And That Happened

This time, it's not because I was lazy or busy.

Remnants of Ike came through Ohio yesterday, knocking out the power at Chez Shyster just before 4pm and leaving us all 19th century until just before 2AM. With no power, one cannot watch baseball, follow box scores online, or even blog. One can drink, however, and that's exactly what Mrs. Shyster and I did before retiring early.

I wake up this morning to see that Carlos Zambrano threw a no-hitter in the Astros' "home game" against the Cubs. Mixed kind of day for Brewers' fans, I suppose. One the one hand the victory helps them fend off Houston for the wild card, but seeing a dominant performance by a team that has increasingly become their primary nemesis in their own backyard on a day when the Brewers themselves lost has to kind of suck.

And what about those Brewers? Dropping yet another game, Ryan Braun minced no words: "This series was a complete and total disaster. It couldn't have gone any worse. We couldn't have played any worse. They couldn't have played any better." I'd like to thank Mr. Braun for picking up the And That Happened Slack in light of the power outage. But really Ryan, ease up. You'll get emails from Milwaukee fans telling you that you're being too hard on them. Trust me, I know.

Around the rest of relevant-game baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally received their Greg Maddux user manual from San Diego yesterday and starting using him the way the Padres did: He provided them with seven innings of shutout baseball and they provided him with no run support, losing the game 1-0. Doesn't matter in the grand scheme, however, because the Dbacks lost too, this time on a Corey Patterson home run in the 10th. Let that one sink in for a minute. Arizona remains 4.5 back, and really ought to be ashamed of themselves.

In the AL Central, the White Sox swept a doubleheader while the Twins dropped their game to Baltimore, leaving Chicago a game and a half up.

With the Philllies beyotch-slapping of the Brewers and the Mets' 9th inning collapse (microcosm of 2007 anyone?) to Atlanta, the Mets are now only one game away from joining the wild wild card race.

A weekend that saw the Rays lose two and the Red Sox win two now has the AL East race back to a one game margin. Carl Pavano got hurt, if you can believe it, though he plans to make his next start. Oh, and Roy Halladay lost again. Why I keep paying attention to that I have no idea, but on some cosmic level I feel like I should have Cliff Lee's back. Maybe he saved me from an Indian attack in a past life once or something.

The AL West, she does not matter anymore, but if you care about such things, the Angels lead is now 19.5 games. Oh, and as of Saturday night, K-Rod is the single-season saves leader.

This conversational stuff was fun and everything, but now that our power has been restored, we will be returning to our usual And That Happened format tomorrow morning.