long sendmail delays when accepting mail, then long delays in sending

I'm using Sendmail 8.13.8 on a CentOS 5.2 machine.

I'm seeing two problems when trying to send a test message with the
simple command:

echo "Subject: testfrombrainjammer154pm" | /usr/sbin/sendmail -v
bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

One is that two long delays occur in the output of the command, as
indicated below:

[root@brainjammer ~]# echo "Subject: testfrombrainjammer154pm" | /usr/
sbin/sendm
ail -v bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Connecting to [127.0.0.1] via relay...
220 brainjammer.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.8/8.13.8; Fri, 18 Sep 2009
16:56:19 -040
0
EHLO brainjammer.com
250-brainjammer.com Hello localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1], pleased
to meet you
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
MAIL From:<root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> SIZE=34

[A delay of 9 seconds occurs here]

250 2.1.0 <root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>... Sender ok
RCPT To:<bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
DATA

[A delay of 14 seconds occurs here]

250 2.1.5 <bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>... Recipient ok (will queue)
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
.
250 2.0.0 n8IKuJB9028173 Message accepted for delivery
bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent (n8IKuJB9028173 Message accepted for
delivery)
Closing connection to [127.0.0.1]
QUIT
221 2.0.0 brainjammer.com closing connection
[root@brainjammer ~]#



Any idea why those delays of 9 seconds and 14 seconds always occur?
And they always *do* take exactly 9 seconds and 14 seconds,
respectively -- never any variation in the length of time in the
pauses. This leads me to think that sendmail is trying to do
something for 9 seconds, and it has some internal timeout setting
which tells it to try doing it for exactly 9 seconds before giving up,
rather than the slowness being caused by any kind of system load.
(This is on a machine that's nearly 100% idle.) On another machine,
when I execute the same command, it completes instantly with no
pauses.

(Note this is after the connection is already established, so
presumably this is unrelated to the question in the FAQ at
http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section3#3.12
"Why do connections to the SMTP port take such a long time?" )

The second problem is that it takes sendmail almost an hour before it
actually sends the message out to the remote mail server. When I did
eventually receive a message I had sent, the mail headers showed:

Received: from brainjammer.com (brainjammer.com [65.98.99.184])
by mxperim7.sea5.speakeasy.net (Postfix) with ESMTP
for <bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:44:21 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from brainjammer.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by brainjammer.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n8IJxM3x026438
for <bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:59:47 -0400
Received: (from root@localhost)
by brainjammer.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/Submit) id n8IJxMj6026437
for bhas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:59:22 -0400

The timestamp on the header added by speakeasy.net, "Fri, 18 Sep 2009
13:44:21 -0700 (PDT)", is 50 minutes later than the timestamp added by
brainjammer.com, "Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:59:22 -0400". Why does it take
so long before the message gets sent out?

Thanks!
.

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