By Vincent Liu

For Matt Means, perfection was no more. For the Mountain View High baseball team, it was business as usual.

Sporting a perfect 0.00 earned-run average through his first 13 innings of the season, Means gave up his first earned run last Saturday afternoon. It was only a slight blemish, as the Spartans rode his dominant pitching to shut down host Monta Vista 5-1. The win improved Mountain View to 8-0, 4-0 in the SCVAL El Camino Division.

The Dodgers had Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale in the early 1960s; the Diamondbacks have Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling today. The local high school version of a fearsome lefty-righty twosome is beginning to take shape, courtesy of southpaw Means and his right-handed teammate Erik Davis.

Means and Davis each owns a 3-0 record and respective ERAs of .368 and 1.40 through eight games. After junior Davis beat Homestead 8-2 at home last Thursday, Means followed with a two-hitter and 12 strikeouts over six innings against Monta Vista.

If the early-season achievements of the two pitchers are any indication of things to come, Davis and Means may be creating their own rendition of the old son, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

In the second game of the season, Davis pitched a no-hitter, striking out 17 in a 1-0 win. Not to be outdone, Means hurled back-to-back one-hitters, with 11 Ks in each game. Davis’ fastballs had been clocked at up to 93 mph