The Sports Guy and Cuban

I saw on ESPN's homepage today that the Sports Guy had a new "Curious Guy" column up with Mark Cuban (the "Curious Guy" is when he takes someone he finds interesting and trades e-mails with them into a column, it's usually not sports related) so I figured I'd check it out and see if Simmons asks any questions to Cuban about baseball. Much to my chagrin (but not to my surprise) most of the talk centers on bland NBA topics, Cuban's "salary embargo" (he won't let his announcers publicly talk about any of his players salaries) and the dress code. One statement by Simmons got me wistfully thinking of a Cuban ownership here in the 'Burgh though:

Nobody was really thinking outside the box with stuff like, "If we built state-of-the-art locker rooms, flew everyone around on a luxury charter and treated these guys first-class in every respect, would that lure more free agents here?" and "Who says we only need to have two assistants, what if we have eight, wouldn't that make us more competitive?" I don't agree with some of the personnel decisions that you've made -- and I've written as much -- but it's been impressive to watch you turn the demeanor of that franchise around in Dallas. Guys want to play there, which is a complete 180 from the way it was 10 years ago. Ahhhh.

Too bad we're not for sale, the Pirates problem isn't that no one can think outside of the box, it's that no one that runs the team even knows they're in a box to begin with.