I can't tell you, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be joined out here in the figurative wilderness by others who are seeing the financial light. When it comes to Major League Baseball's messed up economics.

Good morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday.

If you're into football and or hockey, sports that already have salary cap systems.

I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this.

Mike DeCourse, he's a friend of mine.

Mike is longtime writer for the sporting news, predominantly renowned for his exceptional college basketball coverage.

Some of you in the area might also remember, Mike was a big part of the old Pittsburgh press

when that newspaper was still ticking. Mike put together some research and a resulting report

yesterday in response to some quotes that he read in our coverage at

D.K. Pittsburgh Sports from both Rob Manfred Major League Baseball's Commissioner and Tony Clark,

the chief union executive from All-Star Week in Atlanta.

Mike was particularly struck by Clark's comments about how a cap system works and how flimsy

and hollow misleading Clark's comments were, because that's pretty much all the union has

with which to rally the players because the truth is the salary cap system which I will remind for only about the billionth time always involves a ceiling and a floor that are only about 20 million dollars apart benefits way more players than the current system does.

And what he did, and this is something that deserves a deeper layering.

And I'm sure Mike would tell you the same thing than what he did.

Well, all he did was simply look at the percentage of big league players on current active rosters, right now, 26-man

rosters who are earning less than the National Hockey League minimum over the course of a full

season.

And he pulled up as his prototype, poor Henry Thrun, million-dollar defensemen in San Jose for the sharks who gave up more goals than anybody else in hockey this past season.

And then he looked at a comparison of James Wood from the Nationals, who's just a budding superstar.

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