Along with Townhall.com, the SportsNuts and AP are the remaining undefeated teams at 4-0. Yes, it's only two weeks into the season, but look closer. Comcast’s wins Saturday against 2005 playoff teams WRC and WTTG gives the SportsNuts critical tiebreakers against two likely playoff entrants this year.

For AP, after missing the playoffs last year, the Flash has opened with three of four victories against lower-tiered opponents, including a thrilling win against Team Video Saturday. The quick start gives the Flash a one-game lead over the surprising National Press Club at Layhill—but most of all, a three-game spread over the sluggish Gazette, of which AP owns an Opening Day victory and now a huge edge in the division.

Of course, there are still six weeks and 12 games to play and the factor of the Dawg Days of June always changes the scope of the playoff races. But in recent years, the teams that can get out of the gate quickly can afford a little meltdown in June. And if rain so happens to shorten the season, then these early-season victories are bigger than Santa.

Week 2 nonetheless showcased much of the league’s balance—and uncertainty from week to week—as five teams that started 2-0 suffered losses. The most shocking was CNN’s doubleheader setbacks to AOL and USA Today after such an impressive Opening Day. Thirty runs in one game one week, seven total the next. Yipes!

Now, the Capitalview/Homewood Division is wide open—even to winless NBC News Channel—because CNN, last year’s runnerup for the championship, has a decidedly more difficult upper-tier schedule.

Meanwhile, it was a solid week for USA Today and AOL as each gained valuable non-division tiebreaker victories against CNN and Atlantic Video. It was also an important day for the Gannetoids because their recent history has been a sluggish start to the season and losing some of these key early upper-tier games, hurting their playoff seed.

And looking straight ahead, USA Today and the Washington Times are facing Comcast SportsNet and Townhall.com this weekend in games that absolutely, positively, unequivocally are going to make a difference in the outcome of either the Wheaton Forest race and/or the playoff seedings.

Post.com’s sweep of the Times and Washington Post—winning the Johnny Livengood Memorial game and the mournful “Red Jersey Award” once again—keeps the vaunted Bucketheads in step with Townhall.com and AOL for that brutal Burning Tree race. There’s a whole lotta scoreboard watching going on in that division and the Bucketheads’ win against the Times shows that while the defending champs might be thin in numbers, they ain’t parting with that title without some resolve.

On a wider view, so much of the first two weeks has been about the upstarts and you can start to feel the energy of AP, National Press Club, Team Video and, after Saturday, WJLA/NewsChannel 8, and possibly the Post.

AP mounted a big comeback, capped by Mike Young’s two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, to knock off pesky Team Video. Hey, nevermind that 10-run sixth by Team. No problem. AP has scored 60 runs in four games, causing (mock) mutterings of . . . corked bats!

When did you think you’d ever hear that phrase in slow-pitch softball?

Team Video looks to be improved after winning only four games a year ago. After handing the Press Club its only loss, Team is halfway to last season’s wins total. Could they be this year’s Atlantic Video or NBC News Channel? One thing we do know: The legendary Ernie Crow had four hits and three RBI against AP and if the name . . . Ernie Crow . . . seems familiar, look at Rule 2-D and, yep, that’s him. One of the MMSL’s first major rules, drafted in 1993.

Ernie autographs pages of the MMSL rules book for donations to charity, namely after-game beer and pizza at the Stained Glass Pub.

This week’s games are unwittingly fascinating—not just because of the Post.com/AOL/WRC/Gazette quartet at Burning Tree or the Townhall.com/Comcast SportsNet/USA Today/Times bloodletting at Veirs Mill. No, across the board we have excellent matchups of evenly balanced teams—the 78ers against the Press Club, for example, and ABC News against AP.

It's also a critical week for CBS News and the Post to make some inroads, and for Discovery Channel if the Ducks want to get back into things. A bad week by the Ducks and about the only chance they have for the playoffs is a big winning streak or, more likely, winning out in the final two rounds of Aspen Hill Division games.

But don’t discount the lower-tiered teams meeting each other, either. City Paper vs. WUSA means one will get its first victory, and so might the Examiner. The Post has an opportunity to take the lead at Wheaton Forest and NBC News Channel has a window for leaping back into things at Capitalview/Homewood. The standings could take a huge jolt after Week 3.

On a wonderful side note, NBC News Channel sent e-mail last week saying it didn't have enough bodies and would have to forfeit. WRC and WTTG graciously offered to loan them players. "Just come out to the fields!"

Very classy, and the foundation of sportsmanship and selflessness we need in the MMSL for years more to come.