SBL Notebook, Week 16

What just happened? Here we had this nice little race going in the American division, we looked away for just a few seconds, and the Zero's turned around and hijacked the damn thing. The Z's kept on partying like it was 1999 on the offensive side of things, the Bammers were betrayed by their normally resolute pitching, and just like that, we saw a 7-0/0-7 swing that inflated the Zero's lead over the second-place Bammers from one game to eight. The Z's, almost alone among SBL teams, seemingly did not get the memo about this being the Era of the Pitcher, as they continue to mash like McGwire and Sosa and Bonds at their roid-ragin' peak. The Zero's slugged 11 home runs this week, to go with the 13 they launched last week and the 16 they pounded the week before that. They've also averaged 38 RBIs, 37 runs and, for good measure, 8 SBs in that three-week stretch. This isn't supposed to be happening in this diminished day and age, so we can only speculate that perhaps there is no PED testing in the United Arab Emirates, current home base for the Z's. Or maybe the UAE has been sucked into some giant time-warp vortex thing, causing the Z's hitters -- most notably Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun, Aramis Ramirez and Dustin Pedroia -- to believe and behave as though it’s 2001, not 2011. It took the Z's a little while to get going -- they were 7-12 after three weeks, at which point they already trailed the Bammers by 11 games -- but there's been no stopping them since during a 60-21 roll over the last 13 weeks that has carried them to the best record in ball (67-33), by an ever-widening margin. They’re 13-0 the last two weeks and 28-4 over the last five, during which time they’ve turned a nine-game deficit into an eight-game lead over the Bams . . . While the rise of the Zero's from near-worst to first in the AL (and the corresponding slide of the Bammers, who started 18-1) serves as a bracing reminder to avoid putting too much stock in early-season results, it is not the only rags-to-riches tale at work in the SBL this year. The National division has witnessed a similar recovery by the Cherry Valley Bombers, who broke last out of the gate at 3-16 through three weeks, but have steadily risen from the depths of despair to legit contention in the NL race. A league-high 15 HRs and league-low 1.14 ERA did the trick for them this week in a 6-1 performance (only the bad luck of having to face the Zero's prevented them from going 7-0) that lifted them above .500 for the first time all season, and to within eight games of the new NL front-runners, the Godfathers. (Side note: That makes 56 home runs in the last four weeks for the power-mad Bombers.) The G-Daddies also went 6-1 (losing only to the CVBs) and evicted the Inmates from the penthouse, where the Mental Defectives had resided since Week 11. The ’Mates trail by one game, then it’s five more back to the Derelicts and another two to the Bombers, who jumped over DamianUnited into fourth place. . . . And while we're on the subject of the CVBs’ rise to respectability, take a snapshot of this week's standings. The Bombers' ascension to 52-48 means that only three of our 12 teams currently sport losing records, and that's something you rarely see this far into the season, or at any point in any season. Speaks well for competitive balance, particularly in the NL, where any of five teams could win the division crown. Well done, everyone!