Vinnies Pizzeria Leads the League in Boredom

Though currently entrenched in a respectable 3rd place, Vinnies Pizzeria officials confessed yesterday that the team bores them to tears. "We've put together an incredibly balanced team. We hit for power. We steal bases. We score a ton of runs. Our bullpen's great. Lately, our starting pitchers have even begun winning once in a while. Managing this team is like eating a mayonnaise on white bread sandwich. Boring." Thus said general manager Josh Aiello when roused from his customary 7-inning nap. And a closer look at the numbers back him up.

While not a spectacular fake team, this year's lineup is overwhelmingly competent. In fact, the only serious flaw is that the team does not hit for average, a predicament any fake manager can attest to being the most yawn inducing challenge to confront. "Who wants to trade for batting average?" concurs Boro Boys GM Bill Griffith, himself a stolen base man. "Not only does it lack sex appeal of any kind, it's virtually impossible to raise a terrible team average by adding one or two hitters. You might as well just cross that category off the list and move on."

Which appears to be what Vinnies Pizzeria is doing, if the fact that they continue playing Chase Utley every night can be viewed as any indication. The posterboy for exciting fake play, Utley has hit just .227 over the past month, including a 3 for 19 skid last week. Yet he remains one of the team's most popular players. "Chase does virtually everything well," agrees Aiello, "besides hitting for average or washing his hair. But nobody's perfect."

With the fake halway point rapidly approaching, the team feels it has at least 4 or 5 weeks left to sit around hoping the competition just falls apart. "It's either that, or go to the beach or something," yawns Aiello, "which couldn't possibly sound like a worse idea."