Reference By TOM JONES © St. Petersburg Times published March 28, 2003

CLEARWATER -- The Devil Rays' opening-day starter might be struggling, but their No. 2 pitcher looks in regular-season form.

Make that fine regular-season form.

One day after staff ace Joe Kennedy finished a dreadful spring by getting pounded by the Yankees, Victor Zambrano was just about perfect against the Phillies on Thursday at Jack Russell Stadium.

Zambrano retired the first 12 batters and didn't give up a hit in five scoreless and impressive innings as the Rays no-hit the Phillies 8-0.

"I'm glad for the opportunity to be the No. 2 starter, and I have felt good all spring," Zambrano said. "The team has played (well) behind me, and tonight the defense was really good."

It really didn't need to be.

The only hiccup Zambrano suffered came in the fifth inning. After retiring the Phillies in order through four, Zambrano hit Pat Burrell in the head on an off-speed pitch that got away. He then hit the next batter, David Bell, on the thigh. But a double play and a popup got him out of trouble.

The performance capped a solid spring for Zambrano. In 22 innings against major-league lineups, Zambrano allowed 11 hits and five runs with 16 strikeouts and three walks.

"When I was back in my country (Venezuela), I worked very hard to get ready for spring training," Zambrano said. "And I've been getting better each (start) all spring. I'm ready to go."

JONNY BE GOOD: What a night for the Rays' Jonny Gomes, who is expected to start the season at Double-A Orlando.

Called up for Thursday's game, Gomes homered in his first-ever spring at-bat, a three-run blast on the second pitch.

He then made a diving catch in left with two outs in the eighth to preserve the no-hitter.

This comes after the 22-year-old has a heart attack Christmas Eve.

When the game was over, Rays manager Lou Piniella said Gomes had tears in his eyes.

"Back at Christmas, I was laying in a hospital bed for five days," Gomes said. "I didn't know if I was going to get shut down. To be here, it was a pretty emotional night for me."

It isn't sure if Piniella was serious, but he said he was going to take another look at Gomes and might use him as a designated hitter today.

"Hey," Piniella said. "We keep saying we're looking for right-handed power."

THANKS BUT NO THANKS: The Rays will not be bringing back outfielder Adrian Brown. The Rays rejected the tender of his contract after he was offered back by the Red Sox as a Rule 5 player.

His contract stays with the Red Sox, who likely will send Brown to the minors.

STOLEN MOMENTS: Perhaps the brightest, and certainly the fastest, star for the Rays this spring has been outfielder Carl Crawford. Entering play Thursday, the leadoff hitter was batting .303 with a .343 on-base percentage.

Most impressively, though, he stole his ninth base of the spring Thursday. That's tops in the majors.

That fits in well with Piniella's style. Over the past four years, Piniella's teams have attempted and stolen more bases than any team in the majors.

GAME DETAILS: The Rays took a 4-0 lead with two runs each in the first and second innings. Former Phillie Travis Lee, booed by the Clearwater crowd, delivered a two-run double in the first. Crawford and Rocco Baldelli, who went 3-for-4, had run-scoring hits in the second. ... Catcher Javier Valentin had a pair of singles. ... Rey Ordonez went 3-for-4.

MISCELLANY: Pitcher Dan Reichert, released by the Rays two weeks ago, signed a minor-league with Toronto on Thursday. ... Damian Rolls returned to the Rays. He missed Wednesday's game to attend the birth of his daughter.

Washington Post By Thomas Boswell Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 28, 2003; Page H01

This week, baseball wanted to open its season with a game in Tokyo between the Seattle Mariners, owned by Nintendo founder Hiroshi Yamauchi, and the Oakland A's. The war in Iraq prevented such travel plans. But the point remained the same. It felt natural, not forced, for baseball to begin its season on another continent.

Every pro sport wants to conquer the world. For many years football, basketball and baseball have boasted about their ambitions to develop a true international identity. Who thought that baseball, so backward at times and blockheaded at others, would establish itself as such an exemplary international sport? You've come a long way from Cooperstown, baby.

The day may come, distant to be sure, when the World Series will be contested among the champions of North America, South America, the Caribbean and Asia. That's not the whole world, by a long shot, but it's a pretty good start. The NFL, for one, would be jealous. Football may have started a league in Europe, but its players, aside from soccer-style kickers, are almost all Americans.

Baseball has gone far past that point. The sport is not only loved on three continents, but the game's major league clubhouses have long had players from as far away as Australia.

For some reason, which is hard to understand, few in baseball ever seem to brag about one of the sport's great strengths. In a country that is proud of its melting-pot roots and ideals, baseball's demographics come much closer to mirroring the country as a whole than any other major sport.

The sport as a whole, and almost every team, has a roughly equal mix of white, black and Latino players. Once, the cohesion of these three groups was considered rare enough to be worthy of mention. The great '75-76 Cincinnati Reds, led by Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, set the example. Now, it's the rule.

For more than 50 years, the game has benefited from, and to a degree been redefined by, the huge contributions of African American athletes, especially those, such as Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson, who epitomized the five-tool star athlete. Now, everyday players start from the assumption that they should, ideally, have speed as well as power, agility as well as strength.

