Week One (March 18, 2001)
The Immaculate Inception
Maybe it's divine intervention, but the Vatican City Cardinals are off to a perfect 4-0 start in their inaugural season. The league's only undefeated team is doing it with offense, averaging over 11 runs per game. All the other teams are deadlocked around the .500 mark, save the Kentucky Hillbillies -- the victims of Vatican City's fast start.
Another Cy For This Guy?
Greg Maddux threw a shutout to open the season for Vancouver, allowing just 6 baserunners in the victory... Just as impressive was Philadelphia's Ryan Dempster, who threw a shutout in his first performance... ... Troy Percival pitched 3 scoreless innings, yielding just one hit, to lead Phoenix over Newark in extra innings for the second time this week.
Newark's Manny Ramirez has 4 home runs in the team's first four games, and leads the league with 8 RBI... Matt Lawton is one reason for Vatican City's hot start, with 10 hits, 6 runs, 3 doubles and a .556 batting average... Leading the charge in Honolulu, Jason Giambi is hitting .500, slugging 2 home runs to lead the team past Hoboken Saturday.
Medic!
It was a rough opening week for many of the league's brightest stars, still shaking off the rust from an off-season of inactivity. Harrison's Gary Sheffield will miss 39 games recovering from Tommy John surgery, and Brooklyn's starting catcher, Mike Lieberthal will be miss nearly a month with a horrendous case of athlete's foot. Jeff D'Amico, who lives in England during the off-season, unwisely wolfed down some British hamburgers he brought from home and will be out until the end of March with mad cow disease.
The final cuts of spring training weighed down the waiver wire, but
notable moves included the Kentucky Hillbillies
trading Carl Everett to the Newark
Sugar Bears for Tomokazu Ohka and Lou Pote, and
the
TWIB may have Ozzie Smith, but we have the better Smith! Zane Smith, former pitcher for the San Antonio Slingers and Sacramento Seahawks, now writes this column exclusively for the Diamond Mind Baseball League. Click Here for past articles.