FIFTH STARTERS for $100 Alex.

For the 2001 Pirates, he allowed 33 hits in 16 innings in four starts.

Who is Tony McKnight?

Ooooh, no. Don Wengert. Who was Don Wengert, obviously.

No, you don't want to play this category of Jeopardy, much less this annually arcane category of spring baseball, the one we've all been playing for the worse part of six weeks. I mention this only in the glow of excitement from the weekend announcement that Dave Williams has been anointed the Pirates' fifth starter for the 2005 season.

That means the pitching rotation is set. Clear your October calendars.

I'll try FIFTH STARTERS for $200 Alex.

He was the fifth starter in 1992, the last time the Pirates made the playoffs.

Who was Tim Wakefield?

No, Danny Jackson. Who was Danny Jackson? Wakefield was a midseason call-up.

Again, you really need to switch categories. Try NOTABLE BOLIVIAN MIMES for $100.

There's no point in examining the fate or the history or even the pedigree of fifth-starter candidates, because nine times out of 10, the guy who is the fifth starter is two bad starts or one extended series of lined drives away from being a candidate for one of two things: minor-league player of the week or newest member of the American Association of Retired Persons.

Williams pitches today against the Toronto Blue Jays. At the end of today, he'll probably still be the fifth starter. Probably.

The most amazing thing about baseball this spring has been the volume of media and fan interest in determining the Pirates' fifth starter. Even on the Pirates' Web site it is written that "the Pirates' biggest question mark heading into spring training" was answered Saturday.

Dave Williams.

Look, I like Williams. I thought he pitched beautifully here in 2001 when he posted a 3.71 earned run average in 18 starts for an abominable baseball team. I'm sorry he got hurt and has struggled since.

But if Williams is the answer to the Pirates' biggest question mark, let's just say that previous remark about clearing your October calendar is now 50 times as facetious as its original intent.

Twelve consecutive losing seasons and the biggest question on this team is "Who in the world are we gonna pitch April 13 at Milwaukee?" Yeah, that's right. The Pirates don't need a fifth starter until then and likely only need one three times in all of April.

FIFTH STARTERS for $300 Alex.

Of Brian Meadows, Sean Lowe, and Bronson Arroyo, the only one to make more starts in 2002 than Joe Beimel.

Who is Arroyo?

No, who is Meadows? He made 11 starts, Arroyo only four that year.

Ken Freakin' Jennings doesn't know this stuff.

No, it's not exactly common knowledge, and it's not just immensely insignificant in Pittsburgh terms. Last I looked, the New York Mets' fifth-starter job was coming down to Jae Seo vs. Kaz Ishii and the Oakland A's were trying to decide among Kirk Saarloos, Keiichi Yabu, and Seth Etherton. These aren't the kind of issues that scuttle a season.

With the Pirates, the fuss over the Williams vs. Ryan Vogelsong and Zach Duke competition is like analyzing who gets the last spot in the trailer park for the coming tornado.

It's not as if Lloyd McClendon's first four starters are Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Claude Osteen, and Don Sutton. A better question might be, "Who is the second starter?"

Kip Wells is the presumed answer. Wells won five games last year. One a month. Just not, you know, every month.

I'll be the first to tell you, or at least maybe the first one today, that spring training stats are about as important as Martha Stewart's prison record, but on a club in which the ERA for March is more than 6.00 and the combined ERA of the "top four" starters is nearly 11.00 (and remember, the pitchers are ahead of the hitters), the fifth-starter question is not much more than a diversion.

FIFTH STARTERS for $400 Alex.

In the history of the Pirates, he's thought to be the only fifth starter to wind up with more wins than anyone on the staff.

Who is Jim Bibby?

Noooo. It's Oliver Perez. Oliver Perez.

Oh yeah, Oliver Perez. It says something about the pitching the Pirates have at the major-league level that you can be a fifth starter in March and the ace of the staff in August. You kind of hope the reverse isn't true, because that's a whole other category.