I hope everyone enjoyed his or her holiday weekend as much as I did.  Lots of exciting things happening over Labor Day weekend, so let’s jump right in.

– I finally caved and joined Twitter.  Follow me @sp_flips to get up to date info and nonsense.

– So much for having a bunch of exciting finishes across multiple divisions this year.  With the Giants, Indians, White Sox, and Cardinals failing to gain any ground whatsoever; it appears as if the only exciting race might be the AL West.  Unless the Rays can somehow make a run for the wildcard in the AL East, that is.

– George who?  Kottaras? What a special night it was for the back-up catcher.  Hitting for the cycle is rare enough, but how rare is it to see a back up catcher do it?  I am not completely sure, just sure enough to say that you probably won’t see it happen again in your lifetime.

– Seeing old Charlie Manuel play a game under protest took me back to my youth summer league days.  Did he have to put up a $100 cash like my coaches did?  Or do you think the front office covered it for him?

– Congrats to Adrian Beltre– now the youngest 3B to ever amass 2,000 hits.  Just imagine what could be if he knew how to stay healthy?  Wow.

– Watching Josh Beckett go down was rough.  Not only does he play on my fantasy squad, but he also proliferated the notion that pitchers are not athletes.  Just watch this and tell me where/how he hurt himself. (FF to the 21-second mark.)

– How about Javier Vazquez?  Dude has been looking like it’s 2009 again.  Make sure nobody steals his Delorean.

– I can only imagine the silence in the Jays front office boxes as Brett Lawrie did this.

– Have a great day everybody, and remember…there are only 4 days left in this workweek.

Stan Musial Award (MVP)

National League:
First Place Vote – Joey Votto (Cincinnati)
Second Place Vote – Carlos Gonzalez (Colorado)
Third Place Vote – Albert Pujols (St. Louis)
Fourth Place Vote – Adrian Gonzalez (San Diego)
Fifth Place Vote – Troy Tulowitzki (Colorado)
Sixth Place Vote – Aubrey Huff (San Francisco)
Seventh Place Vote – Jason Heyward (Atlanta)
Eighth Place Vote – Roy Halladay (Philadelphia)
Ninth Place Vote – Jay Bruce (Cincinnati)
Tenth Place Vote – Ryan Zimmerman (Washington)

American League:
First Place Vote – Josh Hamilton (Texas)
Second Place Vote – Miguel Cabrera (Detroit)
Third Place Vote – Evan Longoria (Tampa Bay)
Fourth Place Vote – Paul Konerko (Chicago)
Fifth Place Vote – Robinson Cano (New York)
Sixth Place Vote – Delmon Young (Minnesota)
Seventh Place Vote – Carl Crawford (Tampa Bay)
Eighth Place Vote – Jose Bautista (Toronto)
Ninth Place Vote – Joe Mauer (Minnesota)
Tenth Place Vote – Adrian Beltre (Boston)

Part 4 of my series is dedicated to the Seattle Mariners. Technically, it should really be dedicated to one of the toughest looking players in baseball history, Jay Buhner. Many years ago I saw a Mariners’ commercial that featured Jay Buhner, using his shiny, bald head to reflect sunlight into the opposing hitter’s eyes. I know, genius.

Since then, I have been unable to find it despite my best efforts combing the intraweb and plugging keywords like: “bald guy,” and “sweet jesus look at that bald guy!” into every major search engine. Luckily, much like that Buhner commercial, the Mariners have made plenty of other classic commercials, many starring some of the better players of the past 2 decades.

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