"It's a return to the simple, organize, acoustic music I always played and always heard around my house growing up," Mr. Flannery says.  "That's the reason I did the record, for my father, who's a retired ministered.  We just had to put him in a [medical -care] home in Encinitas.  He's in advanced stages of Alzheimer's and the music is our way of connecting.  "My father doesn't know who I am sometimes, but he knows the songs, word for word.  It was a real powerful, emotional experience, and a real healing thing for our family," he says.  As each song for the album was completed, Mr. Flannery would take a cassette tape copy for his father to hear.  Inspired by the bluegrass of his dad's native Kentucky and by the Irish music of Mr. Flannery's grandparents, the songs helped to ground father and son, literally and figuratively.  "My dad has this thing he does at night, where he wanders,  he walks," Mr. Flannery says.  "That's why we had to put him in a home, because he would walk away at night and we'd find him three miles from our house.  But the music would keep him in his chair.  "I go over to see him each night, and play a tape of the album for him. Even when he doesn't know who I am, when he hears the songs, his eyes light up.  It's amazing what the music can do."   Mr. Flannery, 41, wrote six of the songs on "Pieces of the Past."   It's available by mail (for $15) from:Tim Flannery, 315 S. Highway 101, U No. 109, Encinitas, Calif. 92024.  A portion of the proceeds will go to the Padres' Tickets for Kids program.  "Pieces of the Past" was produced by noted Irish Musician Matt Manning, who moved to San Diego with his family in late 1996.  Mr. Manning contributed two songs, the Gaelic-tinged "Viejas Nights" and "Waltzin' an Angel," a major ht for him in Ireland three yeas ago.  Mr. Manning hails from Ireland's Cork County, which -- coincidentally -- is where Mr. Flannery's grandparents lived before immigrating to the United States.  "Matt helped me on my journey, not only through my father's native Kentucky, but back to our Irish homeland," says Mr. Flannery, a married father of three and infielder with the Padres from 1979 to 1989.  "And it turned out that Jackson Browne's father passed away from Alzheimer's so there were all these amazing connections.  My dad still carries a piece of coal-around in his pocket, because he things he's still in Kentucky and that he's 4 or 5 years old."  A veteran bassist and singer-songwriter, Mr.Manning was so impressed by Mr. Flannery's songs that he enlisted several colleagues in Ireland and Nashville, Tenn., to play on "Pieces of the Past."  "I don't know anything about baseball," says Mr. Manning, 45.   "But Tim is like the salt of the earth guys in Ireland who are very connected in the land.  And after I heard the tape he gave me of his song, `Million Miles Away,'  I said: `OK, let's do this,'  But I also told him: `If we're going to do it for the love of the music and take everything else -- the electric guitars and drums -- out'.  "What I think we've captured on this album in blood-and-guts music from the heart.  It's real, and it's more like Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie than Jimmy Buffett.  It's Tim's statement of who and what he is in 1999."

Mr. Manning mailed an advanced copy of "Pieces of the Past" last month to a friend in Ireland, who passed it on to a radio disc jockey. Listener response has been so strong that Mr. Flannery and Mr. Manning already have been approached about mounting an Irish concert tour after next year's baseball season concludes.  "I love music, but I'm very fortunate to not have to  make a living at it.  Whenever the music business gets too weird, I just to and play baseball,"  Mr. Flannery says.