I'm walking the block to the park with my neighbor and his sons, Zachary and Rowen, 6 and 3. We're going to play a little ball. On the way, the dad, Rich Kautter, asks his older boy about his favorite baseball team. The Pirates?

"The Yankees," Zach corrects him. "They are way better than the Pirates."

For the past year, the Pirates have been trading their best hitters. They broke up what was ever so briefly the most productive outfield in baseball -- Jason Bay, Xavier Nady and Nate McLouth --trading them and a relief pitcher for 11 young guys who might help the Pirates contend for a championship in, say, two or three years.

Grown men have had trouble seeing the wisdom. But even those who believe in the plan must know that, for a boy just shy of 7, two or three years is an eternity.

At 3 years old, Zach could recite the entire lineup. Could he do that now?

Zach gave tiny shakes of his head, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher's sign.

At the park, we broke out the plastic bat and ball. Dad pitched and I took a spot near an ancient tree that served as third base.

We had a blast. Zach hit nothing but line drives, and both boys darted around the bases like laughing hummingbirds. The way Rowen rounded a base and then held his arms out, ready to go either way, reminded me of the fleet and joyous Nyjer Morgan.

That would be the player the Pirates traded last Tuesday, as the team's outfielders disappear like snitches in the Witness Protection Program.

Zach expects that next "it's going to be Freddy Sanchez," the 31-year-old All-Star second baseman. He's probably right.

Almost a year ago, when the Pirates traded Nady to the New York Yankees and Bay to the Boston Red Sox, Zach could still be loyal to the hometown nine. Rich's wife, Maria, has a brother who lives in Manhattan, and when the Kautters went up to visit late last year, the boys were presented with Red Sox jerseys with Bay's name on them. But Zach wouldn't switch allegiance to either the Yankees or Bosox.

"We're fine," Zach told his aunt and uncle, according to his father. "We've got Nate the Great."

That would be McLouth, traded five weeks ago. That was right around the time Zach's team, the Blue Jays in the Brighton Heights Athletic Association, played a game against an Urban Impact team at Martin Luther King Field across from Allegheny General Hospital. Nyjer Morgan spoke to the players and signed a ball for Zach.

Now he's gone, too. The signed baseball has been tucked aside in Zach's room but his father expects that, if they run out of balls someday, "the Nyjer Morgan ball" will be put in play and scuffed. It took a while, but the Pirates are wearing Zach down.

After our little game, in which Rowen revealed himself to be the only ballplayer alive honest enough to call himself out after a tag in a rundown, Zach got ahead of us. I yelled to ask if he had any final thoughts on the Pirates.

"They need to play better -- that's the only thought I have," he said over his shoulder.

How old did he think he'd be before the Pirates were champions?

"Thirty," he said. "At the least, 20."

Somewhere in that little boy's heart remains a Pirates fan. When his father asked if he'd go to PNC Park if he came up with tickets behind home plate, Zach readily said he would.

I started to tell him that at least he didn't know the whole history, didn't have to suffer through 161/2 consecutive losing seasons, but Zach cut me off.

"It started when the Braves beat the Pirates," he said.

He was right. Almost 10 years before he was born, the Atlanta Braves scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to take the seventh game of the 1992 National League Championship Series. The Pirates haven't had a winning season since. How did Zach know?

"They show it during rain delays."

That film of Sid Bream sliding across home plate in Atlanta should be rated R. Haven't our children suffered enough?