6-4-3 of the week
With that Robbie Alomar-Omar Vizquel Show broken up in Cleveland, somebody has to step forward to become the new Human Web Gem Double Play Combination. After last weekend, we're nominating Pittsburgh's Jack Wilson and Pokey Reese, the Flying Wallendas by the Monongahela.

In the ninth inning last Saturday, with runners on first and third and the Cubs on the verge of tying the game, Alex Gonzalez pounded what looked like an RBI single up the middle. Uh, not so fast.

Wilson scrambled behind the bag, ate a pound and a half of dirt and came up with the baseball. Then, still lying on his face, he flipped it with his glove toward the bag, where Reese picked it out of mid-air and whooshed it to first for a game-saving, game-ending double play. Whew. Five stars for that one.

"It must have been a pretty good play," manager Lloyd McClendon told the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto, "because I got so excited that I jumped up and hit my head on the roof of the dugout."

Nature lovers of the week
In a game last weekend in Denver, umpires had to stop the action temporarily when they noticed Arizona relievers Eddie Oropesa and Miguel Batista climbing around the rocks and trees beyond the center-field fence at Coors.

Batista said they were just trying to get a better view than the one from the bullpen, but manager Bob Brenly was shaking his head.

"I think they were talking to Bambi out there," Brenly told the East Valley Tribune's Ed Price. "Pitchers -- you can't figure them out."

Big EEEEEEEE of the week
Anybody have any good theories on why Mets shortstop Rey Ordonez ran up twice as many errors in two weeks this year (eight) than he had all season in 1999 (four)? We don't. But it's just one more example of how baseball sometimes can make so little sense, it's comical -- even, occasionally, to Ordonez himself.

The other day, the New York Post's Tom Keegan observed Ordonez rolling a ball on the clubhouse floor to his 2-year-old son, Anthony Rey. After his son clanked one, Ordonez chuckled: "Just like your father."

Box score line of the week
You hate to see a good guy end his career with a box-score-line-of-the-week kind of outing. But it happened to Cardinals pitcher Andy Benes last Monday in Arizona. His line:

3 IP, 6 H, 10 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 0 K, 73 pitches to get 9 outs.

In Benes' defense (or lack thereof), the Cardinals did commit four errors while he was out there, leading to seven unearned runs (actually allowing Benes' ERA to go down in a game in which he gave up 10 runs). But at least Benes wasn't grabbing onto that as an alibi.

"When you're not pitching well," he said, "you can have 15 guys out there and no one's going to get to it."

Mound conference of the week
For those of you who always thought it was fascinating to see an entire infield go to the mound for a conference with a pitcher who speaks virtually no English, you'll love this tale from the Los Angeles Times' T.J. Simers.

Wednesday in Denver, Dodgers pitching coach Jim Colborn called time and went to the mound to visit his unhittable new Japanese starter, Kazuhisa Ishii. Since Colborn speaks Japanese, that computed. But what didn't compute was the rest of the infield joining him on the mound. So what was up with that?

"I've never heard Colborn speak Japanese," reported first baseman Eric Karros. "So I just wanted to hear it. I couldn't understand any of it, so I went back to first base."

Piazza-ism of the week
Those of us who have stowed away our parkas for the duration of the season weren't complaining about the heat wave that swept the East Coast this week. Which didn't mean it wasn't a source of nonstop conversation at suddenly tropical-feeling ballparks everywhere.

But you'll be happy to know that our favorite worldly catcher, Mike Piazza, is convinced that whatever was going on up in the climatalogical regions of the atmosphere, it was not a result of global warming.

"I'm not buying the whole global-warming theory," he told the Newark Star-Ledger's David Waldstein "Back in the Industrial Revolution, there were no limits on pollution and no catalytic converters and things like that. Probably the level of pollution was higher back in the early 1900s."

In other words, maybe it was just HOT. OK?

Robbery of the week
When is a line drive that drops in front of the right fielder not a hit?

When Mets pitcher Jeff D'Amico is the man who did the hitting -- and, more importantly -- running down to first base.

Wednesday, D'Amico roped what looked, at first, like an RBI single against the Braves. Except for one thing, his teammate Al Leiter reported to Wild Pitches: Right fielder B.J. Surhoff was playing "right behind the infield dirt."

So Surhoff scooped up the ball, fired it to first base and actually threw D'Amico out, 9-3. It was the first 9-3 non-hit since Aug. 25, 2000, when Marlins right fielder Mark Kotsay pulled the sneaky trick on Reds pitcher Elmer Dessens. But this one even took a run off the scoreboard, since Jeromy Burnitz apparently had scored from third on the hit -- but had his run wiped off the board since it was the third out.

D'Amico's view of this memorable play: "I was like, 'Geez, here we go. I'm going to get thrown out at first base -- like an idiot.'"

Switch-hitter of the week
In your program, if you ever buy one, you may note that Phillies pitcher Vicente Padilla is listed as a switch-hitter. But it doesn't tell you in there he's the most unpredictable switch-hitter in baseball.

Last Sunday, in an 11-strikeout masterpiece against the Reds, Padilla came to bat twice against right-hander Elmer Dessens (yes, the same Elmer Dessens as above). In the first at-bat, he set up right-handed -- and struck out trying to bunt. In the second AB, he hit left-handed -- and grounded out.

"I guess he bunts right and bats left," manager Larry Bowa told the Philadelphia Daily News' Dana Pennett-O'Neil. "As long as he pitches like that, I don't care how he hits."

Bonds bailsman of the week
We take you now to Milwaukee, where Brewers pitcher Nelson Figueroa describes what it was like to give up the 574th home run of Barry Bonds' career -- on a curveball away:

"I didn't think he got enough of it to get out," Figueroa told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Drew Olson. "How many guys have said that now? ... 574 of us."

Milestone men of the week
Who gets the precious game ball from a game in which more than one pitcher reaches an important career milestone? The Washington Post's Dave Sheinin reports this was the big crisis for the Oioles on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium.

Rick Bauer got his first big-league win that night -- but the man who closed it out for him, Jorge Julio, got his first big-league save. It was Julio who wound up with the ball at the end of the game, because that's when he pitches. But in the clubhouse, Julio marched over to Bauer and presented it to "my good friend, Rick Bauer."

Except Bauer, who had just dropped in from the International League that day, felt guilty. So he had another idea.

"Maybe," he said, "we can saw it in half."

Threesome of the week
And the winner of the First Man To Hit Three Homers In A Game competition for 2002 is ... Astros masher Lance Berkman, who did it Tuesday -- right after getting his conspicuously long hair cut for the first time since spring training.

"It just shows you," Jeff Bagwell told the Houston Chronicle's Jose de Jesus Ortiz, "that the Samson theory is out the window."

Injuries of the week