Stop! Breathe! The image you see at your left is NOT that of a hairless Johnny Damon, shorn and trembling before the might of George Steinbrenner...at least, not yet.

The New York Post gets itself in a lather (hee) on the back page imagining what Johnny Damon will look like as a clean-cut Yank, but it's only on the inside that it reports that said shearing actually has not happened. Johnny Damon has arrived, he's brought his razors, and he is prepared to bend to the Draconian rule of facial hair law imposed by Steinbrenner these 30-odd years, but he is still, as far as this hardy sportswriter can tell, hot n' hairy as the day is long.

It's a shame, to our adoring eyes, to lose Damon's bad-boy hairiness to Steinbrenner's insistence on Yankee "professionalism" over the years (pinstripes = bankers, dontcha know)(or at least used to make Babe Ruth look skinnier, as the apocryphal story goes). Either way, we judge our ball players on one thing and one thing only: how they look. So we're sad about this whole Johnny Damon thing. Because the Post does not imagine him hot. In any case, the NYT has a slideshow of images for your delight, and apparently the guy can hit so I guess we'll see what happens.

JOHNNY: I BROUGHT MY RAZORS, BUT... [NYP]
FACE FACTS: HE'S A WINNER [NYP]
The Yankees' Hair Apparent in Center Field [NYT]
Slideshow: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow [NYT]