“Hey, who’s your agent again?”

From SB Nation’s interview with legendary sports agent Ron Shapiro:

Q: Many years ago you came very close to being Alex Rodriguez’s agent before he selected Scott Boras? How might things have turned out differently?

A: With Alex I could foresee that if he were shaped by the wrong value system that he might well fall into the trap of narcissism unhappiness. He certainly earned as much as anyone in history of sport, yet was so ill-suited for that success. He is always engaging in so many self-defeating acts. Brooks Robinson wrote a terrific column in The New York Times about how Alex chose an agent who pushed the money - early on that the seed was planted for what appears to be destroying him at this point. I like to believe that my partner Michael Mass and I could have made a difference in his life.

Fun to think about. Of course we’ll never know.

But this does lead to a potentially fruitful line of inquiry ...

Typically, agents keep score in dollars. But there are other ways to keep score. You could keep score in baseball statistics. You could keep score in suspensions. You could keep score in endorsements. You could keep score in negative press references. You could keep score in a lot of things.

And you might find that some agents’ clients out-earned other agents’ clients in the short term, but not in the long term. You might find that some agents’ clients stay healthier than other agents’ clients.

What you would probably find is not a whole lot, because life’s so bloody complicated. But I would like to have some information about agents before I ran a draft or signed a free agent. That’s probably just me, though.