What a good sport.
A portly pizza man paraded up and down a busy New Jersey highway in nothing but women’s pink bikini bottoms as a punishment for finishing dead last in his fantasy football league.
In recent years, tales of fantasy league losers facing humiliating punishments have become viral hits. There were the fantasy owners who were forced to get a tattoo after coming in last, the hairy bro who had to get a belly-button ring, and even a 27-year-old dude whose penance was to take the SAT with high school students.
And then there’s the cringe-worthy case of Angelo Boemio, whose near-naked display on Labor Day is making the rounds on Facebook. For 10 very long minutes, the 42-year-old pizzeria owner turned the shoulder of Route 9 in Toms River, NJ, into his own personal fashion runway and modeled size XXXL women’s bikini bottoms from Kmart to the delight and horror of pedestrians and drivers.
“People kept beeping, stopping to take photos, and one lady with four kids in her minivan drove back and forth five times while her kids laughed in the back,” Boemio tells The Post, adding that local cops called his business to say their switchboard lit up with concerned citizens.
‘We do our draft on Labor Day so the loser has all of those months to think about their punishment.’
- Mike Durazzo
“People were calling to say there’s some weirdo in a bikini walking down Route 9, but the officers knew it was a product of fantasy loss, so they let us have our walk of shame,” says Boemio.
The league, which is made up mostly of pizzeria owners in Ocean County, adopted the shame-inducing statute two years ago to keep players from losing interest once their teams had no shot at winning the league.
Boemio is the second to be sentenced to public indignity.
“I kept saying this would be no big deal, but that morning I felt queasy and my hands were clammy,” he says. But Boemio downed a shot of Patron, disrobed and took the stroll while donning a lucha libre mask and holding an “I suck at Fantasy Football” sign.
“Once I put on the mask, I felt like a superhero. I walked freely. I didn’t want my daughter’s teachers or a customer seeing me.”
Mike Durazzo, who filmed the madness, says there is a certain “mental toughness” required in their league.
“We do our draft on Labor Day so the loser has all of those months to think about their punishment,” says Durazzo, noting that last year’s loser used it as motivation. Fellow pizza man Andy Esposito hit the gym and lost 15 pounds so he would look good in a Speedo.
“Andy embraced it,” adds Durazzo.
Boemio says the punishments have changed the objective of the game.
“Now the league is no longer about winning. It’s just about not coming in last place. No one wants to be mortified,” he says.