my last year of playing professional major league baseball,” he recalled. “I wanted to make sure we have a very clean drink available.”
The Major League Baseball (MLB) all-star outfielder believes he has the A-team needed to capture more of the sports drink market, including professional athletes Bo Jackson and Ohio State Buckeyes All-American safety Caleb Downs. Jackson played in the MLB and the National Football League.
A-Game has been on the market since 2022 and is naturally sweetened with either honey or plant-based stevia. Flavors include dragon fruit plum, tropical, strawberry lemonade, citrus, concord grape, and black cherry pomegranate. The drink contains no artificial colorants.
“We probably have nearly 1 percent of the market,” Damon said. “This year is a big year for us. We plan to have 3 percent of the market after 2025. A-Game has a great taste and no competitor can take that away from us.”
