Boras? He doesn't even know us!

A good friend of mine who is in baseball and has been around the game much of his life sent me a seemingly never ending spew of angry text messages on Wednesday. The messages, as you might have guessed from the Blog headline, involved Scott Boras.

A few of these texts went like so:

“How about writing on the mega-contracts signed by Boras clients (professional and amateur) and how they have panned out?”

“Seriously, what’s the incentive to give into Boras? His success rate has to be brutal.”

“Drew. Zito. Dreifort. Kevin Brown. Jeff Austin. Two teams are paying A-Rod, and the team that signed him went in the tank. Beltre. Damon didn’t get any mo …”

“re money than KC offered. Burrell. Rey Sanchez.”

“Beltran didn’t want to go to the Mets … they were the only team to offer that much money.”

“How about A-Rod getting 200 grand for making the All-Star Team? Apparently $25 million doesn’t include being an All-Star.”

“Travis Lee, Bobby Seay, Matt White … remember they all weaseled out of the 1996 draft? Those deals worked out great for Arizona and Tampa Bay, didn’t they?”

“Actually, he didn’t represent all of those draft guys at the time.”

“Chan Ho Park.”

And so on. There are more texts. (To clean up a few of the inevitable inaccuracies you will find in text messages … Boras doesn’t represent Burrell; I think Damon did actually get quite a bit more money than the Royals offered; the Beltran text about him not wanting to play for the Mets is conjecture though it may very well be true).

My friend can go on some serious text rants when something gets him riled up. Don’t get him going on Global Warming (no, my friend is not Al Gore – think of the opposite). Anyway, all day on Wednesday my phone buzzed, I would check it out, and there would be a text message that said something like, “And don’t forget about Rick Ankiel.”

Somewhere inside all those angry texts there may be an interesting question: Would a team be better off to simply avoid Boras clients altogether? Or more to the point: Do Scott Boras clients, by their very nature, have priorities and demands that make them more likely than usual to bust?

I have an opinion about this that I actually think might go beyond baseball a little bit. First, though, I want to say that I respect Boras for his many talents as an agent (hey, you never know, he might want to represent this blog). I thought I said this the other day, when I wrote a blog about Boras’ client Mike Moustakas, but apparently the sentiment got lost. I wrote there that Moustakas, the No. 2 pick in the draft, was (at best) a 50-50 shot to sign with Kansas City because:

A. The Royals insist they will not pay much above slot money (slot is $3.1 million).
B. Scott Boras clients, with few exceptions, do not sign for slot money. Scott does not even acknowledge the concept of slot money. You get the sense he couldn’t even say the word “slot” much in the same way Fonzie couldn’t say “Sorry.”

Anyway, the general points I was trying to make, in no particular order, were:
1. Mike Moustakas says he loves the game and desperately wants to play professionally.
2. I believe him.
3. However Mike Moustakas (and his family) signed with Scott Boras.
4. You don’t sign with Scott Boras – the biggest, baddest agent around – unless you want to play hardball and make the most money possible.
5. Therefore, Mike Moustakas might not play professional baseball (at least for the time being).

That was it. That was the whole blog. The last few days, though, I have received several responses (and comments) from fans and people around baseball who read the blog and seemed to think I was saying that:
1. That I agree with slotting draft picks.
2. That I think the kid should sign, and I’m an idiot.
3. That I think the Royals should offer more, and I’m an idiot.
4. That I blame the kid for signing with Boras.
5. That I think “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)” is a great song.

Well, I obviously did not do a particularly good job on that blog. The truth is I don’t have any particularly strong feelings one way or another about slotting – I see why the owners and commissioner want slotting; I see why players and agents don’t. I certainly don’t have any opinion at all on either No. 2 or No. 3 – heck, I failed college accounting (maybe that’s what they meant by the “I’m an idiot” part). And on No. 4, I certainly don’t blame anyone for signing with the biggest, baddest agent around, the guy most likely to get you a great deal. I’m all for people wanting to get what they want out of life.

(On. No. 5: I don’t think “Birds Fly” is a great song. I think it’s a FABULOUS song – “We are, we are, we are but your children! Finding our way around indecision!”).

But now we move on to today’s question: Is Boras worth the hassle?

(No, first, we deal with another controversey -- is the Birds Fly lyric "We are, we are, we are, we're just children" or "We are, we are, we are but your children?" I've seen it both ways. I think it's the second, but someone needs to get Ian McNabb on the phone).