However, it is only in the last 15 years that the sport has practically been saved by an incredible influx of talented players of Hispanic descent. Just when excessive expansion might have diluted the quality of play disastrously, the number of players from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela and, in recent years, Cuba have reinvigorated the whole sport.

Look back to the league leaders in the "Baseball Encyclopedia" as recently as 1987 and notice how relatively few Latino players were top-echelon starters. Fernando Valenzuela, Pedro Guerrero, Andres Galarraga, George Bell and Teddy Higuera show up in the top five in major categories. But that's the entire list.

These days, you could put together an all-Hispanic team that could be competitive against a team assembled from all the other countries in the world combined. Give me a battery of Pedro Martinez and Ivan Rodriguez, with Eddie Guardado, Armando Benitez and sublime Mariano Rivera to finish the job. An outfield of Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez and Vladimir Guerrero would terrify any pitcher. Give me an infield of Carlos Delgado, Edgardo Alfonzo, Miguel Tejada and Albert Pujols. My designated hitter is Juan Gonzalez. Now pick your team. Good luck. You'll need it.

Just when it seemed baseball couldn't get any luckier in the fresh-blood category, the game suddenly discovered that a stereotype no longer held true. For generations, Japanese baseball was considered the equivalent of Class AAA ball. Ex-major leaguers, especially power hitters, frequently were stars there. To produce enough home runs, fences were shorter there and balls were wound tighter. Curveballs dominated, great fastballs were few.

Now, times have changed. In this new century, the major leagues seem to receive a new gift from Japan almost every year. When Hideo Nomo arrived in 1995, he was considered a bit of a fluke -- a notion that, in retrospect, seems ignorant. Nomo is still going strong (16-6 last year), but, recently, he has been joined in America by a new distinctive Japanese star almost every season. The great reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki arrived in 2000, then most valuable player Ichiro Suzuki left the game breathless in '01.

This season, baseball will get a glimpse of something it has never seen -- a Japanese slugger. Sadaharu Oh never crossed the Pacific, though he played well against American stars in exhibition games. Last winter, the New York Yankees signed 6-foot-2, 210-pound Hideki (Godzilla) Matsui, 28, who hit 50 home runs and won his third most valuable player award last season in his 10th season of greatness with the legendary Yomiuri Giants.

How will his skills translate? Hispanic players, perhaps because of the long tradition of superb Cuban players, were always presumed to be gifted at any baseball position. But Japanese hitters have been stigmatized as lacking power. In a sense, even Ichiro's batting title, done in Ty Cobb style, reinforced the image.

In the last two years, non-descript former major leaguers Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera each matched the Japanese single-season home run record of 55 (set by Oh). So, Matsui, who will be followed everywhere by a legion of Japanese media, has plenty to prove. So far, Matsui has hit around .300 in spring training, but looks more like a 25-homer man with excellent bat control than a threat to Barry Bonds.

Who's coming next? Perhaps the shortstop Kazuo Matsui, naturally called "Little Matsui," who hit .332 with 36 homers and 33 steals last season for the Seibu Lions; he'll be a free agent after this year. Unfortunately, the Japanese performer we might want to see most, 27-year-old right-hander Koji Uehara, can't escape his contract for several years. Last fall, in an exhibition, he struck out Barry Bonds three times in one game, something nobody in the States has done since '00.

What players from Mexico to Venezuela, Cuba to Japan, the Dominican Republic to Canada, have brought to the big leagues is more that excellent performance. They have widened our vision of the game. Other cultures bring slightly different insights and styles to baseball.

Watch the Expos' Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez pause in the middle of his windup, knee under chin like a flamingo posing on one leg, and you will see a trait of many top Cuban pitchers: perfect balance at the moment they coil above the rubber. Entire Cuban national team pitching staffs can be seen in the bullpen, all standing on one leg, all with one knee near their chins, as they practice hopping on one leg without losing their balance.

To see Ichiro hit is to be taken back almost a century to the hit-'em-where-they-ain't techniques of Wee Willie Keeler and John McGraw's Giants. Who practically runs out of the batter's box in mid-swing as they chop down on the pitch? Once, many players did.

Our international stars also take us into a future we didn't imagine. For example, led by magical shortstop Omar Vizquel, more middle infielders are realizing that you can catch and throw the ball barehanded in one motion while turning the double play. Who needs a glove? What was once called hot-dogging is now seen as an appropriate risk-reward approach to a vital play.

Baseball is a sport that evolves by inches and by inspiration. It's a game of details, but of sudden insights into new methods, too. As more nations and cultures fall in love with the sport, then bring their subtle alterations of the pastime back to us, baseball grows richer as it grows broader.

In the 19th century, America invented baseball. In the 20th, we dominated the game and polished it to a high gloss. Now, in this century, American baseball and the rest of the world appear ready to shake hands across great distances, each glad for the other's version of the sport and better for it, too.

