SBL Notebook, Week 9

Someone, perhaps the Big SBL God in the Sky, reached down and pushed the celestial pause button on us this week. The third week of interleague play was virtually a break-even affair – although it goes into the books as a 19-17 American division victory, their third IL win in a row, and the Americans will take it, thank you very much. And the division races were virtually unchanged – the Cherry Valley Bombers and runners-up DamianUnited both went 2-4 and remained three games apart in the NL, while (in the big 80-point headline here) Andy’s Badgers chipped a whole entire game off of the Zero’s advantage in the AL, trimming it to a mere two games. With a severely truncated MLB schedule on Thursday, plate appearances were down considerably, almost to Week 1 levels, and that helped depress hitting numbers pretty much across the board. The glaring exception was the Formerly Puny, Now Prodigiously Pounding Pontiffs, who rung up 14 HRs, 43 RBIs, 36 runs and a .373 OBP. That, plus a spiffy 2.66 ERA and six saves, lifted the Raging Papists to a 6-0 week and into third place, three games behind the resilient Zero’s, who went 4-2 and extended their occupation of the AL catbird seat to the six-week mark. After a 10-15 start, the normally docile Team Vatican has gone 23-8 over a five-week stretch to insinuate itself into the thick of the AL chase at 33-23. . . . One week of interleague competition to go, then it’s back to mixing with our own kind.