6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: The Dream That Comes In Pairs

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Sunday, February 20, 2005

The Dream That Comes In Pairs

Here's an interesting story about Cuban defector Kendry Morales and his Canadian agent, John Di Manno, in the New York Times. If Morales is new to all this free-market, free-agency stuff, well, so is Di Manno, for whom Morales is his first-ever client:

Di Manno apparently wants to be a baseball agent. For several years he had been trying to hook up with a top Cuban player willing to defect to the United States. There were some false starts -- like the time, according to another agent, Di Manno pursued a promising pitcher only to lose him to that agent. But finally, in Morales, Di Manno had found his man.
''In this business, it's all about landing the right guy,'' Di Manno said. ''That one big client that can lead to more opportunities down the road, many more opportunities.''
He spent months winning Morales's confidence, meeting with him in Cuba, phoning him from Canada, dangling before him all the dollar signs available in the major leagues. When Morales finally defected, last June, Di Manno was waiting for him in Miami. Morales signed a personal-services contract binding the two men even though Di Manno was not yet an agent certified by Major League Baseball and had never represented another athlete.
I flew to the Dominican Republic with as many questions about Di Manno as scouts had about Morales. Scouts wondered if Morales could field, or hit major-league pitching. I wondered if Di Manno was a shark, a hustler holding undue influence over a 21-year-old new to a free market system. After a few days in the company of both men, however, I wondered who exactly was the savvy businessman and who had just stepped off the boat.

So, how did the Angels pick up this guy? The answer seems to be that a bunch of other teams -- the Yankees, the Marlins, Detroit, Seattle -- all passed.

'I think the guy has the chance to be an average offensive player in the major leagues,'' said a scouting director for one of the few teams that expressed sustained interest in Morales. (He asked not to be identified because he didn't want to poison any future dealings with the Angels, Morales or Di Manno.) ''And that remains to be seen. He's an average player to be sure.''

We'll get a good idea of just how good Morales is presently. And, Di Manno will know soon, too, just whether he'll get to stay in the sports management business.

// posted by Rob @ 9:40 AM link // 0 comments