Amazingly, all this happened after a 1-2-3, six-pitch first inning in that March 8 start. So since then, this man has given up 11 runs -- on no hits. What's the degree of difficulty of that?

Obviously, Bierbrodt's nightmare isn't funny anymore. But after the first start, he was still laughing about seeing manager Hal McRae come out to get him after seven straight walks and a hit batter.

"Me and Hal were walking off, and he was like, 'You couldn't hit water if you fell off a boat,'" Bierbrodt told the St. Petersburg Times' Marc Topkin. "That pretty much sums up the outing."

Hernandez (who has given up 44 hits in 22 innings this spring) on the homer by Abbott, who swung away despite being an AL pitcher coming to bat with runners on first and third in the second inning of a spring-training game:

"I thought he was going to bunt. That was a good bunt."

"He wanted me to bunt," Abbott told the Seattle Times' Bob Finnigan. "I said, 'Come on. It's spring training. Lou's not here.'"

Big EEEEEEEEEE of the week
We don't know how anybody could top a pitcher giving up 11 runs on no hits. But the Diamondbacks did something Sunday that's just about as impossible:

They committed 10 errors in one game -- and WON (10-9).

We haven't been able to discern the last time a team did that in the regular season -- although we can assume it was somewhere around 1884. But SABR's David Vincent and Retrosheet's Dave Smith did determine that no team since 1978 had committed more than seven errors in a game, that only nine teams even had done that and that just two teams had clunked seven balls in one game and won.

(Those two teams, for those interested: Astros over Pirates, 6-5, on June 12, 1978, and Mariners over Brewers, 10-8, on June 25, 1978.)

But back to live action: Minor-league shortstop Tim Olson, playing because the "A" team was in Mexico, piled up four of the errors. Third baseman Chris Donnels made two, and his replacement, Robbie Hammock (normally a catcher) made another. Which means the left side of the infield had seven errors.

Right fielder Doug Devore, catcher Chad Moeller and second baseman Junior Spivey contributed the other three.

"Somebody pinch me and wake me up from this nightmare," Olson told the East Valley Tribune's Ed Price.

Well, one thing Olson had going for him is that his manager, Bob Brenly, could never use four errors in one game as an excuse for cutting anybody -- because he did it himself. In fact, Brenly tied a prestigious modern-day record with four errors in one inning in a rare 1986 appearance at third base.

"Anybody can make four errors in a game," the manager quipped. "Try four in an inning. It takes a special kind of athlete to do that."

Fearsome foursome of the week
And one more feat no one alive had ever seen before:

On March 12, Reds pitcher Lance Davis went to the mound to start a game against the Phillies. By the time he'd gotten his first out, he'd already given up four home runs.

No one has ever done that in a regular-season game. But Davis' day went: Jimmy Rollins homer, Doug Glanville homer, four-pitch walk to Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell homer, Travis Lee homer.

"I feel," Davis said afterward, "like I just fell out of a dumpster."

Which is not to be confused with saying he felt like Ryan Dempster.

Of the four homers, the two scariest were Glanville's -- a line drive that disappeared in about three-fourths of a second -- and Burrell's, which went over the fence, over a street and landed in the back yard of a house on the other side of the block.

"The home run I hit apparently hit a lady walking on the other side of the fence," Glanville told Spring Fever. "They brought me the ball to sign for her, and I signed it, 'Watch out for big snowflakes.'"

Burrell's homer was judged by several observers to be the longest they'd ever seen at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater. Glanville speculated it went so far, "it was caught by Sharbat Gula, the newly found Afghan Girl from National Geographic." But that report, he conceded, was "not confirmed."

First chapter of the week
It was a big week for first innings involving the Phillies. Three days before hitting four home runs before making their first out, they also saw their manager, Larry Bowa, get ejected before they made their first out.

Bowa was run by Marty Foster for arguing checked swings in the top of the first, but that's not important now. The important part is that it's clear that arriving late for one of this team's games is no longer an option. And at this point, we might as well just turn this entire column over to Doug Glanville.

When we observed to Glanville that there ought to be a marketing campaign somewhere amid all this first-inning hoopla, he got right on the case.

"The marketing team can provide a new rule: 'Miss the first three outs, miss the last three outs,'" he said. "All fans tagged as missing the first three outs are automatically ejected out of the ballpark for the last three outs. And should the game go extra innings, no fan who missed the first three outs can see extra innings and is thereby ejected by the top of the 10th."

