You think you got Scott Boras figured out? Think he’s the Antichrist? If so, check out this profile of the Uber Agent from FanHouse’s Jeff Fletcher:
Boras, 57, grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Elk Grove, Calif., just outside of Sacramento. In this case “farm” isn’t just another word for “country.” It was an actual, working farm. Boras milked cows and drove a tractor. He said he learned early how important efficiency was, because it was only by doing his chores quickly and correctly that he could have the time to pursue his passion: baseball . . .
. . . Boras’ first office was a tiny little place in Pomona, a unspectacular, smoggy, community east of Los Angeles that Boras picked because it was located halfway between Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium. The outside of his office was scrawled with graffiti from gangs.
Boras truly came from nothing and built his business through a lot of hard work. He wasn’t gifted with clients via his dad’s golf buddies. He didn’t inherit a portfolio. He gives tons to charities. He’s a family man. He has employees who have worked with him for years and years and they all speak well of him. And despite all of that, he’ll always be thought of as evil because he has demanded that billionaires give his mere millionaire clients a greater cut of the revenue they produce. His clients are rich and famous, but in the world in which they operate, they are the little guy, relatively speaking. We almost always root for the little guy in this world, but not in baseball, and not when Boras is involved. Why?
Sure, his methods are sharp, make no mistake about it. Indeed, I’ve argued on multiple occasions that his representation of multiple free agents at the same position in the same offseason (e.g. Matt Holliday and Johnny Damon) is a conflict of interest. But there’s more than one side to every story. When it comes to Boras, almost everything we read is negative. It’s probably worth taking a look at the positive for once and giving him the same benefit of the doubt we’d give anyone else.
