The people behind this campaign to elect a few Pirates to the All-Star team are going about it in a very un-Pittsburgh way.

First of all, the plan is actually working.

Second it stands in blatant disregard of decades of tradition held dear by the Pittsburgh corporate community, which says that anything resembling a civic problem should be approached thusly:

Step one: Define the problem.

Step two: Commission a study of the problem.

Step three: Give the study group a few months to a year to develop long-winded, tongue-twisting mission statement.

Step four: Call a press conference to unveil the statement.

Step five: Wait about five years and then, as they say on the back of the shampoo bottles, repeat.

You don't just go out and get something done. That's not the Pittsburgh way. Yet that is what's been happening in this baseball backwater.

Three weeks ago, Jason Bay looked as if he had as much chance of starting the All-Star game as Barbaro had of winning the Belmont Stakes. Bay hadn't even cracked the top 15 vote-getters among National League outfielders, despite outplaying most if not all of them.

Some 900,000 votes later -- 500,000 in the past week -- Bay has moved into third place, good enough for one of the three starting jobs on the grass for the big July 11 game at PNC Park.

That's all because of the new Pittsburgh motto.

"We Will . . . Stuff the Ballot Box.''

I'm all for it. Call me ethically challenged. Call me morally bankrupt. Call me Raul. (I've always liked that name, Raul.) The voting drive by the Pittsburgh Ad Federation, the Pirates and others falls entirely within the rules of baseball, and it's about time people in this town stopped whining about being a small market and began acting like a big one.

Big Towns stuff ballot boxes all the time. The best catcher in baseball this season, Joe Mauer, is a Minnesota Twin and so fifth in the American League catcher's voting, hundreds of thousands of votes behind Boston Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, leading despite an off year. Such slights happen every summer. The Twin Cities need to produce a fan like Frank Marmion.

Marmion was driving home to Mt. Lebanon from his South Side office nine days ago, the top down on his MGB convertible, when inspiration struck on Cochran Road. Sports radio jabber was all about the shame of Bay not getting enough votes for the All-Star squad, and by lunchtime the next day Marmion's ad agency, GatesmanMarmionDrake, had produced a "Let Bay Play!'' logo directing fans to vote at www.mlb.com.

Five agency clients -- Courtesy Suzuki, Benson Lincoln Mercury, Metropolitan Window, SturmanLarkin Ford and Dormont Appliance -- stepped up to share ad space for the cause.

The Pittsburgh Ad Federation sent an e-mail to more than 1,200 ad people in the region asking them to join in.

The Pirates, now in their 14th consecutive losing season, are grateful for any help they can get. The organization already had a half-dozen computers in a ballpark storefront on General Robinson Street for fans to vote before, during and after games, and this week it sent its crew of dancing-on-the-dugout gremlins out into the wild of the Golden Triangle with "Vote Your Bucs'' signs.

The team is also pushing third baseman Freddy Sanchez, among the league leaders in batting and the leading write-in candidate with 343,000 votes; slick-fielding shortstop Jack Wilson, fourth in the voting at his position, and second baseman Jose Castillo, third at his spot. On-line voting ends midnight Thursday June 29.

It took more than 2 million votes to start in the outfield last year, and Bay crossed only the million mark this week. Some national support comes from those who simply appreciate a good ballplayer, but Bay was probably the best outfielder in the league last season, and he didn't crack the top 24.

"Jason has started more than 250 straight games in left field,'' Brian Warecki, Pirates director of business communications, said. "He deserves the chance to once again start in front of the Left Field Loonies in his home ballpark."

This is a loony idea whose time has come.