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The Pirates' 1979 World Series trophy will remain at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum until its ownership can be determined, a bankruptcy court judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge M. Bruce McCullough, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, granted the team's motion to halt for 30 days the sale of the trophy and other memorabilia held by the Allegheny Club.

The judge scheduled a hearing in 30 days for the club and the team to outline their ownership claims -- a process that the club's attorney, Scott Hare, said could take an entire day. In the meantime, the two sides will meet to see if they can settle the dispute.

Both sides agree that the trophy and memorabilia should stay in Pittsburgh. But Hare says the bankrupt Allegheny Club -- which once displayed the items at its banquet facility in the former Three Rivers Stadium -- is obligated to its creditors to obtain fair value for the items. An unidentified bidder from New York has offered $100,000.

Any bad blood that may have existed between the club and the team was not evident at the court hearing yesterday.

The team first attempted to recover the trophy and memorabilia around the time of Three Rivers' demolition in February 2001 and the preparation for PNC Park's opening that spring. But Allegheny Club refused.

Former team executive Steve Greenberg said the club may have been harboring ill will because it was not offered a new home at PNC Park.

The team requested the emergency hearing after learning through a report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the memorabilia could be sold to an out-of-town interest.

The team's attorney, Samuel Grego, said: "Evidence would show that the Allegheny Club was a jewel of the business community ... that was as fine a place as there was available to display the items on a loan basis."

He said the club was a "temporary depository" because there was "no place else to put (the memorabilia)" in Three Rivers Stadium.

Hare said Allegheny HYP Club will present as a witness Jack Relisano -- the club's general manager at the time that the club says the team's then-owner, the Galbreath family, donated the memorabilia to the club.

Pirates spokeswoman Patty Paytas said that if an agreement can't be reached with the club in the next 30 days, the team has "a lot of people with a story to tell" to bolster its claims to ownership of the items.

She would not say if members of the Galbreath family would be witnesses for the team.

John "Squire" Galbreath -- grandson of former team owner John Galbreath and son of Dan Galbreath, team president at the time of its 1985 sale to a public-private consortium -- said last week he doesn't believe his father would have given the trophy to the club.

A September 2001 letter from Squire Galbreath to former club President Kevin Vaughn, however, might suggest otherwise. In the letter, Galbreath seems to acknowledge that the memorabilia was donated to the club by his family. In return, he was seeking 11 of the square, steel scoreboard numbers from Forbes Field, which he said he never received.

The Galbreaths have an original twin of the 1979 trophy, as well as the team's 1971 trophy and a reproduction of the team's 1960 championship trophy at the family's Darby Dan Farm estate near Columbus, Ohio.

The club loaned its 1979 World Series trophy to the sports museum at the Sen. John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center in the Strip District last week.

It had been on display for two years at the UPMC SportsWorks division of the Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore, where other items of memorabilia -- such as a portion of the old Forbes Field wall in Oakland and a bronze relief of the late Roberto Clemente -- still reside.

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