Someone then drew laughs by asking what the guess had been exchanged for.

And Hurdle drew even bigger laughs by answering the guest had been exchanged “for two-out RBIs.”

If only it were that easy.

I’m often asked why these ’13 Pirates could have better pennant-race staying power than the 2011-12 versions, and my answer usually has to do with more experience, the presence of more race-savvy veterans, greater depth.

Too complicated. Next time, I might just say: “Look how tight have stayed doing it just with smoke and mirrors. Wait till the bats show up.”

The most remarkable thing about the Bucs being only four games behind St. Louis, with the Majors’ fifth-best record, is how few clutch hits it has taken.

The Pirates are hitting .209 with two outs and men in scoring position — compared to the Cardinals’ .336. Yet own only four fewer wins. 

A classic cup half-empty or half-full proposition. “They can’t get a key hit” or “They’re due to bust out, then look out above.”

One conclusion that could be drawn from the getting-the-most-out-of-the-least first 10 weeks is that pitching stability has carried the team. And, of course, that would be wrong, since the Pirates have averaged more than one starter for those 10 weeks.

All those things going wrong, and it has still come out right. Should be a good sign, no?

The attempts to compare baseball eras, with the idea of getting current players on higher pedestals. This is most obvious when today’s postseason performances are compared to yesteryear’s — which is ridiculous, since yesteryear the postseason involved dramatically fewer games.

And you don’t have to go all the way back to pre-1969, when we only had the World Series. For many years, the League Championship Series were best-of-five. Anyway, you get the idea.

And now we’re being told that Cabrera could set a big-league record for most RBIs into the All-Star Game break. At his current blistering pace, the Tigers third baseman would get to 107 ribbies by the July 14 timeout — compared to the record 103 in 1935 by Hank Greenberg.

A great storyline, especially in Detroit, since Greenberg was one of their own.

One big apples-to-oranges problem:

This season started on April 1 and Cabrera will have gone through 94 games by July 14.

The 1935 season, as did most seasons in that era, started on April 17 and Greenberg got to play 76 games prior to the July 8 All-Star Game. 

A difference of 18 games seems quite significant. Just thought you might like to know.

The irony is that it isn’t really a bullpen question, but a rotation question. Unless starters begin taking some burden off the relievers, they’re going to run out of gas long before the schedule runs out of games  – pretty much like last season, when this trend had a lot to do with Collapse II.

Through Monday’s games, the Pittsburgh bullpen has worked the most innings (209) in the NL. But that’s only the big picture, and the insets are more troubling: Pirates relievers have worked 65 more innings than the Cardinals, and 45 more than the Reds. The long-range effect on the division race of that disparity should be obvious.

The Bucs have already done a bit of shuffling to keep fresh arms in the bullpen, but those are bandages, not cures.

Complete games from starters? Forget that; the Bucs don’t have any, but that doesn’t make them unique in today’s game. But how about the fact they haven’t even gotten a single eight-inning start?

Runaway pitch counts aren’t the problem. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, I think a bigger issue is manager Clint Hurdle having fallen in love with the Melancon-Grilli end-game. Hurdle can’t be blamed for depending on the duo, which has been flawless.

But he has to ease up on the starters’ leash. Numerous times they have been removed when comfortably under 100 pitches after seven.

In a twisted sense, the offense could also help. The Bucs have played nothing but tight games, so fresher arms at the end are desirable. More comfortable leads would convince Hurdle to let starters work longer and let relievers catch their breaths.

It all gets recorded on your internal DVR, and the longer you’ve been around, the more often you hit the “Playback” button.

I hit that button again yesterday, when Reid Ryan was named club president of the Houston Astros.

It brought back those wonderful days in the Angels’ clubhouse in the early ’70s. Nolan Ryan was a budding ace, the Ryan Express just pulling out of the station toward all those no-hitters and strikeouts.

Nollie developed a warm relationship with Angels coach Jimmie Reese, an endearing institution in that clubhouse who had been around the game long enough to once having been a roommate of Babe Ruth. They become soul father and soul son.

Countless times, I’d watch Jimmie pal around with young Reid, the Ryans’ first son, born a few months before the first of his eight seasons with the Angels. Through Reid, the relationship between Nolan and Jimmie grew even deeper, quickly reaching the point Nolan, somehow, wanted to keep Jimmie in his life forever.

So when the Ryans’ second son was born, in 1976, they named him Jimmy Reese Ryan.

Life goes on. Reid Ryan becomes the president of a Major League team. And we still see him in a long-gone clubhouse, running circles around the knees of the 70-something Reese, as proud papa Nolan grins from his locker. 

His name is Francisco Rodriguez. He is a slight (barely six feet tall) Venezuelan right-hander who did not even join the Angels until late September — an injury to another pitcher let him worm through the loophole for postseason eligibility — and had worked less than six innings under the regular-season wire.

The ultimate unknown, in other words.

And in the Division Series against the Yankees, he is striking out everybody. Ditto in the Championship Series against the Twins, then the World Series against the Giants. The Angels need a total of 11 wins (Division Series were still best-of-5) to claim the crown, and Rodriguez pitches in 10 of them, with 28 strikeouts in 18 2/3 innings.

His heroics become monotonous, as do references to his name.

This was during the Rodriguez Era in Texas. Alex Rodriguez and Ivan Rodriguez. A-Rod and I-Rod.

So, at some point, while covering that postseason and chronicling Francisco Rodriguez’s strikeout exploits, in the deadline rush, my fingers almost absent-mindedly tap out K-Rod on the keyboard.

And a nickname was born. Now you know.

Odd thing, Rodriguez never took to the label, and when he joined the Mets in fact asked people to stop using it.

