The Benchwarmers zero out of ****

And now ladies and germs...straight from the gutter...

Here's your Sudoku substitute for the day: Say your wife said you were late. And your excuse was that you thought she meant Mountain Standard Time because she grew up in Colorado. And she bought it, and reminded you that, next time, she means Pacific Standard Time. Which is one hour earlier than Mountain Standard Time. Who's the bigger idiot?

In "The Benchwarmers," the answer is neither. That award goes to Jon Heder's character, a helmet-wearing, mildly retarded momma's boy who must have watched Steve Martin's "The Jerk" on loop. He, a dimwit (David Spade) and a lawnmower (Rob Schneider) form a three-man baseball team enter a tournament against fully-stocked 12-year-old teams rife with rotten jerks and bullies, coached by sporting goods salesmen who tweak each other's nipples and employ a middle-aged poolboy/gimp for massages and presumably gay sex, although these scenes take place offscreen.

Subplots include the life of an agoraphobe, the ovulation cycle of said Idiot Wife, the second chapter in Craig Kilborn's quest to play the ugliest characters written for the screen, and a sequence where former slugger Reggie Jackson destroys mailboxes from the flatbed of a speeding truck. It's a movie, ya know, for the kids!