You mean it took secret information to confirm the Pittsburgh Pirates haven't spent for talent? No one could figure that out when the Buccos are waddling through an 18th consecutive losing season?

We needed a leak from the inner sanctums about the financial statements of this team and other teams? Sure. And please put a video on YouTube.

Sports is remarkably simple. The best athletes win. In tennis and golf, by themselves. In team play, as part of a group which through their presence they make better.

The Spander Theory reads like this: Cars, wine and ballplayers, with rare exception, you get what you pay for. Vosne Romanee, Albert Pujols. No difference.

Someone made public financial reports that the Pirates, Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays, despite all those empty seats we see on television, are very profitable.

No one had to disclose the Rays are also a competitive team. That information is available by studying the standings. The money Tampa gained was used wisely.

The Pirates and Marlins chose another path. That such information is now in newspapers and on the internet has David P. Samsom, president of the Marlins, in a snit.

He said disclosure of the supposedly private documents about what goes on inside the front offices, is "a breach of fiduciary obligation and duty by the leaking party.''

Easy there Mr. Samson. If it's out there, it's going to be everywhere, government, baseball. Someone's always talking. Or Tweeting. Or e-mailing.

Someone always has an axe to grind or an enemy to attack or a cause to further.

We find out secrets about the war in Afghanistan, then no problem we will find out secrets about the inner workings of a game that in truth is a business.

"It's a crime,'' the Marlins' Samson said of dispensing the material on revenue-sharing. "And it will be followed up intensely by Major League Baseball and its member clubs.''

Think it will stop the whistle-blowers? Think it will stop the Yankees or Twins or Cardinals, the franchises which are wealthy and willing to use their wealth?

Team owners are rich people. All of them. Some want to win championships. Some only want to stay rich.

"There is a group of people ticked off that revenue-sharing isn't used to put a product on the field but in the owners' pockets,'' Marc Gannis, a sports industry consultant told the New York Times. "And that would be parties related to the players. But I don't think the union has access to audited financials.''

Another group ticked off for a different reason is the fans. The commissioner himself, Bud Selig, has said on more than one occasion that a team must offer hope even if it can't offer titles.

The Pirates and Orioles and Royals and Oakland Athletics, the latter despite a staff which leads the American League in pitching, offer hopelessness.

Every once in a while on XM-Sirius radio's Broadway station there's a song from "Damn Yankees,'' the musical about a Washington Senators fan so frustrated by never beating New York, he sells his soul to the devil to reverse the situation.

The show, based on a book by the perfectly named Douglas Wallop, opened in the 1950s. A half century later, the Yankees remain the Yankees, and the Pirates are the new Senators.

Except the old Senators never had the advantage of revenue-sharing, and so moved to Minnesota starting with the 1961 season, and Washington was given an expansion team, which in 1972 became the Texas Rangers.

Lots of hanky-panky in baseball, little of it to the benefit of the fans.

A team loses games. Then the fans lose their team. Maybe a little more complex than that, but in Washington or K.C. with the Athletics and Seattle with the Pilots, franchises that were hustled to another city, essentially that's what happened.

What's happened to baseball, unlike the much wiser NFL, where Green Bay flourishes alongside the Giants, Jets and Bears, is the small market teams either can't spend or in the case of the Pirates haven't spent.

The Pirates earned $29.4 million in 2007 and 2008, taking $69.3 million in revenue sharing at the same time. Yet they have the smallest payroll of the 30 teams in the majors, executives insisting they are using the profits for player development.

"Even when we're winning,'' Frank Coonelly, the Pirates' president told Associated Press, "we will be a revenue-sharing recipient.''

Is that a warning or a threat? Somebody eventually will leak the answer.