He is scheduled to report back to the Brewers tonight. Maybe I’ll seek him out and finally apologize for the whole thing.

I bring this up because in a recent conversation, Clint Hurdle dropped a “145-or-bust” line on me. Translation: The manager’s daily target for his hitters is to make opponents throw at least 145 pitches, in his studied belief the red line to guaranteed wins.

Does the evidence of the first six weeks of this season support that belief?

Yes: The Bucs now are 8-3 when they see at least 145 pitches (which makes them 12-13 when they do not).

This brings up the intriguing balance between being disciplined enough to run up pitch counts, yet staying aggressive enough to not let pitchers get too comfortable.

However, the most interesting takeaway is that, despite the manager’s attention to this detail, the Pirates have forced fewer than 145 — in most cases, a lot fewer — in 25 of the first 36 games.

The biggest factor in making pitchers work, I would think, is not swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. It’ll be interesting to track the improvement in this regard.

Not so good for the know-it-alls.

The Dodgers, Angels and Blue Jays spent the offseason and preseason drawings awes. Well, they spent a lot more. They bought up players like survivalists buying canned goods.

The takeaways from their sprees included sympathy for the Astros’ horribly-timed move to the AL West, sarcasm for Arizona’s move toward low-profile grit in the NL West, and the perception the injury-devastated Yankees were conceding in the AL East.

I know it’s early. No one knows “early” better than we in Pittsburgh.

But a look at the six-week pole brings to mind Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington’s December caveat:

“Markets like us, we’re not going to make the big splash in the offseason. We’re never going to win the back papers and the offseason.”

The Pirates haven’t won anything yet, of course. But at least they’re in the NL Central picture.

Meanwhile, after fighting for headlines and ratings and all that, the Dodgers and the Angels are still fighting — for the dishonor of the Majors’ worst record. On further review, Boston’s marquee players did not go to Los Angeles in that blockbuster — their problems did.

Ditto the Toronto haul that disgraced Miami. The Blue Jays record is right there with that of the Angels and Dodgers. Meanwhile, Joe Girardi is front-runner for AL Manager of the Year for keeping the Sad-Sack Yankees near the top of the East Division.

Hey, the stripped-down Astros and Marlins are as bad as advertised/feared. They’re rebuilding on the cheap. What’s the Angels’, Dodgers’, Blue Jays’ excuse?

Clint Hurdle, meanwhile, virtually shrugged it off. Even the part where Sanchez is appealing the suspension, in the meanwhile keeping him active — in the Bucs bullpen.

So here is a radical thought: This whole thing went down precisely the way the Bucs wanted it, volunteering and sacrificing a marginal pitcher to make the point the NL Central kingpins will no longer push them around.

Well, not exactly the way Hurdle wanted it to go down. No manager likes his bullpen thrown into disarray by losing his starter before an out is even recorded. But other than that — a potential catastrophy with long-term effects that was avoided thanks to Jeanmar Gomez’s 4 1/3-inning relief stint — the Bucs got a message across.

Last season, Reds and Cardinals pitchers combined to hit Pirates batters 13 times — including Aroldis Chapman’s notorious 98-mph heater off Andrew McCutchen’s shoulder. The Pirates got six of theirs, but otherwise made a point of maintaining their cool because their thin ranks couldn’t afford the toll of retaliation, losing key players to discipline.

No disrespect, but Jonathan Sanchez is not a key player on this team. Even if he were pitching reasonably well, he’d only be keeping a spot warm for Francisco Liriano or Charlie Morton.

So he was the perfect messenger after Matt Carpenter, Carlos Beltran and Matt Holliday had begun Friday’s game by digging in and swinging from the heels.

Isn’t is reasonable to assume that in the typical pre-game skull session, Sanchez was encouraged to bust some hitters inside if he felt they were too comfortable? The Bucs didn’t mind, perhaps even planned, for Sanchez to take a bullet for them.

They just didn’t want it to happen so early. Otherwise, they delivered an important message without having to pay a heavy price.

But it might. There are always numerous brother combinations playing in the Majors; get them together, lightning can strike.

However, I covered an event that has occurred only once in Major League history, and is less likely to ever come around again: Father and son, going yard back-to-back.

The Griffeys, of course.

Sept. 14, 1990, Anaheim Stadium. Harold Reynolds leads off the first with a walk off Kirk McKaskill. Pops Griffey slices a 1-and-0 pitch over the wall in left-center. Ad The Kid hits the very next pitch to the very same spot.

The crowd of 35,000 stirred, but there was no great, emotional reaction. Those were far less sensation-prone times. Things didn’t — couldn’t — go viral. So even the post-game media coverage was muted.

But I did do something I had never done before, or since: I took my game scorecard into the Mariners’ clubhouse after the game, and asked both Griffeys to sign it, next to their home-run squares. Which they did, for a memorabilia, and memory, that still has a prominent place on my wall.

This is not welcomed news for a lot of you fans, who can’t help associating the pet 2012 symbol of solidarity with the team’s eventual collapse.

Still, spearheaded by several clubhouse leaders — Andrew McCutchen and A.J. Burnett among them — the Bucs are serious about continuing the “Z” tradition.

Fine. But I’ve got an idea for a compromise.

Zoltan, the dude of “Where’s My Car?” fame who was the original inspiration for the sign, is so last year. He had his chance.

Many of the Bucs are ardent followers of shows such as “The Walking Dead.”

So — OK, stay with the “Z”.” But now it stands for “Zombie.”

Bonus point: And the Bucs’ new in-house victory song is “Dead Man’s Party,” by Oingo Bongo. It’s a match made it Undead Heaven.

Have we got a deal?