Well, this answers a question I had for Scott Boras: "Do people ever ask you for an autograph?"
At least one person has asked for the signature — and not on a client's contract — of Major League Baseball's most dreaded, feared and loathed agent. It's on a baseball, which is among the items up for bid at an online auction, Ump's Care Charities, and it's going for $30 as of Thursday afternoon. Bidding concludes at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday.
• Build-A-Bear Workshop experiences for children with cancer
• Major League Baseball experiences for children awaiting adoption
• College scholarships for deserving young adults
That actually sounds like a wonderful cause. You know, we get on umpires sometimes ... Yeah, where was I? Oh, yeah, Boras. Sure, it's like asking Darth Vader for his autograph — actually, that's a bad example because more people like Vader than they do Boras. There's no denying his place in baseball history, though, at least when it comes to money:
Boras is the man who helped bring J.D. Drew and the city of Philadelphia together with batteries. The man who emancipated Bobby Seay and Matt White on a technicality. The man who busted the $50 million barrier with Greg Maddux, the $100 million barrier with Kevin Brown and the $200 million barrier with Alex Rodriguez. The man who got the Dodgers to pay $55 million for Darren Dreifort, who brought from Japan a curiosity named Daisuke Matsuzaka and who negotiated $126 million for Barry Zito.
Boras undeniably is one of the more instrumental individuals in MLB history. As with labor leader Marvin Miller, he'll probably never see induction into the Hall of Fame, but one certainly could make the case for Boras and Cooperstown.
Who are the most influential people in baseball since Jackie Robinson broke in?
Bud Selig; Marvin Miller and Don Fehr; Bob Bowman (CEO of MLB Advanced Media); Bill James; Jerry Reinsdorf; Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. There probably are more, and Boras is in there, somewhere.
If you're building an all-time collection of baseball autographs, and Boras isn't among them, sorry, you're one ball short.
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