He Hate Me



Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune said everything there is to say about agent Scott Boras: "He is a very, very bad man. Exquisitely bad, in a foreclose-on-the-farm sort of way." Bryan Miller, in a thinkpiece on Slate, offered a more even-tempered assessment of the agent in 2001: "Scott Boras is the Marvin Miller of his age—the man the owners claim they can't afford, but the players can't afford to live without." Either way you cut it, no one likes the guy -- owners and GMs hate him with a passion, fans treat him like a human pinata, and I doubt highly that any player who has reaped the benefits on Boras' predatory tactics is inviting him to their next Christmas party.

But shit, Boras gets results. Look at the A-Rod, Kevin Brown and Darren Dreifort contracts he engineered a few years ago. Woah. And then look at his cream-of-the-crop client list for this year's free agent class: Adrian Beltre, Carlos Beltran, Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek, Kevin Millwood, J.D. Drew and Magglio Ordonez. GMs and owners have already balked at his demands for Beltran (10 years, backloaded) and Jason Varitek, but those guys will get signed. Above market value. Because Scott Boras never loses. He's like Wile E. Coyote if the super-genius managed to get the better of the Road Runner and drop an anvil on his head every time.

Word out of Chicago is that White Sox GM Kenny Williams doesn't like the way negotiations with franchise cornerstone Magglio Ordonez have been going; Williams called a press conference to tell reporters that the White Sox "would not be signing any Scott Boras clients this year." Well, no shit, Sherlock -- isn't that why the Washington franchise pulled the trigger on deals with Christian Guzman and Vinny Castilla so quickly? No one wants to get stuck negotiating with Scott Boras as an act of desperation.

Still, what's going on here? Is this Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf's legendary cheapness rearing its head once again? The White Sox franchise has a nasty track-record of blackballing its highest-paid players as a way of keeping salaries at a manageable limit -- Big Frank Thomas got treated pretty badly in the midst of a prolonged slump and he just redeemed himself in the eyes of the fans last season. People were booing the guy at every at-bat because of Reinsdorf's carefully-orchestrated smear campaign. What Kenny Williams said should ring true in the hearts and minds of every baseball observer from the top of an organization to the fan sitting in the nosebleed section, sure.

But you don't owe it to anyone to tell them the truth unless you're sleeping with them -- Boras is a terrible bed-fellow of course, but imagine the whispers of collusion that might circulate if all teams took a stand against the Boras clients this year. Kenny Williams would be Exhibit A in that trial. So what you do is shut the fuck up and keep it behind the scenes. You don't need mommy and daddy to tell you that they're getting divorced after years of bitter arguments...you knew it all along.