Double Agent

The fifth and newest general partner of the restructured and recapitalized Arizona Diamondbacks occupies a spacious corner office on the executive level of Bank One Ballpark.

He has been busy redecorating the office walls but busier yet rebuilding the foundation of a franchise burdened by debt and the 111 losses of last summer.

After 20 years of knocking down management’s door as one of the industry’s most powerful player agents, Jeff Moorad is now entitled to put his name on the door.

Succeeding the ousted Jerry Colangelo, he is a part owner and is chief executive in everything but title, and his later-in-life career move was seen as so unique, so rife with irony and a potential for conflicts, that it generated investigative concern at both the commissioner’s office and players’ union.

Even now, the concerns having been addressed and alleviated to the extent that Moorad is on the job full-time and prepared to push his ownership stake to $20 million, according to Diamondback sources, there are varying perceptions.

He is either the enemy within, as some owners who took it personally when they lost contract battles with him in his previous life may continue to believe, or he is a welcome defector who brings state secrets regarding players and the union.

Has Jeff Moorad, having represented some of baseball’s most renowned players for two decades, suddenly joined the dark side, or is he now emerging from the dark?

The baritone-voiced Moorad laughed and said he would leave that call to others. He is where he wants to be, operating on what he calls “the purer side of the business.”

“I don’t think there are a whole lot of people in the industry who don’t fantasize at some level about ownership of a club,” he said.

“I can’t say I thought about it as a central theme of my life, but I thought that one day it might be a possibility to the extent that I now consider it a dream come true.”

*

The business of high-profile contract negotiations isn’t one that leaves either side appearing totally pure, and it was not long ago that Moorad sharply denigrated the motivation of ownership in general.

“The fans care about the game and the players care about the game,” he said during the frustration of the 1994 work stoppage. “The owners don’t care about the game. They only care about grabbing more money and more power over the national pastime.”

Now, of course, Moorad’s dream keeps getting interrupted by reporters throwing that quote at him, and while he chalks it up, to an extent, to being “young and naive,” he doesn’t take it back.

“I make no excuse for anything I’ve said or believed at certain times in my life,” he said.

“Over the last 10 years I’ve certainly acquired an appreciation for some of the broader views I hold today, and there should be no mistake about my role and loyalty going forward.”

Besides, in Moorad’s view, is the transition really that unique?

Didn’t Ron Meyer and Brad Grey, for instance, come out of the representation field to run major Hollywood studios?

Didn’t Jerry Kapstein, baseball’s first big-time agent, become president of the San Diego Padres and now an advisor with the Boston Red Sox?

Isn’t Rick Hahn, a former Moorad associate, the assistant general manager of the Chicago White Sox and isn’t Dennis Gilbert, an agent of the Moorad and Scott Boras magnitude until retiring to focus on his insurance business, now a consultant with that club?

Although valid, none of that mitigates the extent of Moorad’s leap, the caliber and earning power of the clientele he left behind, the financial and spiritual investment in the Diamondbacks, his comprehensive role and the initial alarms that sounded on both sides of the baseball fence.

On one front he had to satisfy union officials that none of his final contract negotiations had been compromised in any way by his private knowledge he would be moving on, and that he would continue to safeguard confidential player information.

“I left my files behind,” Moorad said. “I walked out of the office with my cellphone and little more.”

On a second front he had to satisfy baseball lawyers that he retained no financial ties to his former business, and he had to work with Commissioner Bud Selig to refine his exact title and role with the Diamondbacks while Selig attempted to assuage many owners who expressed a variety of concerns.

Some flatly didn’t want an agent running a team and attending league meetings.

Some bemoaned the fact that Moorad, to an extent, was financing his investment with their money -- the annual 5% or so he took from the annual $200 million or so that his 55 or so baseball clients received in salaries.

Some worried that his relationship with some of the game’s top players -- his clients included Manny Ramirez, Shawn Green, Luis Gonzalez, Adam Dunn, Vernon Wells, Darin Erstad, Pat Burrell, Brad Penny and C.C. Sabathia -- would give him an unfair advantage when those players were on the open market.

