Wanted: A sports agent who isn't greedy

Let me just put this out there if you didn't get the message before. I'm not that fond of sports agents. Most of them, it seems, are actually out for themselves more than their clients. They want more than the standard 10% commission on a player's contract, and, if you're someone like Scott Boras, you usually get it while fleecing baseball teams over and over again.

Boras did it again earlier this week, as Jacoby Ellsbury moved from the World Series champion Boston Red Sox to the arch-rival New York Yankees for 7 years and $153 million, which breaks down to $21.8 million per year. Conversely, the Yankees let their only healthy superstar from this season, Robinson Cano, head West to Seattle, as Jay Z and Brodie Van Wagenen priced themselves out of the Yankees' suddenly restricted expense account. Though Cano said last week that he really wasn't asking for $300 million over 10 years, he did get almost as much as now-ex-teammate Alex Rodriguez got.

Jay Z (aka Shawn Carter) is a rookie when it comes to the sports agent business, so he had Van Wagenen, a recent recipient of the Weasel ears and a relative unknown until signing on to (mis)represent Cano, do the talking for him. Van Wagenen, obviously using Boras' playbook, despite the fact that Cano had dumped Boras for him & Carter earlier in the year, overstepped his bounds. At the end, it was Seattle, which if memory serves is still partially owned by Nintendo (can someone check that for me), which decided to take a chance. The Yankees, meanwhile, went low rent and signed Kelly Johnson, a well traveled vet whose resume includes stops in Atlanta, Toronto, Tampa Bay, & Arizona, and it looks like he'll be Cano's replacement at second base. Plus, there's the threat that Curtis Granderson, who is being replaced, it looks like, by Ellsbury in center, could go cross-town to the Mets, according to media reports. Granderson, flanked by Eric Young, Jr. & Juan Lagares, could give the Mets a very scary---to opposing offenses---defensive outfield in 2014. No, Young doesn't have a cannon for an arm, but Lagares does, and most of his outfield assists came playing center. He'd move to right, and get some sage advice from Granderson, should the ex-Tiger sign with the Amazin's.

I'm digressing. The point I'm making is that most agents who haven't played the game----and there are precious few who actually did---live vicariously through their clients. Boras, as we've documented, was a minor league catcher in the San Diego chain whose career was ruined by injuries, and he's the poster boy for living vicariously. They want what they feel they could've had if they were in the bigs themselves. That's called being greedy. What I'm interested in seeing is an agent who actually puts ego aside and does business the right way. Since Boras has a monopoly on a lot of incoming rookies, this is difficult. Maybe the next time he gets the Weasel of the Week award, or a Dunce Cap, Boras should get a Bible along with it. There's a verse in there about love of money being the root of all evil. If you want the respect of the consumers paying your clients' salaries, you need to humble thyself first.