Will this be the year Alford breaks out?

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the topic of prospects. As a diehard Pirates fan coming of age in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, it was fun following the big-league club, but it was just as much fun for me to look beyond Three Rivers Stadium to the bushes – places like Salem, Va., Gastonia, N.C., Waterbury, Conn. and Charleston, W.Va. — to see how players like Richie Zisk and Rennie Stennett were developing down on the farm.

That morphed into an opportunity to cover actual prospects during a stint at a newspaper in California’s Central Valley, a stint that happened to come at a time when the home team trotted out players with names…