Generally speaking, little good ever comes of baseball's All-Star break, most especially from the game itself, which is often a tedious affair noteworthy in the broad view only because it is somehow superior to the balance of the species: the Pro Bowl, the NHL All-Star Game, and the NBA All-Star Game.

But this time it was different, especially for the Pirates, of all people.

With the disclaimer that the first two weeks of July 2009 represented a period in which notables of every conceivable ilk were saying ridiculous things just about nonstop, let it be recorded that this was the July when the thought-to-be-hopeless Pittsburgh Pirates, slunk near the verge of a 17th consecutive losing season, received more positive validation from more powerfully influential sources than at any time in memory.

But again, proceed with caution, as we are currently in some kind of bizarre rhetorical fortnight where Al Sharpton said there was nothing strange about Michael Jackson (nothing?), where Shakira appeared on "The View" to explain that her new CD is sung "entirely in English except for three songs that are in Spanish" (entirely?), and where Carl Crawford, the American League's hero in the All-Star Game thanks to a home run-stealing catch at the left-field wall said, "It was definitely probably the best catch I've ever made." As to whether it was probably definitely his best ever, that's anyone's guess.

Luckily, the good news about the Pirates came from none of these sources, but rather from voices of undeniable expertise and authority, not just in baseball but well beyond. Is this why they keep saying, "This is beyond baseball?"

First, the commissioner of baseball, the Bud of Selig, in his annual chat with the Baseball Writers Association of America that covers a wide range of topics although rarely Palestinian self-determination, pronounced the following regarding the Pirates:

"When you have a club that's been down that long, it just takes a long time, and that's all I can say. But are they on the right track? They are. And I think that track will be faster than most people think."

That's right; there'll be a Pirates parade before you know it.

I wasn't at the Bud presser, so no one had to listen to my snarky follow-up question. What is the arithmetic ratio that best expresses how long a club's been down to how long it takes to come back? If you've been down, for example, for 81/2 years, does it take 81/2 years to come back, meaning the Pirates are just about to turn the corner, if you must? Or will a team that's been down most of 17 years not likely be back until 2026?

Because that doesn't sound like any fast track to me.

If you don't believe Bud, maybe you'll believe the president of the United States, who managed to tuck a quick half-inning of baseball talk into an itinerary still commonly bloated with economic catastrophe, nuclear brinksmanship, global terrorism, mass environmental suicide and a worsening health care morass.

But back to the action.

"I see a lot of parity right now," Barack Obama told Fox booth brothers Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. "I think it's terrific that everybody around the country has a little bit of hope for their team, except maybe for the Nationals, but they have a new ballpark.

"I'm trying to be encouraging to the country and to baseball fans everywhere."

It's true that if there were a two-team division with just the Pirates and the Nationals, the Pirates would be in first place by 111/2 games, but even in reality, the Pirates were included in the 29-member grouping of teams that the president of the United States considers to have at least "a little bit of hope."

I mean, if there is any higher validation for Pirates management out there, well, there just isn't.

Unless ...

Where else could you go? The commissioner. The president of the United States. What, the Pope?

Well it just so happens that Joe Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI), while not addressing the Pirates' situation specifically in the 144-page encyclical issued July 7, wrote extensively about a just economic system that, adopted by Major League Baseball, could brighten Pittsburgh's future remarkably. Writing of "a new humanistic synthesis," the Pope explains that the ideal market is "not the place where the strong subdue the weak [yeah you Steinbrenners!]," and that "commercial logic needs to be directed toward the common good, for which the political community in particular must take responsibility."

I'm not one of the leading analysts when it comes to Papal encyclicals, though I play one in the paper, but this seems to be the clearest message yet from Benedict XVI that baseball needs a federally mandated salary cap.

Maybe they'll ask him that directly the next time he shows up on "The View."