By KARY BOOHER kbooher@jacksonsun.com Mar 28 2003 <a href=miva.jacksonsun.com>jacksonsun.com

Right-hander Angel Guzman, who likely will be in the Jaxx's starting rotation this year, was awarded to the first Billy Williams-Ron Santo Rookie of Spring Training Award.

Guzman had a nearly 1.20 ERA while in big-league camp as a non-roster invitee. He was signed by the Cubs in 1999 out of Venezuela and was 11-4 with a 2.19 ERA at the Cubs' two Single-A teams last year.

"He's really opened a lot of eyes in the baseball world," Cubs farm director Oneri Fleita said.

<a href=mlb.mlb.com>By Paul C. Smith / MLB.com - CLEARWATER, Fla.

Victor Zambrano, Brandon Backe and Jorge Sosa combined for the Rays' first Major League no-hitter of any kind. The three pitchers shut down the Phillies in the Rays' 8-0 win Thursday night at Jack Russell Stadium.

Zambrano did not give up a hit or walk over five innings. He struck out five and hit two batters in his final start of the spring. He is scheduled to start the Rays' second game of the year.

"I felt very good today," Zambrano said. "I threw a lot of strikes and had good defense behind me."

Zambrano (2-1) has given up just five runs and 13 hits in 24 innings this spring.

"I've felt really good every time I pitched this spring," Zambrano said. "In my country (Venezuela), I worked very hard to get ready for the season. I especially worked on using both sides of the plate."

Backe pitched the sixth and seventh innings and Sosa closed out the last two innings in the Rays' first ever no-hitter, spring games or regular season. It was only the third spring no-hitter in the Majors since 1996.

"That was really nice pitching," manager Lou Piniella said. "Zambrano was really, really sharp. He throws three or four pitches for strikes and he goes right after hitters. And Sosa threw the ball well, too. Sosa, I really like the way he's thrown the ball out of the bullpen this spring."

Outfielder Jonny Gomes hit a home run in his first plate appearance of the spring, and made two impressive catches in left field in the final two innings to preserve the no-hitter.

Gomes, who has been assigned to Double-A Orlando, hammered his home run out to left with one out in the sixth inning with Javier Valentin and Rey Ordonez on base. Gomes, who hit 30 home runs at Single-A Bakersfield in 2002, was up from the Rays' minor league camp for the game.

The game was special for Gomes, who had a heart attack last December but has been cleared to resume his promising baseball career.

"It was definitely an emotional night for me," Gomes said. "Last Christmas Eve, I was in the hospital for five days with a shocker hooked between my legs in case I pulled the shutters and checked out."

Gomes said his family does not have a history of heart attacks but a valve to his heart was pinched and he didn't know what to think or do. He went a full day before going to the hospital.

"I ended up with a bruise worse than normal," Gomes said. "And they don't know why it happened, but I'm OK now."

Gomes said he would always remember his first game in the Majors, even if it was a Spring Training game.

"I'm going to keep the bat and everything else I can get my hands on," Gomes said.

Also for the Rays, Rocco Baldelli was 3-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored. Travis Lee had a two-run double in the first inning and Carl Crawford had an RBI single and stole his ninth base of the spring in the second inning. Ordonez had three hits and scored twice.

The Rays are 8-18 with two ties in the Grapefruit League.

Paul C. Smith is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Read On 25/03/03

The 18-man U.S. roster for the March 29 match traveled to Portland on Monday for a week-long training camp, reuniting ten players from the U.S. squad that made an historic run to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup in Korea/Japan.

"Over the past two or three years, the Venezuelan national team has made great strides, and I think they are perhaps the most improved team in South America," Arena told US Soccer. "We are certainly looking forward to the challenge."

Included in the roster is Washington native Kasey Keller, second on the USA's all-time goalkeeping list for wins (31) and shutouts (28), who has collected an astonishing 13-0-4 record on home soil since 1998.

Also returning is the striker tandem of Brian McBride and Landon Donovan, who together scored four of the USA's seven goals in Korea/Japan.

The camp also marks the reunion of the midfield corps of Pablo Mastroeni, John O'Brien, DaMarcus Beasley and Earnie Stewart, who last took the field together as starters in the 3-2 upset victory against Portugal in the USA's opening match.

Once again, MLS players dominate the roster, with 14 of the 18 now playing domestically.

The following is the U.S. roster for the March 29 match:

GOALKEEPERS (2): Tim Howard (MetroStars), Kasey Keller (Tottenham Hotspur)

DEFENDERS (5): Carlos Bocanegra (Chicago Fire), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover 96), Nick Garcia (Kansas City Wizards), Frankie Hejduk (Columbus Crew), Eddie Pope (MetroStars)

MIDFIELDERS (7): DaMarcus Beasley (Chicago Fire), Bobby Convey (D.C. United), Chris Klein (Kansas City Wizards), Kyle Martino (Columbus Crew), Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado Rapids), John O'Brien (Ajax Amsterdam), Earnie Stewart (D.C. United)

FORWARDS (4): Edson Buddle (Columbus Crew), Landon Donovan (San Jose Earthquakes), Jovan Kirovski (Birmingham City), Brian McBride (Columbus Crew).

Press Release courtesy of www.ussoccer.com