Through the flood of Pirates defeats frequently come the reminder that the effort has not been lacking. Manager Jim Tracy often cites the team's effort as a positive.

The Pirates and all baseball players are paid quite handsomely. Effort should not be an option. To suggest effort is a positive sends a bad message. Effort should not ever be mentioned. It should be understood that it is always there, win or lose, rain or shine.

There are varying degrees of effort. It's a generational thing and, in leveling criticism, that has to be understood. It is, for example, simply not cool to go all out all the time in the major-league baseball of today.

We don't agree, but we can live with that. But to not go all out in a crucial situation is totally unacceptable.

How could Tracy not notice Jose Castillo's lack of effort in the seventh inning of the game Sunday against the Detroit Tigers when nothing less than the outcome of the game was in the balance? When effort could have made the difference between winning and losing, it not only wasn't there, the lack of it was flaunted.

The Pirates had rallied to within one run of the Tigers by scoring six times in the inning. There were runners on first and third with one out when Castillo came to bat. He hit a sharp grounder to shortstop Carlos Guillen. It looked like a near-certain inning-ending, rally-killing double play. The operative phrase in the previous sentence was "near-certain," as opposed to dead-certain.

Had Castillo been safe at first, the Pirates would have tied the game, and that knowledge should have motivated Castillo to his mightiest effort. It was his professional duty. But it didn't.

Castillo jogged to first. He ran at such a pace that, even if the ball had been bobbled, he would have been out.

Tracy should search the Pirates' film library for some action shots of Dave Parker in the mid-1970s and show them to his team. Parker was the best player on the team in that era and just about the best in baseball. He never was fully appreciated by the fans because of his persona, which was brash bordering on loudmouth. But no one played the game harder. Every ground ball he hit to an infielder -- every ball -- resulted in nothing less than full bore sprint to first base. You could see the veins in his neck bulging when Parker made that 30-yard dash.

That's not the way the game is played today but you'd think the embarrassment of grounding into a double play and killing a rally would motivate a player to run hard just in case there's a bobble. It didn't for Castillo, which means Tracy can never talk about effort on this team.

Earlier this season, Jeromy Burnitz, a guy who plays hard most of the time, came under severe criticism for not running hard to first on an infield grounder. Although this does not excuse Burnitz, his situation -- the Pirates were losing, 6-3, in the eighth inning -- was far less crucial than Castillo's.

Burnitz also ran harder to first base that night than Castillo did Sunday.

This would have been the perfect time to send a message to Castillo and all the Pirates. Most of them are in situations where playing time is crucial. They need to play to prove they belong at a higher salary level. Castillo should have been quietly benched for a game or two. He needed such a message and, as near as we can tell, considering he was in the starting lineup the next game, he didn't get it.

Castillo also contradicts the notion that Tracy is teaching the Pirates fundamentally sound baseball. At least twice this season, on close plays at first base, he elected to end his dash by leaving his feet and diving head long to the bag. He was out on both occasions.

If that were the quickest way to get to a the finish line, which, in this case was first base, every 100-meter dash of importance would end with runners diving for the tape instead of running through it.

But it's not the quickest way. Diving slows the runners, and, in the case of Castillo, it might have been the difference between being safe and out.

Running to first base is a basic fundamental. Castillo doesn't know how to do it, and the fact it has happened at least twice indicates he wasn't corrected after the first time.

There's no excuse for that.

There Pirates have a lot of shortcomings. Lack of effort and a failure to execute the most basic of fundamentals shouldn't be among them.