When Twins catcher A.J. Pierzynski headed for the plate Tuesday in Tampa Bay, it would have been a great time to slip out for a quick grouper sandwich to go. Uh, make that two.

Because you would have had plenty of time to order, watch them cook it, pay and get back to your seat without even missing his at-bat.

	Pierzynski

It requires a mandatory Baseball Tonight update these days when any hitter has one at-bat that goes on for 13 pitches. But Tuesday, in always-funky Tropicana Field, A.J. Pierzynski had two 13-pitch at-bats. In back-to-back trips to the plate.

And just to make sure we all understood that 13 was the lucky number of the evening, immediately before Pierzynksi's first 13-pitch marathon, teammate Dustan Mohr stepped in and had yet another 13-pitch at-bat himself.

"I was on deck for both of A.J.'s at-bats," Twins utility quote machine Denny Hocking told Wild Pitches. "I was, like, 'Dude, put the ball in play -- so I can go up and make an out.'"

But even though Pierzynski told Wild Pitches that as all this dragged on, he just wanted to "make like Ichiro and slap a ball to left," he turned into a man who couldn't figure out a way to hit a baseball between those well-separated foul lines. Maybe there was some kind of Star Wars force field at work.

Now we want you to understand what went on here. According to loyal reader Allan Wood, who chronicles long at-bats for the sheer joy of doing it, before this night, there had been only three 13-pitch at-bats by all the hitters in the major leagues during the entire season (and none longer).

Then, mysteriously, we had three at-bats like that in one game -- two of them by one hitter, and two of them back-to-back. And all three of them ended in hits. Is this a weird sport, or what?

At one point, Devil Rays pitcher Joe Kennedy said, he got so frustrated, "I asked the umpire, 'Do you have any other pitches you can teach me to throw?' "

And when Kennedy wasn't talking to the umpire, he was talking to his catcher, Toby Hall, who went to the mound twice during Pierzynski's first marathon (just to make sure, apparently, it lasted longer than the episode of Frasier that was airing on NBC at the time).

Pierzynski said he could hear a fan behind the Devil Rays dugout yelling that he swung like a girl. He saw his teammates roaring at some of the pitches he fouled off. He even heard his two dozen friends and family members in the stands getting on him, wondering "why I couldn't hit any of those fair."

But eventually, he got his family off his back by hitting one foul ball that was caught by his cousin. And since both his interminable at-bats ended in hits, that settled his teammates down, too.

By the time the night was over, though, he'd fouled off 20 pitches just in his first three at-bats. Which has to be a record, at least in the post-Richie Ashburn era. But the reason we love A.J. Pierzynski here at Wild Pitches is he had the answer of the year for why he hit all those fouls.

"I was trying," he said, "to hit a foul ball to every person in the stands."

Triple-triple of the week
Just this spring, we proposed to Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton that baseball stage a World's Fastest Baseball Human competition at the All-Star Game, pitting Atlanta sprint champ Rafael Furcal against Seattle blazer Ichiro Suzuki.

Man, throw that thing on pay-per-view, and somebody would pay $19.95 to watch it. We guarantee it.

	Ichiro

	Furcal

Well, nobody has taken us up on that idea. But last Sunday, we got the next-closest thing.

Out in Seattle, Ichiro thumped two triples in one game. But back east, Furcal topped him -- with three triples, in a game against the Marlins.

So we asked our friends, Jeff Scott and Leslie Macher, of Major League Baseball Productions, to get out the videotape and time them. And the winner is ...

From the Dominican Republic, ladies and gentlemen -- Rafael Furcal.

He made it to third on his first two triples in 11 seconds flat. He pulled in at a mere 11.14 in the third heat -- probably, according to Leslie Macher, because it was 2½ hours after the first triple and he was tired.

Whatever, Ichiro's time on both of his triples was exactly 11.05 seconds. So even though Furcal had to slide into third and Ichiro's were of the stand-up variety, the gold medal for tripling goes to Rafael Furcal. Hold your applause, please.

Furcal, who had no triples all last season, was the first player to hit three triples in one game since Lance Johnson did it in 1995, the first National Leaguer to do it since Shawon Dunston and Herman Winningham in 1990 and the first Brave to do it since the unforgettable Danny O'Connell pulled it off on June 13, 1956.

You know it was quite a show. So Wild Pitches asked a couple of eyewitnesses to describe the sight of Furcal whooshing around the bases.

