PITTSBURGH - The Pirates can't give away bobblehead dolls or shoot fireworks off every night to draw big crowds. So they might have a different promotion to pitch in 2006: the All-Star Game.

Pittsburgh and San Francisco, both of which have opened new ballparks since 2000, have emerged as the front-runners to host the 2006 All-Star game.

Baseball in recent years has rotated its annual midsummer game among the numerous cities which have opened new parks since the early 1990s, and both Pittsburgh and San Francisco are making strong pitches for the 2006 game.

Pittsburgh is pitching to host the game for the second time in 12 years, which would be one the quickest turnarounds since the 1961 and 1962 expansions substantially increased the number of major league cities. The 1994 game was held at Three Rivers Stadium.

San Francisco last had an All-Star game in 1984 at Candlestick Park.

The Butler Shocks 15-and-under AAU girls basketball team won the NAYS Tournament recently at Seneca Valley Intermediate School.The players are ninth graders at Butler Intermediate and went undefeated during the regular basketball season.The players include Angela Byrnes, Jenny Lesniewski, Tess Crispin, Rachel Barry, Elizabeth Schultz, Emily Miller, Elza Hartung, Erin Kelly and Maria Baroffio.

Butler High School graduate and University of Pittsburgh freshman Krystal Epps qualified for the Big East Championships in the 800-meter run.Epps ran a time of 2 minutes, 12 seconds recently to qualify.

Moniteau graduate Jess Flick, a pitcher on the Grove City College women's softball team, recorded a 5-2 victory over Penn-State-Altoona in the second game of a doubleheader recently.Flick allowed four hits in 6innings and took a shutout into the seventh. Grove City (7-2) has won six straight games for the first time since winning the President's Athletic Conference championship in 1998.

Seneca Valley graduate Scott Stewart was named the most valuable player of the men's soccer team at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford.The senior scored five goals and had one assist as the team's captain. He also was named to the All-Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Team.