Excitement over the prospects of the Pirates and the opportunity to see the 2006 All-Star Game at PNC Park has produced a much-needed upsurge in season-ticket sales for the club.

As of yesterday, the Pirates had sold 10,822 full season-ticket packages, a 20 percent increase from last season.

According to Tim Schuldt, the Pirates' vice president of marketing and sales, the team had sold 8,880 full season equivalents at this time last year.

"Sales are coming in at about 200 a week," Schuldt said, "so we soon should be over 11,000."

Although the Pirates are not winning, ticket sales are better than when they were. In 1990, 1991 and 1992, when the Pirates won the National League East Division championship, season ticket sales were 6,378, 8,113 and 8,191.

"Certainly there are a lot of things involved in this," Schuldt said. "We know and the fans believe we're turning the corner. We've had some great improvement in the team. [General manager] Dave Littlefield had done a terrific job. [Manager] Jim Tracy was an excellent hire. We've improved our farm system. We've improved our marketing staff. We've improved our ticket packages and we have better media partners to reach out to the right audience to help us sell those tickets."

More than that, though, is the All-Star Game. There's a tremendous demand for tickets for this game and that demand is accentuated by the size of PNC Park, one of the smallest stadiums in baseball. The only way to assure the ability to buy a ticket is to buy a season ticket.

"Part of it is that we're absolutely leveraging the All-Star Game," Schuldt said. "We'd be foolish not to."

As well as season-ticket sales are going, they pale in comparison to the numbers in 2000 and 2001, when PNC Park opened. With the promise of tickets for the first season in PNC Park, the Pirates sold 13,066 season tickets for their final season at Three Rivers Stadium. When the new stadium opened the season-ticket figure rose to 17,062.

When the team lost 100 games in 2001, ticket sales plummeted, reaching a low of 7,752, in 2004. With the initial promise of the All-Star Game sales began to climb last year.

It's a crucial year for the Pirates. There will be no All-Star Game in 2007 to keep fans tied to their tickets.

"What happens next year? We don't know," Schuldt said. "A lot of it has to do with how the team performs on the field."