For Pittsburghers still digging out of snowbanks and chipping ice off their cars, it is a jarring notion that Pirates pitchers and catchers will report to spring training today. It's a warm thought, too, which is why America, especially on a frozen February day, needs baseball.

While Zach Duke and Humberto Cota are reworking their combination in Bradenton, Fla., other members of the Pirates organization -- those at the front office on the North Side -- are involved in a different type of improvement.

Last week the team opened the new Pirates Community Baseball Center in the Boys & Girls Club of Shadyside/East Liberty. It's an indoor workout facility, made possible by a $300,000 renovation, where kids can practice baseball fundamentals under adult supervision. Even when Mother Nature is in no mood to cooperate.

The center was formerly a rundown indoor swimming pool with faulty plumbing and a rank smell. After Pirates Charities, the team's philanthropic arm, donated $165,000 to the renovation, which also received $75,000 from the Roberto Clemente Foundation and $60,000 from the Baseball Tomorrow Fund of the major league and its players association, the building was transformed into a top-notch youth sports center with batting cages, automatic pitching machines, skill stations and training rooms.

It will now become the home of Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, a program that seeks to engage city youth with the sport, and it will serve as the baseball/softball training hub for the Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania and CitiParks. As the first completed project of Pirates Charities, the center gives the franchise an ongoing baseball presence in Pittsburgh regardless of whether the Pirates are playing.

While the team begins the workouts that will lead to a better season in 2007, the Pirates organization is already showing championship form by stepping up its charitable works in the community.