With the Pirates toppling into a three-run sinkhole before Ian Snell got anybody out yesterday, conditions were approximately perfect for a prolonged holiday spanking by a division-leading Milwaukee Brewers club that rockets roughly two homers for every one the home team manages.

Except that there was a conflicting condition of tart and recent vintage. Lest we forget, that same Ian Snell is tired of losing.

Publicly, peevishly, precociously tired of all the bloody losing.

So he shook off a three-run first-inning homer by .347-thumping Brewers rookie Ryan Braun and rebooted himself toward eight velvety innings that coaxed the Pirates to their sixth win in their past nine games.

"Ever since I've known him, the further he gets into the game, the more electric his stuff is," said right fielder Ryan Doumit, whose fourth-inning homer tied things at 3-3. "That's the Ian we all know."

Two hours after a shaggy, halting, five-hit, 29-pitch top of the first, Snell threw his 104th pitch 97 mph to Prince Fielder, who fouled it off defensively. Two pitches later, the league's top slugger watched the third strike that ended the eighth. It took Matt Capps 11 pitches in the ninth -- all of them strikes -- to save Snell's seventh victory.

It was the 21st time since the beginning of last season that Snell has pitched seven innings or more. When that happens, the Pirates are 17-4.

"I just think when you can take a guy like [Jason] Bay out of the lineup for a day it encourages guys to relax a little bit -- it seems like we have a lot of guys who are playing like there's luggage on their backs," Snell said. "I just think we can play really well if we can just get comfortable."

Pirates manager Jim Tracy pointed Bay to the bench on the merits of his up-to-the-minute, 13-for-98 slump almost as if Bay had crossed some dark threshold. The bench, after all, was a combined 14 for 95, so there was plenty of misery there for Bay's company. A month or two ago, had you said the Pirates could play perhaps their best all-round game of the season against the best team in the league with Bay in the dugout, opening day closer Salomon Torres in Bradenton on rehab, opening day starter Zach Duke headed for an appointment with Dr. James Andrews, and opening day leadoff hitter Chris Duffy disabled with an unstrung hamstring, well, people would have stopped listening about three commas ago.

But what the Pirates got yesterday was not so much unexpected as simply absent for so much of this season's first three months.

When Adam LaRoche, for example, rode Claudio Vargas' 3-0 pitch onto the Allegheny walkways in right center in the sixth and jerked the Pirates into a 5-3 lead, it marked the first time in nearly seven weeks (May 18) that the Pirates hit two homers with men on base in the same PNC Park event.

For an offense that's about as fleet and as fuel efficient as a school bus -- the Pirates sent 15 batters to the plate with runners in scoring position in the first four innings Tuesday and got one hit -- watching four runs score on two swings by Doumit and LaRoche was a rare visit to baseball simplicity.

With four runs or more, the Pirates are 28-16. With three or fewer, they are 9-31. Before yesterday, 20 of the Pirates' 24 North Side homers came with no one on base.

The Brewers remain virtually unaware of such a malady, homering at such a robust pace that their current streak of 13 games with at least one goner is the third such occurrence of at least 11 consecutive games with a homer this season, a simple explanation for why Milwaukee will be leading the National League Central at the All-Star break.

Maintaining even the semblance of their own simplicity will evaporate for the Pirates by 12:35 today, when 10-game winner Ben Sheets goes to the mound for the Brewers against borderline All-Star Tom Gorzelanny, who's after his ninth win.

Someone wondered if Snell was making some kind of All-Star statement with his eight nearly pristine innings yesterday.

"Naw," Snell smiled. "Just happy to be pitching and winning ballgames."

At 4-2 on this homestand, the Pirates have protected at least the illusion that these games against the teams at the top of the division are important to them.

"It's nice to get big hits against a front-running team like the Brewers," said Doumit. "It'd be great to win 3 of 4 from them."

Sounds simple, but often it's more about how simple you can keep it, and how you duplicate the will of someone like Ian Snell.