Yeah, that ought to teach them.

Injury of the week
Dave Hollins, trying to win a job as a bench guy in Philadelphia, was out almost a week after being bit by a spider in his apartment in Florida.

Before we let Doug Glanville go back to his day job, he's here with a report on that mishap.

"You'd think they might mention that in the lease," Glanville said. "You know: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, thousands of spiders -- but at least they eat the mosquitoes."

Now that Hollins is back, Glanville has advised his teammates to pay close attention to any unusual behavior.

"If he shoots a web across the infield and he doesn't use a glove," Glanville said, "then we've got a really great Web Gem."

Reunion of the week
When the Pirates played the Red Sox on March 6, it gave Pokey Reese his long-awaited chance to pay his respects to his old teammates with the Red Sox.

Except for one minor problem: "I don't know anyone over there," he said.

With good reason, too: Reese was with them for exactly one day, as part of his insane four-team winter. (He started it with the Reds, was traded to Colorado on Dec. 18, was traded to Boston the next day, got released the next day when he couldn't work out a new contract with the Red Sox, and then signed with the Pirates as a free agent.)

So let's see. That would mean he even had a less memorable Red Sox career than Izzy Alcantara. Not that it was his fault.

Asked by the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto to recall his favorite memory from his days -- OK, his day -- with the Red Sox, Reese replied:

"I talked to Joe Kerrigan on the phone and he seemed like a nice guy. Now, he's gone, too."

Pool time of the week
It's about this time of every spring when players really start to focus.

No, not on Opening Day. On their NCAA pools.

But veteran pool entrant John Franco told Bloomberg News' Jerry Crasnick that even though this is his 18th year in the big leagues, he's still attempting to win his first basketball pool.

Asked if he'd ever won, Franco laughed: "Are you kidding? I've got a Cal Ripken streak going."

Quotes of the week

"We'll see what kind of reaction I get when I leave in October."

"He's gotta correspond better with his catcher."

Good idea. But who will pay the postage?

Useless information dept.

Because he batted out of order.

If you're having a tough time remembering the last time you saw that, it's because you probably never did.

According to the Sultan of Swat Stats (David Vincent, in case you've forgotten), the last known instance of a player losing a regular-season home run because he batted out of order was June 29, 1933. The victim that day was another Cardinal, Ethan (Sofa Man) Allen. He hit an inside-the-park homer in the Polo Grounds -- but lost it for batting out of order. It would have been his only homer of the year.

The last National League team with 10 losing seasons in a row: the expansion Expos, in their first 10 seasons (1969-78).

The last NL non-expansion team with 10 or more: the 1953-62 Cubs.

The last non-expansion team in either league with 10 or more: the 1952-67 Athletics (yep, that's 16 in a row).

But the Pirates have another challenge: They're coming off 100 losses. Eleven previous teams since 1900 have gone from a 100-loss season to a winning season. But not many have lately. In the last 35 years, only one NL team has done that -- the '85-86 Giants (from 62-100 to 83-79).

That's not unprecedented, but it's close.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau's Ken Hirdt, Mondesi is the first man to pull this off since Rob Deer did it eight years in a row, from 1986-93. One more year like it, and Mondesi ties the much-coveted major-league record, held by Deer, Tom Brunansky (1982-89) and Norm Cash (1962-69).

Here's that list:

June 17, 1974 -- Catfish Hunter, Yankees vs. Red Sox (homer, homer, homer, out, homer).

June 19, 1994 -- John Smoltz, Braves vs. Reds (homer, homer, homer, out, homer).

April 27, 2000 -- Jose Lima, Astros vs. Cubs (homer, homer, homer, out, homer).

So what does that mean? Not much anymore. Of the eight playoff teams last season, seven of them struck out at least 1,000 times. The only team that didn't was Seattle.

Last time we had a postseason in which none of the playoff teams whiffed 1,000 times: 1992 (Braves, Pirates, Blue Jays, A's).

The Mariners and 1906 Cubs may have both won 116 games -- but only the Mariners won all 116 on the field.

Turns out the 1906 Cubs won one of their games via forfeit.

On Aug. 7, 1906, Giants manager John McGraw had had so much trouble with one of the umpires, Jimmy Johnstone, that he refused to allow the umpire into the stadium. So Johnstone declared the game a forfeit -- from outside the stadium.