With most of their fan base more than ready to turn its attention toward Latrobe and the traditional groundwork of real promise, the Pirates will walk this final fortnight preceding the baseball trading deadline with extreme caution and, for the first time in memory, actual hope.

It might have been the heat, but Pirates general manager Dave Littlefield stood along the back rim of the press box yesterday afternoon talking like the general manager of somebody else.

"We've got a lot of interest," he said, characterizing the intent of other teams toward the Pirates in the trade market, "in a lot of players."

Again, it might have been the heat, but no one had the strength for the logical follow-up question: Why?

You can accept the industrial axiom that teams are desperate for starting pitching -- the team in Littlefield's clubhouse being one of them, by the way -- but are they desperate enough to deal anything of even minimal quality for Kip Wells? Wells makes a fifth attempt at his first victory of 2006 tonight after losing 29 of his past 42 decisions, his only association with the All-Star Game being that the giant baseballs floating the Allegheny for the Home Run Derby were apparently meant to simulate the way a real baseball appears to hitters when Wells delivers.

The Pirates have, as Littlefield noted, more flexibility with their roster and payroll at this point in the season than they have in some time, probably since they sent Scott Ruskin, Willie Greene and Moises Alou to the Expos for Zane Smith Aug. 16, 1990.

Yeah, that's why you've got to be careful.

The emergence this summer of Freddy Sanchez, Jose Bautista and Ronny Paulino, combined with the sudden stall in the development of his own young pitchers, have placed Littlefield in the potentially perilous position of being able to listen to trade overtures about shortstop Jack Wilson. It says here that kind of swap likely would be a mistake, but desperation from both ends of the bargaining table can ignite some landmark deals.

"The history of the game is that Babe Ruth was traded," Littlefield said "No one is untradable, or untouchable."

Ruth, dead since 1948, is not known to be on the market, although he might still cover as much ground as some Pirates glovemen.

In any event, with your attention about to shift inalterably toward Ben Roethlisberger and the defending world champion Steelers, and in keeping with our unyielding commitment to public service, here's the way the remainder of Pittsburgh's baseball season figures to unfold.

Unless it doesn't.

July 31 -- The Pirates trade Jeromy Burnitz, Kip Wells and minor-leaguer Rajai Davis to Colorado for ace-potential minor-leaguer Ubaldo Jimenez and an aging stop-gap one-year solution in right field to be named later.

Aug. 1 -- Trade deadline passes with the Pirates declining multiple last-minute offers for Salomon Torres, without whom, Littlefield explains, the club would "simply have no way of getting from the fourth inning to the seventh."

Aug. 6 -- Ryan Doumit homers in the 10th to beat the Cubs at Wrigley, 9-8, dragging the Pirates out of the basement for the first time in 123 days. It is Doumit's first major-league homer in 111 days.

Sept. 26 -- In an 11-10, 16-inning loss to the Astros, the Pirates' record in games in which they trail after six innings drops to a staggering 2-90.

Sept. 30 -- Torres appears in his 100th and final game of the year, six more than the previous Pirates record set by Kent Tekulve in 1979, but six short of the all-time record set by the Los Angeles Dodgers' Mike Marshall five years earlier. By visiting Zach Duke earlier in the game, however, pitching coach Jim Colborn makes his 475th trip to the mound in 2006, joining Cy Young and his 511 major-league wins in that part of the record book titled, "Records That Will Never Be Broken."

Oct. 1 -- Freddy Sanchez, with a .353 average, edges Scott Rolen of the Cardinals (.351) for the National League batting title, the first by a Pirates player since Bill Madlock did it in 1983. The 23-year gap between batting titles ends the longest such drought in the history of a franchise that won six in the 1960s (Clemente in '67, '65, '64 and '61, Matty Alou in '66, Dick Groat in '60), and nine between 1900 and 1911, eight of them by Honus Wagner (Ginger Beaumont won the other in '02).

Oct. 2 -- The club briefly considers, but then rejects, its first potential slogan for 2007: "We've Got Plenty of Nutting."