Friday, December 10, 2004 |
Everybody Loves A Second Act
He is a ruddy man, his face pinched, harsh, and beset with the meanness of a small and very unpleasant scavenging omnivore, say, a ferret or a rat. His features recall some of labor's greasier characters; in particular, he bears a striking resemblance to Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster leader who finished his career in the New Jersey swamps outside of the refineries once he crossed the wrong don.
He's the man who sells your favorite player to the Yankees.
And this week, he's in Anaheim, making a nuisance of himself. Like R. J. Reynolds, he's got a justification for his trade. You have to. Hey, everyone's entitled to competent representation, aren't they?
"I will never sell my clients," he said. "The fact of the matter is, I love this game. I'm doing OK. It would have been a much better business decision to sell it. ... [But] I would never do it and I was one of the only majors who didn't do it. How I measure success is always going to be how I serve the interest of my clients. It's not going to be the fact that I make a certain amount of money. The reality of it is, when I answer the money question, the litmus test came for me seven years ago and I answered it."Idle hands are the devil's workshop, you say? But the devil himself is never idle. Boras preens. He pumps the media with stories about invisible bidders for his players, as he did with the Dodgers and Kevin Brown, or the Rangers and A-Rod. The the devil does not work in a vacuum. The GMs help him out. Desperation, ignorance, and stupidity all conspire to drive up the price of his charges. Lot's wife, after all, looked back.On his way from Scott Boras the agent to Scott Boras the corporation, including sports psychology and sports fitness arms for his clients, Boras negotiated the first $100-million (Kevin Brown) and $200-million (Alex Rodriguez) contracts in league history. He represented big names and, for owners and general managers, big problems, arriving on their doorsteps with the binders and an unapologetic industriousness.
Earlier this year, Boras's failures mounted, so much so that we almost thought he'd been licked. Not so now, not with so many Boras-controlled quality free agents in the market. Today, he's the expansive seller of flesh to men themselves in need of a good story; some, like Brian Cashman or Omar Minaya, have impossible expectations to meet. Others, like Paul DePodesta, have an airy detachment from the inflated claims and hucksterism roaring through the winter meetings like a blizzard; his earlier comment in a Los Angeles Times interview that
“You are projecting the future performance of human beings and you have to be incredibly careful,” DePodesta said. “The ability to predict a player’s performance for one year is difficult. Two to three years out is more difficult. Beyond that, you are throwing darts.”reflects the sober intelligence of a man unmoved by hysteria. In that, I think he is unique, or at least, solidly in the minority. How many others will recall the numerous bad signings of the late 90's, the Albert Belles, the Kevin Browns, the Chan Ho Parks, the Ken Griffey, Jr.'s? In the end, the excesses of free agency are due to the financial incontinence of the general managers. So the point that the free agency system is broken because Kansas City can't afford to keep so much as one Carlos Beltran, while valid, has to be taken with the salt that the clubs make it so. The devil has power only to the extent that men give it to him.
All of your religious analagies not withstanding, this is pretty much a bunch of crap.
I am reasonably certain Boras is not Satan and I doubt that he has ever put a pen in an owner's hand, a pistol to the owners head and said " Sign or die".
It's not the fault of A-Rod or anyone else other than the stupid owner that they are willing to pay him $250 million. Greed, plain and simple, drives the owners. The Rangers also deserve everything they got, or didn't get, from Chan Ho "out of the " Park.
Sorry, no sympathy here and no tar and feathers for Boras. He is simply making the most of the oportunity presented to him. I doubt you would do it any differently.
AHB
: 12/10/2004 08:23:00 PM
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