I suppose when you’re the Pirates, there isn’t much to do in October but release your tentative schedule for the next year before the city turns the entirety of their sports-related attention to football.

On the other hand, the city has probably hand the entirety of their sports-related attention on football since June. Whatever. They’ve got to release their tentative schedule sometime.

See the schedule here. Series of note per the official release:

The Pirates will welcome two American League clubs to Pittsburgh for the first time since interleague play began in 1997. Pittsburgh will host the New York Yankees from June 24-26 for the first time since Game Seven of the 1960 World Series at Forbes Field. In addition, the Toronto Blue Jays will also make their first visit to the city of Pittsburgh for a three-game series from June 20-22. Pittsburgh will also host the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the final weekend of interleague play from June 27-29.

A Yankees-Pirates series in early May might be interesting; by late June I’m afraid the Pirates will already be well into rebuilding for next year.

But will they have beer?

CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs today announced weekend passes for the 23rd annual Cubs Convention will go on sale Wednesday, November 7, at 10 a.m. CST. Passes will be available for purchase only through two methods – by visiting www.cubs.com or by calling tickets.com at 1-800-THE-CUBS.

The 23rd annual Cubs Convention will be held at the Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue, from Friday, January 18 through Sunday, January 20, 2008. Each fan will be able to purchase up to four (4) weekend passes while tickets last. The convention pass, valid for entry during the entire convention weekend, cost $50 each plus convenience fees. Fans holding a room reservation for the 23rd annual Cubs Convention do not need to order convention passes at this time.

The hours of the convention are as follows: Friday 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to midnight and Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included with each pass is access to all autograph/photo sessions, question and answer sessions as well as the memorabilia and vendor booths.

Rooms at the Hilton are currently sold out for Convention weekend, but fans are encouraged to check back for cancellations or availability by calling 312-922-4400. As a reminder, fans who reserve a room under the Cubs Convention rate can purchase weekend passes for only $10 each (limit four per room).

Proceeds from the Convention benefit Cubs Care. The 2007 Cubs Convention raised more than $300,000. To date, the Cubs Convention has raised nearly $4 million for Cubs Care. Cubs Care is a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. Since 1991, Cubs Care has granted more than $12 million in the city of Chicago to support youth sports, children with special needs and victims of domestic violence. Cubs Care also supports a variety of charitable and social service organizations serving the Lakeview community.

The Astros have named a new administrative type:

The Houston Astros announced today that the club has named Bobby Heck as the club’s director of amateur scouting.

Journalists in the greater Houston area are going to have to stretch to find reasons to make puns on the Astros’ new director of amateur scouting, but I bet they’ll try. Maybe he’ll make it easy by getting in trouble with the law or something. “To Heck in a Handbasket” is a phrase I expect we’ll be seeing in headlines in the coming months.

Two Brewers have been honored with baseball’s Nobel Prize: the Player’s Choice Award.

First, Prince Fielder is the most outstanding player in the National League:

“That’s an awesome feeling, knowing that the guys you play against every day respect how you play and how you go out there and give 100 percent,” Fielder told Yahoo.com, which announced the results on a webcast.

And as if that weren’t enough, the players had the love for Ryan Braun as well, voting him the National League’s top rookie:

The 23-year-old did not debut until late May but nonetheless led big league rookies with 34 home runs, a .324 batting average and a .634 slugging percentage. On Thursday, he won the Players Choice Award for most outstanding rookie in the National League, decided by a vote of his peers.

“It really wasn’t easy,” Braun told Yahoo.com in a webcast announcing the award. “I came up, tried to make adjustments as quickly as possible, and as long as I was able to do that, I was able to find some success.”

Congratulations to the winners. Though these awards can’t make up for a missed postseason appearance, they do bring the rare opportunity to appear on a Yahoo.com webcast, so you’ve got to like that.

Welcome readers, to the new and improved Red Hot Mama. You may have noticed that the past season has been kind of a downer around here, due in part to the fact that it’s been the same old mediocrity around Cincinnati but also due in fact to my perspective getting stale. I mean, honestly: there are only so many funny ways that a woman can say “please, for the love of all that is good, stop sending out Stanton.”

So we’re mixing it up around here. We’re taking the exclusive focus off of the Reds in favor of a broader picture of the whole National League Central. If we’re lucky, maybe one of these teams will win the division.

“But you don’t know anything about any of the teams in the NLC except the Reds,” you might say. To which I would respond, “what do you mean ‘except the Reds’?”

In case you were wondering what my Crack Technical Staff was up to while I was undergoing my team-identity existential quandary–and I know you were–he’s been working on a pretty massive change as well. Not only did he design the new look and feel for the site, but he also changed the entire underlying technology. Even as you read this, you have the ability to comment even if you’re not registered, plus edit those comments for up to 10 minutes after you post them.

Speaking registering for an account, if you were previously registered, your account has been migrated to the new software. Check your email for a message with your new password. If you have any problems, drop me a line and we’ll get it figured out.

And with that, I’ll get down to business. This is quite a thrill for me. I haven’t been this excited about baseball since Bronson Arroyo went to Cincy. And just look how well that worked out!