What recession? That’s $17 million for Scott Boras
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Scott Boras said all winter that he did not believe baseball would be deeply affected by the recession, at least not this winter:
Boras, the agent for [Mark] Teixeira and [Manny] Ramirez, has seen all the evidence he needs, in the record revenues about which [Commissioner Bud] Selig crows -- $6.5 billion last year, up from $1.2 billion in 1994. Contracts for broadcast rights, sponsorships, luxury suites and naming rights generally extend for many years, and baseball launches its own cable channel -- the MLB Network -- next month. ‘There’s a lot of hay in the barn for teams to deal with,’ Boras said. ‘I don’t think our industry operates as a short-term reflection of our economy.’
The essential MLB Trade Rumors site calculated that the guaranteed money in all the contracts signed by Boras clients this winter totaled $347 million. (The Teixeira contract, at $180 million, accounted for more than half that total.)
At the standard 5% commission, as the site notes, that’s a little more than $17 million for Boras.
-- Bill Shaikin