Marlins utility humorist Andy Fox said it reminded him of a day at the dog races, except that instead of watching the fake rabbit roar out of the gates as the P.A. man bellowed, "Here comes Rusty," all Fox could hear in his head was, "Here comes Raffy."

And every time Furcal thumped one in the gap, Fox said he actually caught himself sitting in the dugout, saying: "He's off."

But Braves GM John Schuerholz practically scripted an entire fantasy Sports Century episode by analogizing: "He looked like Michael Johnson leading Secretariat around the bases, pursued by winged-footed Mercury."

Now we ask you this: When was the last time you heard winged-footed Mercury get mentioned in any other baseball column, huh?

Flashback of the week
Before we move on, we present you with this triple-triple epilog:

When the San Francisco Chronicle's Henry Schulman read that Furcal was the first National Leaguer to pull off a three-triplefest since Shawon Dunston, he decided to ask Dunston what he remembered about his three-triple game, against Montreal's Dennis Martinez on July 28, 1990.

"That," Dunston laughed, "was when I was good."

Web gem of the week
Rookie Padres third baseman Sean Burroughs missed a golden opportunity last weekend to establish his place in blooper-film eternity.

He lurched to backhand a hot shot by the Dodgers' Mark Grudzielanek last Saturday night, then reached into his glove to fire the ball to first and had a surprise waiting for him:

	Burroughs

The ball had burrowed itself so deep into the webbing of the glove, he couldn't get it out.

Now if Burroughs had spent enough time studying previous blooper tapes starring our hero, Terry Mulholland, and Yankees pitcher El Duque Hernandez, he would have known the proper reaction would have been to heave the whole glove across the infield to first base. Instead, Burroughs just stared at the baseball for about 30 seconds, trying to figure out if he'd just wandered into a bad movie.

At least his teammates, for the most part, were sympathetic.

"The pitcher can run it over and think along the way," catcher Tom Lampkin told Wild Pitches. "But from third, he's got less time to think about it. It would have been a long throw -- with a lot of resistance."

But third-base coach Tim Flannery told Wild Pitches he was disappointed Burroughs didn't dip into his memory bank and pull out a trick from his youth.

"Hey, he's a southern California guy," Flannery said. "He could have done the Frisbee thing. He's a beach kid. I bet he could have flipped it over there, no problem."

Unit watch of the week
Randy Johnson's strikeout numbers these days seem to pile up like those billboards that show the world population. The numbers get so big, you can hardly digest them.

But last Sunday at the BOB, Johnson had one of his all-time afternoons -- a 17-strikeout two-hitter against Colorado in which he was still throwing 100 mph on his 114th and 115th pitches of the day.

It was his sixth game of 17 whiffs or more and his 25th of 15 or more, if you'd lost count. And if you had, we forgive you. But for a guy to be that unhittable in this rocketball age we live in ought to be impossible. Shouldn't it?

So howwwww unhittable was he that day?

"He didn't need eight fielders," Rockies coach-witticist Rich Donnelly told Wild Pitches. "Two guys could have caught everything. A pitcher, a catcher and two outfielders could have handled it. I don't think we hit any ground balls, except for one little roller, and Randy fielded that one.

"They could have given six of their players the day off, and nobody even would have known it. And if they wanted to save time and shorten the game, they could have dragged the infield when he was out there. They could have held a giveaway deal behind second base every inning. Kids could have come out and run the bases. It wouldn't have bothered him."

Box score line of the week
If Greg Maddux can give up 10 runs in one game, you might as well tell us dogs can fly, elephants can join the ballet and Newt Gingrich is a liberal.

	Maddux

There are certain things in life we know are impossible. And Maddux giving up 10 runs in one game was clearly one of them -- until Thursday, when he somehow did that. His mind-boggling line:

4 2/3 IP, 7 H, 10 R, 6 ER, 5 BB, 3 K, 1 HBP, 100 pitches to get 14 outs.

Huh?

The numbers: Maddux had never before given up more than eight runs in a game -- and he gave up eight in one inning. He's had 14 whole months as a Brave in which he didn't allow 10 runs. He walked back-to-back hitters at one point -- something he never did at any point last season while facing 927 hitters. He even threw more balls (53) than strikes (47) if you count his two intentional walks -- something we can guarantee he's never done before. And it was only the third time in his last 43 starts he'd given up more than five earned runs in a game -- all of them against Arizona.