“Some of [the concern] was philosophical and some was personal, as it always is with this group,” Selig said of his constituents. “Some simply didn’t want an agent operating a team, and others were resentful of the tough negotiations they’d had with Moorad in the past.

“In the end, I have a lot of trust and respect for [Arizona managing general partner] Ken Kendrick and I was impressed in meetings with Jeff by his commitment to the Diamondbacks and to the management side of the process.”

Selig gave his approval in February.

Kendrick will represent the Diamondbacks in league meetings and in dealings with the commissioner’s office.

Moorad’s business card reads simply “General Partner,” a title selected by Selig from among eight submitted by the club. He retains sweeping authority.

“I may be 49 but I’m a rookie in this league,” Moorad said. “I have to earn my stripes in certain regards. I understand that and appreciate the way the commissioner and his office worked through the issues and created a role allowing me to be part of the management side.

“I’ve talked to several owners to get their feedback and my conclusion is that this is a time for me to keep my head down and do the work at hand.”

Realistically, however, there’s no way he can totally keep his head down when players with whom he has had a business relationship become available. If that gives the Diamondbacks an advantage that some owners consider unfair, so be it.

“There are sufficient checks and balances on the player system that make it a level playing field depending on how each club chooses to approach it,” Moorad said.

*

So now Moorad is preaching “cost efficiency” to the Diamondbacks -- “we won’t have the lowest payroll but we certainly won’t have the highest,” he said -- after those 20 years of driving up salaries with hard-line negotiations, and Moorad disputes the irony in that by saying he’s still trying to maximize results and advocate on behalf of a client.

It was while at Villanova law school that Moorad called Larry Bird cold and asked if he needed an agent. Bird, then at Indiana State on his way to becoming an NBA superstar, rejected the offer, but Moorad wasn’t dissuaded. After a year and a half of unhappily practicing law in Newport Beach he borrowed money from his dad to pursue his passion, ultimately became partners with agent Leigh Steinberg, brokered a $15-million contract for Will Clark in 1989 that was baseball’s richest at the time, and has not needed to tap into his dad’s account since.

In addition, several events in the late 1990s changed his life and the course of his career.

* A battle in December 1997 with a flesh-eating disease, requiring seven operations in 10 days, led to “spiritual enrichment” through church and family, and a “still driven but better sense of balance.”

* The decision in 1999 by Steinberg and Moorad to sell their representation business to Canadian-based Assante Corp. for $74 million, along with their sale of a New Jersey marketing company and Internet publishing firm for $38 million, stimulated Moorad’s ownership interest, both financially and otherwise.

* His involvement that same year with the Newport Beach chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization, a group of chief executives and entrepreneurs, some of whom had owned teams or had interest in acquiring one, influenced him “to reach beyond the representation and challenge myself at a higher level.”

He ultimately was associated with a Silicon Valley group that lost a bid for the Dodgers to Frank McCourt, and he came close to purchasing the NBA’s Phoenix Suns from Colangelo until an apparent agreement collapsed. That bid brought Moorad to the attention of Kendrick as he was attempting to reorganize and refinance the Diamondbacks, a process that ultimately claimed Colangelo in disagreements over finances and authority.

“That was a rough road for all of us because of the human emotions involved,” Moorad said.

The widely admired Colangelo had put the expansion Diamondbacks on the baseball map in more ways than one, but that success, including a World Series title in 2001, came at the heavy price of repeated cash calls and deferral-laden contracts.

The five general partners now own about 65% of the reorganized franchise and have initiated a 10-year, $250-million recapitalization plan designed to cope with the $165 million of deferred obligation over the next six years.

Moorad has a five-year contract to oversee the operation, a term that doesn’t have an impact on his general partnership. While active in the off-season dealing that brought Green from the Dodgers, sent Randy Johnson to the New York Yankees and netted Troy Glaus and Russ Ortiz as free agents, he insists that the “player side of the business” will take up only 20% of his time.

He will be more involved in marketing, sponsorships, broadcasting, community affairs and stadium operations, the former player agent now pursuing cost efficiency from what he considers the purer side of the desk.