I needed this weekend wrapup more than usual because I’ve really been out of baseball circulation the past couple of days. My folks took my kids out to the lake on Saturday, so Mrs. Shyster and I had a nice lunch, took in a movie, did a little aimless wandering and then had a nice dinner. Yesterday we had my boy’s fifth birthday party. Over both days I was on an Internet detox regimen that, while not a total blackout, was about as unplugged as I ever get. When you spend as much time in front of a screen as I do you just gotta do that sometimes.
The upshot: I didn’t watch an inning of baseball all weekend, and really didn’t pay attention to what the hell was going on. Thank goodness, then, for D.J. and Drew who documented that which needed to be documented and allowed me to catch up quite nicely this morning. The highlights:
- Bengie Molina hit for the cycle. Be on the lookout for Red Heifers and 200 million man armies.
- Nick Swisher hit a walkoff single on the night the Yankees paid tribute to The Boss. I’m glad this event managed to bring some attention to Steinbrenner’s passing, because I was worried that people were completely missing it.
- Oliver Perez is like that garbage barge that went from port to port with no takers for months on end back in the late 80s.
- I’m sure a bunch of people heard about Yogi Berra falling down and thought “Oh noes! These things come in threes!” I had breakfast with my personal mystic this morning, however, and she tells me that Yogi will not form the trio with Sheppard and Steinbrenner. She was insistent, however, that I cancel my bowling date with Joe Pepitone next Thursday.
- The Indians — who otherwise have a really progressive social media policy — scratched David Huff because he tweeted about it beforehand. As if the Tigers knowing about Huff starting on Saturday would have changed anything. They would have hammered him if they knew about him beforehand just as they would have hammered him had he retained the element of surprise.
- The Red Sox have to pay the luxury tax. That’ll be $75, Theo. And no, in this house we don’t pay it to the bank. We put it on Free Parking.
- A.J. Burnett is bad at anger management and he’s bad at lying too.
- Carlos Zambrano is just bad at anger management, but maybe the counseling helped.
- Matt Kemp isn’t being dealt. Of course, the only reason we’re obligated to mention this is because someone ridiculously suggested that he was going to get dealt.
The movie, by the way, was “Inception,” which I liked a great deal. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it will likely make a lot of money and will thereby cause movie studios to try and cash in with copycat psychological thrillers, all of which will almost certainly be muddled disasters because they won’t be written and directed by Chris Nolan.
Anyway, back to baseball for me. Let’s get on with our week.
