Inanimate Objects Will Always Win In A Fight

When are guys going to learn that taking your frustration out on inanimate objects is not a good idea? A.J. Burnett apparently took his frustration out today on some clubhouse doors, cutting his palms in the process. What a stupid MF. To make matters worse Burnett lied to everyone about it, stating he fell. Yeah, that's believable. I always thought of Burnett as a stand up guy. Knowing that he lied about it to the team kind of knocks him down a few pegs in my book. Not many pegs but just a few. We all lie about things from time to time. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.

I only got to see the first 2 innings of the game. We took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and that took me away from the game for about 6 innings. When I got home I went online to the check out the in-game box score and noticed that Burnett only pitched 2 innings. I knew he must have sustained some kind of injury and found out by checking the Lohud blog that he had cuts on his hand. I didn't think much of it at the time. I caught the tail end of the YES post game show where they were talking about it, but I missed 99.9% of the story so I wasn't sure what was up or what was going on. Kim Jones made mention that the clubhouse was empty so nobody was around to walk about and to stay tuned for tomorrow's pre-game show. I remember thinking something big must have happened.

According to the story over at the Lohud Yankees Blog, Burnett lied about how he got the cuts because he was "embarrassed." Burnett was quoted as saying, “I was embarrassed of the situation. I didn’t want that to be a reason why I came out of the game. I’m an honest person and I’m not going to lie to cover up something. That’s the reason, that’s the truth and I’m definitely not going to lie to this organization and these 25 guys in here who I play with everyday.”

I'll give A.J. some credit for eventually coming clean, but if you're an honest person who's not going to lie and cover something up, why would you lie and cover something up? And if you'll do it once, I'm a firm believer you'll do it again. Trust is a pretty important thing and Burnett's got a lot of work to do to regain that with the team and its fans. Same goes with respect. He's definitely lost some of that.

I can respect being passionate and getting fired up enough to the point where you need to beat something up. Who hasn't punched or kicked something that couldn't fight back? I once beat up an oscillating fan and another time I put a huge dent in my refrigerator door. It felt good for about 1/2 a second and then the pain, cuts, and/or swelling kicked in. I can understand doing that. But I'm not a professional athlete that gets paid millions of dollars and needs his hands to do his job. It was a pretty stupid thing to do. A.J. is lucky that the damage to his hands wasn't worse. The Yankees don't need another Kevin Brown.

In the end I think this is going to be more of a non-story than anything else. I think the team will give him a pass. He'll probably get a lot of flack for it but as long as he doesn't pull these kind of shenanigans again all will be good. But again, he's got a lot of work to do to regain the trust and respect of his teammates and the fans.

What's the best thing A.J. can do to make everyone forget about it? Simple. Pitch better. Burnett is now 7-8 with a 4.99 ERA. He's 1-6 in his last 8 starts, allowing 35 earned runs in 38.2 IP. If A.J. can run off a decent string of games we'll all forget about this. I hope he can make it happen.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie