Yardwork: Shields, Verlander in the Zone & Down Goes Albert

Considering the amount of attention that’s been paid to baseball attendance this season and the plethora of photos Darren Rovell has tweeted to hammer home the number of consistently empty stadiums around the league, I thought it might be appropriate to center the headline of this post around the Cubs and Yankees breaking an attendance record at Wrigley Field this weekend, but too much other stuff happened yesterday. Now having said that, it’s worth mentioning that Wrigley welcomed 126,283 fans, a franchise record for a three-game series. Yes, the needle was moved. The Yankees often treat the needle like a lightweight javelin. But onto baseball…

Justin Verlander pitched his second straight complete game, allowing four hits and one run that came on a Ty Wiggington home run as the Tigers won 9-1. He has four complete games on the season and has gone eight innings or more in seven of his last nine starts. One can comfortably say the Tigers ace has found his groove. And really, when you look at his entire body of work thus far, he’s only had one bad start. The guy has been tremendous.

Also, I agree with Bubba on this A-Rod/Soriano exchange. A glove tap to say hello is one thing, but fist bumping between opposing players during a game is lame:

Since we’ve been showing mostly late inning home runs, here’s a great catch by Peter Bourjos from Friday night at Citi Field:

[Photo via Getty]