On the one hand, you can say: Hey, if you want to be a player and a real contender, you have to deal with Boras. Look around. The Detroit Tigers built their turnaround on the wings of Boras clients – Ivan Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, Kenny Rogers. Look what Johnny Damon and Jason Varitek did for Boston, what Carlos Beltran did for the Mets, what Greg Maddux did for the Braves (not to mention Andruw Jones), what Prince Fielder is doing for the Brewers, what Bernie Williams did for the Yankees, and none of this even includes ARod, Mig Cabrera, Matt Holliday, Mark Teixeira, etc. The argument here is that many of the best players sign with Boras, and if you want great talents, you need to play ball with the Agent of Doom.

On the other hand, you can say: Hey, look at all the flops. The disasters. Darren Dreifort signed a, what, $58 million deal and went, what, 34-37 over five years? Chan Ho Park – yikes, $15 million per year for 5.50 ERAs and higher. Brien Taylor’s career was knocked out in a bar fight. Jeff Austin never won a single game for Kansas City after holding out a year. Rick Ankiel snapped and is trying to come back as a hitter. Barry Zito – does anybody want to be stuck with THAT deal right now? They’re booing J.D. Drew in Boston (they’re not saying “Drew!” They’re really booing his .250-batting, no-power-swinging butt). They still can’t believe the catastrophe known as Jeff Weaver in Seattle. There are many other fiascos. The argument here is that the players who sign with Boras care more about money than the game and, as such, they are much more likely to flop, become pains in the neck, turn into Jose Rosado, etc.

Here’s where my “maybe this goes beyond baseball” opinion comes in: I think generally people will see what they want to see. This is not particularly new ground but take a look at this week’s New York Times Bestseller list. You will notice, right off, that The Soul of Baseball is not on there. Why? Maybe it’s because you didn’t buy the book. Did you buy the book? This blog surpassed the 40,000 readers plateau in the last month, and I have to tell you if all of you would buy a book, then it MIGHT be on the Times bestseller list. For certain that Amazon number would go up.

OK, sorry, lost my head for a moment.

Look at the NYT Bestseller lists and you will see a book by Al Gore and a book called “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming” (not written by my friend, but I’ll bet he’s read it). You will see Barack Obama and Dick Morris, you will see the Pope’s discussion of Jesus’ identity as revealed in the Gospels and Christopher Hitchens on why God is not great. In other words, you will see any number of books that allow people to read exactly what they want to believe. Democrats read Frank Rich, Republicans read George Will, crazy people read Ann Coulter, it’s all very tidy, and it’s all very predictable.

I think there are just people in our society that, for some reason, represent something larger to us. Barry Bonds is like that. To many, many people, Barry Bonds represents the absolute worst in athletics. He represents selfishness, obnoxiousness, steroid-abuse and anything else that is wrong with sports. And there’s plenty of that in his record. Of course you also could point out that Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player of our generation, that he carried the Pittsburgh Pirates to the playoffs three times, that he dragged San Francisco to the playoffs four times, that he played the game awfully hard and awfully well for many years – even his harshest critics have said he held out on performance enhancing drugs for the longest time while so many players around him used the stuff. Finally, they say, his ego couldn’t take it. And he became the greatest hitting machine in the history of history.

But none of that matters now. Bonds has moved beyond all that and become a symbol. He’s like modern art. People see him exactly the way they want to see him. Some see him as pure evil. Some see him as a victim. Some see him as a cheater. Some see him as a man who played by the rules of his time. Some see him as unworthy of replacing the class and grace of Hank Aaron. Some see him as a much better player than Aaron ever was.

Point is, it's all there. With Barry, you can see what you want to see.

And the same is true of Boras. If you want to make him an evil genius, a destroyer of the game we love or a defender of ballplayers, there’s enough in the record to back you up. I think when you go down the list of Boras’ clients, you will see enough head cases to poison the 1927 Yankees. You will also see plenty of difference-makers, player who could, with a little help and a little luck, turn around the fortunes of even the 2003 Tigers.

In other words, Boras is whatever you want him to be. I remember once reading two reviews, back to back, of the movie “Jerry McGuire.” The first review talked about how much fun it was, how uplifting it was to see that, even a sports agent, could find love and the meaning of sports.

The second review said something like this: “OK, so as best I can tell, this movie was about how one self-centered sports agent battled another self-centered sports agent for the right to represent a self-centered wide receiver, while Renee Zellweger whined.”

See, it’s all how you see it. I’ve always thought Renee Zellweger was quite hot.