The quote: "I don't explain it," Arizona manager Bob Brenly said. "And we're not even going to try to explain it."

Ejection of the week
Padres manager Bruce Bochy made an early exit in his team's game last Sunday in Los Angeles, when plate ump Mike Winters thumbed him for arguing a Phil Nevin called strikeout.

Asked afterward what happened, Bochy deadpanned: "I wanted to listen to Vin Scully. I enjoy him so much that this gave me a chance to listen to the game."

Heads-up play of the week
Gritty Pirates catcher Jason Kendall had no RBI all season until last weekend, when he took a foul ball in the side of the head and had to leave a game with a slight concussion.

	Kendall

Two days later, he came back and drove in four runs in one game, three of them on a bases-loaded triple.

"If I had known this was going to happen," manager Lloyd McClendon told the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto, "I would have hit Jason over the head a few days ago."

Piazza-ism of the week
After spending three straight days in the trainer's room after tweaking his hamstring last week, Mets catcher-poet Mike Piazza emerged Friday with this announcement:

"I feel like a shrimp cocktail, I've spent so much time on ice."

Trespasser of the week
The Reds' Juan Encarnacion launched a 454-foot home run Thursday against Colorado that carried so far beyond the left-field fence, it hopped past a bulldozer and into the construction site for the Reds' new ballpark.

"I thought that opening was next year," Rockies coach Rich Donnelly told Wild Pitches. "I guess he thought he'd open that park a little early."

Plastic surgery threat of the week
While pitching against the A's on Wednesday, Yankees pitcher David Wells almost took a rocket back through the box off the old noggin at one point.

Asked about the threat to his good looks the next day, during his WFAN radio show, by hosts Jody McDonald and Sid Rosenberg, Wells chuckled: "Might have been an improvement, huh?"

Bullpen parade of the week
You think it's easy managing the Texas Rangers, you should have seen manager Jerry Narron try to make it through Thursday's 11-9 win over the Blue Jays.

At one point in the seventh inning, Narron used five pitchers in a span of 12 pitches -- and got no outs.

Told afterward by the Dallas Morning News' Gerry Fraley that only one manager in history had ever used more pitchers in one inning (Oakland's Steve Boros, who used six on Sept. 3, 1983), Narron replied: "If I'd known that, I'd have tried to get one more in."

Grady Little quote of the week
This week's most amusing quip from new Red Sox manager-quipster Grady Little is an explanation for why he gave utility-cheerleader Carlos Baerga a start at second base Friday.

"Every once in a while," Little said, "we've got to give everybody in the dugout a break by getting Baerga out on the field. He drives everybody crazy in there."

Reincarnation of the week
Last Sunday in Chicago, an amazing thing happened: Jose Rijo -- a man who missed six years because of Tommy John surgery -- started a game at Wrigley Field and won, for the first time since July 13, 1995.

In between Rijo's wins, Randy Johnson won 114 games.

"God bless America," Rijo said. "Whoever said this isn't the land of opportunity is wrong."

Rijo didn't just win, though. In five innings he gave up just three hits, lowering his ERA to 1.38.

"At this pace," chuckled manager Bob Boone, "he's a shoo-in for the All Star Game."

Slammer of the week
After 5,347 at-bats without a grand slam -- most among all active players -- Seattle's Mark McLemore finally hit one Monday.

Asked afterward if he was aware of those stats, McLemore made it clear he had a better grasp of one of those numbers than the other.

"I didn't know exactly the number (of at-bats)," he said. "But I knew it was never."

Drew Carey alert of the week
On a miserable meteorological evening at Jacobs Field last week, the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Paul Hoynes asked Indians GM Mark Shapiro if it was raining or snowing?

"It's Clevelanding," Shapiro said.

Metaphor man of the week
When the poor Detroit Tigers placed Dmitri Young on the disabled list Friday with a hernia, it was the seventh time they'd placed a player on the DL just since Opening Day.

	Young

The appropriate cliché here is: When it rains, it pours. But Young pulled many more metaphors out of his blender for Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler.

"It's definitely April showers," Young said. "Or damaging storms. Left hooks. Right uppercuts. Knees to the groin. ... Hey, that's me."

Headliner of the week
Finally, here's the baseball headline of the week from the always-entertaining online humor site, the Ironic Times:

Manager Fired, Hired, Fired
Hired, fired, hired, fired.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.