Ok, it's not a done deal yet. But -- much to my surprise -- it looks like the fans of Pittsburgh are actually going to get Jason Bay into the All-Star Game at PNC Park. Bay would become first Pirate to start in the Midsummer Classic since the early 90's (Andy Van Slyke, I think?).

There's been a huge push around here to get Bay in. It started with the MLB reps coming to town and publicly challenging Pirate fans to get Bay in so that he can be an All-Star starter in his home park. No one seemed to respond at first, as he was 15th in the voting early on. His slow start didn't help matters.

But...as of yesterday, he's leaped to 3rd! Even just last week he was down far enough that I didn't see him catching up. But a recent marketing campaign on several fronts -- and efforts by the Pirates to "get out the vote" -- are apparently working to counteract Pittsburgh's natural disadvantages in the All-Star voting.

I'm going to vote a few times right now. You can vote 25 times a day. So native Pittsburghers, get crackin'.

UPDATE: I had a request for the link to the online ballot, so here it is. A side note: if you go to Google and put in "mlb all-star voting," the first hit is for the 2005 balloting. You click on it and it says "Sorry, the polls are closed." So for a second I thought that was true, until I realized that I knew for a fact you could vote 'til the 29th. How stupid for them to leave that link active, and that it trumps the 2006 version in Google.
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