Cuban rumors

These rumors will probably not go away any time soon.

I have no doubt that the Pirates are for sale -- at the right price. And I have no doubt Mark Cuban, like any other man with the resources to consider such a purchase, has his own price that he wants to pay. If the team has been valued by neutral outsiders at, say, x millions of dollars, I'm sure the team could be had for 2x or 1.5x million dollars. Likewise, I'm sure potential buyers want to bid and pay .5x or .75x millions of dollars.

Kevin McClatchy et al can do what they please with the team. They own it. Despite the stadium-taxpayer swindles and what not, the team is not a public utility that exists to pipe pleasure into area homes. Fan outrage cannot bring some kind of healing political pressure to this situation. It's wasted enthusiasm, I think. With all due respect, those energies would be more profitably invested in reforming the public school system or some other civic project.

So long as they do not sell the team Robert Irsay-style, which appears unlikely, I don't see how new ownership will do much to get more wins from the current roster. Maybe a new owner, say Cuban, will invest millions of dollars into payroll and bring in a new cast of characters that wins more games than St. Louis. Or maybe not. There's no point rooting for an ownership change, in my view, because no promises or guarantees come with new ownership.

I think McClatchy et al have done OK with the team. For sure, they have made mistakes, but mistakes are par for the course.

I'd also add that I don't know McClatchy - in pictures he looks to me not like an individual, but like a type - and I wouldn't recognize him if I sat next to him in a bar. Likewise with Littlefield. I have no ties to any of these guys, and I doubt I ever will.

My advice to fans rooting for an ownership change has two parts. First, give the man some space. I doubt public pressure can do anything to promote the sale of the team. If anything, I suspect it would only discourage the sale because it would, pretty obviously I think, increase the leverage of potential buyers. And this would decrease the chance the ownership group will get the price they want for the team. There's no way public outrage will force them to sell low -- the owners are not elected officials but private businessmen.

Second, don't think that an ownership change is a magic bullet that will solve all the Pirates' problems. An ownership change would certainly disrupt business as usual, and that may or may not be a good thing.

The Pirates head into 2006 with a roster that's loaded with youth and value. They sure could use a hitter like Brian Giles or Manny Ramirez, there's no doubt of that. But I'm not sure that simply raising the payroll from $50m to say $70m guarantees that new ownership would spend the extra money wisely. Plenty of teams with $70m payrolls have significant chunks of this money sunk into bad, Darren Dreifort-type contracts.

So be careful what you wish for. I'm sure we'll continue to hear and read about imminent sale rumors for some time. I'll be ignoring them. I'll believe it when I see it, and I'll speculate about what to expect from the ownership change when (and if) an ownership change ever takes place.