CINCINNATI, OH -- The day after Reds' Chief Operating Officer John Allen showed irritation over relentless trade rumors about Ken Griffey Jr. going to the White Sox, General Manager Dan O'Brien also loosed a torrent of anger on reporters.

“Look, I've told you a hundred times. We're not planning to trade any of our outfielders at this time,” O'Brien said from the second stall in the men's room near his office. “I also haven't found anyone to take Aurilia or a miracle man with the magic elixir to make the world's most potent offense produce on a regular basis. OK? Now can I have some privacy please?”

Undaunted, one reporter peeked over the wall and asked whether the Reds were going to acquire starting pitching.

“Does this team need pitching?” O'Brien asked sarcastically as he slammed the stall door. “I hadn't noticed.”

“I'll just pull an ace out of my [rear end] then!” O'Brien added as he stormed out of the restroom, toilet paper on his shoe.

No news yet on a similar outburst from Manager Jerry Narron, but several reporters are vigilantly poking him with a stick to see what happens.

“Hey,” said Narron. “Cut it out.”

CINCINNATI, OH -- Cincinnati Reds reliever Todd Coffey was accosted by his teammates, stripped down, and thoroughly sprayed with a hose for approximately 15 minutes today, all over a misunderstanding.

During spring training and early in the season, several players missed playing time due to flu-like symptoms. When the insidious bug continued to pass from player to player, the Reds had cultures taken of the clubhouse to eliminate environmental factors as the cause. After several delays at the lab, the results came back last night and definitively showed that the clubhouse itself was not to blame.

“In this case, the cause appears to be simple enough: saliva,” explained Dr. Timothy Kremcheck, Reds Medical Director.

Not that the Reds are spitting on each other, but trace amounts of saliva end up in the air, on furniture, and on people when people get together and talk, cough, or sneeze.

“It's normal for small amount of other people's saliva to end up on you,” said Kremcheck, “but it can spread disease. That's why hand washing is so important, and that's what I told the guys.”

So how did a brief lecture on hand-washing get Todd Coffey sprayed down with a hose?

“I told them when anyone coughs in the clubhouse that thorough scrubbing of the cough-er as well as the cough-ee is important,” said Kremcheck. “They just misunderstood.”

Coffey is reported to be slightly embarrassed but squeaky clean. Despite some residual redness, Coffey is available to pitch immediately.

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Adam Dunn, recently lauded as a hero for his efforts to retrieve the ball from Edwin Encarnación's first home run, demonstrated his heroic traits again today during lunch.

“We were having roast chicken and mashed potatoes, but they were really bland,” said teammate Jason LaRue. “I looked around for some salt, but it was all the way at the other end of the table.”

LaRue mentioned the lack of seasoning in passing, but never expected Dunn, whom he was sitting next to, to step up the way he did.

“It was just amazing,” recalled LaRue. “He shouted down for the guys at the other end of the table to pass down the salt, and they did it.”

Dunn downplayed the incident. “I knew how important it was to him, and it was getting kind of late in the meal and you didn't want him to have to finish the potatoes bland.”

“I just called down to the end of the table -- I didn't know who was closest to it, but one of the guys heard me talking about the seasoning and the importance of enjoying your meal and blah, blah, blah. I asked if he could send down the salt and he said yeah, he would do it.”

Dunn also got the pepper.

“I hadn't even asked for it,” said LaRue. “That just shows what a heroic guy he is.”

BOWLING GREEN, OH -- Wins, a pitching number widely derided by baseball statistic aficionados, has suddenly soared to the pinnacle of referential reverence thanks to the work of a local college student.

“I discovered it by accident,” explained Brian I. Ack, a graduate student of mathematics at Bowling Green University and the president of the student chapter of the Calculation Lovers Uber-Brotherhood (CLUB). “I was analyzing the impact of pitchers' win shares divided by their opponents batting average on the team's record. That's when I noticed the trend.”

The trend was between a pitching staff's number of wins and the team's standing in its division.

“It's a shocking 100% correlation,” said Ack. “The team whose pitching staff accumulates the most wins takes its division every time.”

“Such high predictive accuracy is unheard of,” Ack continued.

Ack's discovery has sent a shock wave through the CLUB, and more discoveries appear to be just around the corner.

“My roommate and I recently had another breakthrough that I think will be just as powerful,” Ack said. “It turns out that if you look at OBP -- without adding anything to it or anything -- that you can determine how often a player reaches base.”

Ack plans to publish his findings in The Diamond Angle Baseball Magazine, on his weblog, and in haughty-sounding posts on baseball message boards across the Internet.

Once again, Red Hot Mama has been fortunate enought to sit down with a Red, this time it was Jacob Cruz, to ask him eight stupid questions about his favorite things.

RHM: Jacob, you have a very cute dog. What are her favorite toys?
JC: Sometimes she chews shoes.

RHM: What are your favorite female farm animals and creatures from Australia?
JC: I think I'll go with ewes and kangaroos.

RHM: Favorite place to take a nap?
JC: I like to snooze in zoos.

RHM: What's your favorite way to travel down a river?
JC: If I had to choose, I'd use canoes.

RHM: Favorite thing about teammate Felipe Lopez?
JC: Tough question, but you can't lose with the tattoos.

RHM: Favorite way to use herbs?
JC: They're the only way to infuse stews.

RHM: Favorite pastime after a game?
JC: I turn on the t.v. and peruse news.

RHM: Favorite children's show that features an atypically colorful dog?
JC: Clifford. What?