Animals tally eighth straight

The Endzone Animals won their eighth straight after a 5-1 shutdown of Vancouver yesterday. Jason Bergmann held the Fist to one run on six hits in seven innings. Magglio Ordonez's three-run homer in the first inning off Jake Peavy gave the Animals the early lead. Peavy struggled in the first, walking two of the first three batters before the homer, but settled in and pitched seven innings, but took his first loss of the year.

New Jersey's Jesse Litsch held the Tampa Bay Plunkers to only three hits and one run in seven innings to earn his first win of the year. Adam LaRoche was 3-4 with a homer and Josh Fields was also 3-4 to lead the Buddah "offense" to the 2-1 win. It was the ninth time (out of 15 games) that the Buddahs were held to less than 3 runs. Jeff Francis pitched a complete game in defeat, surrendering only two runs and nine hits.

Newark once again pounded away on their opponents. This time Marietta was the recipient of a 19-3 drubbing. Chien-Ming Wang once again received a ridiculous amount of run support from the Sugar Bear bats. After only receiving eight runs in support of his first start, Wang got 22 against Sardine City, 18 against Vegas, and now 19 against Marietta. Randy Johnson and Javier Vazquez each had one game of double-digit run support, but other than that the Bears were relatively held in check. "Wang was feeling all down in the dumps before the season after losing to the other pitchers in a poker tournament" said team captain Chipper Jones, "so this is our way of making it up to him."