Colin Sheridan: Title drought makes it easy to understand why Yankees dropped pretension

Meanwhile, it appeared Mayo were about to hit rock bottom against Armagh on Saturday but Davitt Neary's inspirational goal proved the catalyst for the type of comeback to which supporters have become accustomed. 

This week, after fifty years, Hal Steinbrenner announced that the New York Yankees have amended their long-standing facial grooming policy. It means players, like Johnny Damon in 2005, will no longer have to undergo a ceremonial shearing. Pic: Al Bello/Getty Images

In the summer of 2002, I sat in the bleachers of Fenway Park and fell in love - figuratively speaking with a man named Johnny Damon. From a distance of about 250 feet, number 18 looked like Jesus Christ, and he fielded a baseball like him too. Hair long and black flowing from underneath his Red Sox hat complemented by a beard biblically thick, Damon was a cult hero in Boston, and his man-of-the-woods image fed the frenzy. While his play was explosive, he had an off field reputation for being shy and soft spoken (until his lips touched the firewater, that is. Then, apparently, all bets were off). When Johnny would turn and wave from centerfield, the Fenway crowd would go nuts. There may have been better baseball players in Boston, but, that glorious August, there was none cooler.

Like catching an indie band before they made it big, watching the Red Sox that summer was special. Without a World Series since 1918, the sense of longing in a sports mad city was palpable, - for a Mayo man - very relatable. The team Damon joined the year before was a motley crew of colourful characters, especially compared to the straight-laced Evil Empire of the New York Yankees down the road. Pitchers Pedro Martínez, Derek Lowe and Ugueth Urbina, left fielder Manny Ramirez, third baseman Shea Hillenbrand and shortstop Nomar Garciaparra; the names were as exotic as their play. I left Bunker Hill that summer with two t-shirts, and little else - Damon, and the number 5 of Garciaparra. Nomar famously always swung at the first pitch - usually taboo in baseball - and his cavalier attitude exemplified the likeability of a team that was the mirror image of its city: battered, a little broken, and brim-full of bloody attitude.