It’s Not a Secret: Agents Are Now Major Players

The year was 1948, before the start of spring training.

Into the upstairs office of Clark Griffith at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. strode a dapper chap who introduced himself to the 78-year-old owner of the Washington Senators.

“I’m Johnny Berardino’s agent,” he announced. (Griffith had recently obtained Berardino in a one-for-one trade that sent fellow second baseman Gerry Priddy to the St. Louis Browns.)

“You’re what?” said Mr. Griffith.

“I’m Berardino’s agent and I’m here to talk contract.”

Mr. Griffith bristled and then said, “No you ain’t. I don’t do business with agents. I do business with ballplayers. Goodbye.” Berardino never played for the Senators.

If Mr. Griffith was acting the traditionalist, that was not surprising. What would you expect of an old ballplayer who before the turn of the century was a six-time 20-game winner for the Chicago Cubs and a contemporary of the legend, A.G. Spalding, maybe the most famous name in baseball history.

These recollections are brought on by the recent Associated Press report detailing the intricacies of the contract confected by his agent for Albert Belle, until lately the highest-paid player in the game at $11 million a year for five years with the White Sox.

It would not seem that this man’s new role as the No. 1 economic royalist in the game would also call for an escape clause for Belle. Yet such a thing was written into Belle’s contract. Lest he be mortified if three other players surpassed his salary, Belle was given the right to walk out of his contract with the White Sox and test the open market.

He has already been leapfrogged, trumped by two of baseball’s new multimillionaires. The Braves showered Greg Maddux with a $57.5 million contract for five years, and now the Red Sox have blown the payroll gasket by paying pitcher Pedro Martinez $69 million (whew!) for six years, averaging $11.5 million a year for pitching every fifth day.

It may already have set Albert Belle to thinking.

The agents have been a new force in the game for several decades, with the club owners long ago recognizing the need to deal with these lawyer fellows who know how to protect their clients, know how to read all the stats favorably, can upstage the general managers they deal with and, in some cases, call more shots than anybody else in the game. They are a society that has raised the average player’s salary in 10 years from an average of $440,000 to last season’s average of $1,333,609. These guys are predicting a 12.5% raise for 1998.

As one measurement, recall that 10 years ago Eddie Murray was the highest-paid big leaguer at $2,460,000. It doesn’t quite sound like Pedro Martinez’s 1998 paycheck of $11.5 million from the Red Sox.

But those agents know no limits. They are now writing stuff into a player’s contract that taxes credulity. Martinez’s agent has even put the Red Sox on trial, giving his man the option to quit the team if it does not get into the playoffs after his first three years with them. How ‘bout that? An escape clause that enables a pitcher to wriggle out of a contract that pays him nearly $400,000 for every start he makes.

Their agents are big on what is called “incentive bonuses.” Ten years ago, Wade Boggs offered an example. He could earn $250,000 if named the regular season MVP, $100,000 for the playoff MVP, $50,000 if he made the all-star team and $50,000 if he won a Gold Glove. Who you were made a difference that year. Oakland’s Tony Phillips could win only $15,000 if he became the World Series MVP, an honor that would fetch Reggie Jackson $200,000.

Their agents think of everything. The contract that weight-prone catcher Jim Leyritz signed with Anaheim last season was one of the game’s most fascinating ventures into the “incentive” department. The Anaheim club agreed to pay Leyritz $25,000 every time he had a body fat measurement below a specified level. Four times during the season they measured him. Four times he earned the payoffs.

Infielder Charlie Hayes of the Yankees, the Associated Press reported, collected $1.5 million last season for weighing in satisfactorily 10 times and 10 times being measured for body fat content, the new ploy by the agents.

The agents apparently keep a close watch on each other and judge what the market will bear. Barry Bonds’ man--capitalizing on all those home runs his client hits for the Giants--wrote into his new contract that Bonds must be provided with a hotel suite on all road trips. Apparently it caught the eye of Greg Maddux’s agent, who, according to the New York Times, penciled in the notion that a hotel suite would also be becoming and most necessary for his Cy Young winner.