Even Agents Taking a Hit During Baseball Strike

The producer of “Saturday Night Live” is holding on Line 1. . . . Better pick up Line 2, Bret Saberhagen is calling from an airplane. . . . Did you call back the people at Fox? . . . Is everything set with Michael Bolton? . . . When does “Seinfeld” need Danny Tartabull again?

Dennis Gilbert, perhaps the most prominent agent in baseball, works in a fancy office building in Beverly Hills, complete with a panoramic view of the city from his penthouse suite. He wears Armani suits, drives a Rolls-Royce and lives in a 14,000-square-foot mansion.

He also is absolutely miserable these days, feeling no different than the thousands who have been affected by the baseball strike.

One difference is that he keeps working, putting in longer hours on baseball than ever before.

These days, Gilbert, along with hundreds of other baseball agents, continues to work without getting paid. When the players walked Aug. 12, the checks stopped. If the players don’t get paid, neither do their agents.

The Beverly Hills Sports Council’s client list includes a Who’s Who of Baseball. Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, Saberhagen, Tartabull, Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco, Bobby Bonilla, Kevin Appier and John Franco are among his 75 major league clients. Gilbert and his partners represent 12 players who each earned base salaries in excess of $2 million in 1994, and five players with salaries of at least $4 million.

Considering that the Beverly Hills Sports Council receives 5% commission, the company lost $653,861 in wages from the dozen players earning at least $2 million, and close to $1 million from their entire clientele.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Gilbert said. “We may have lost the most money, but that’s because we have negotiated the biggest contracts.

“What this office misses most, though, is the game. That’s the fun part about being an agent. I mean, we got the penthouse floor just so we could rent out space on the roof for satellite dishes. We normally would have games on all day.

“Now, instead of watching baseball games on TV, I’m watching Bob Shapiro perform on TV. It feels weird.”

Said Jeff Borris, who along with Rick Thurman is a partner with Gilbert: “It’s a tremendously empty feeling. This is the time of year we’d be scattering across the country to see our guys in playoff games. Now, we sit around and talk about labor issues.

“It’s a tremendous void in all of our lives.”

Gilbert, 46, a former minor league outfielder who became a millionaire by the age of 30 by selling life insurance, says he won’t suffer any financial hardship because of the strike.

Sure, he has immense overhead, with phone bills that run nearly $10,000 month, but business will be conducted as usual. There will be no layoffs on his staff, and he rejected the invitation from his employees to take a pay cut.

“I know times are tough,” Gilbert said. “I had an agent call me the other day and asked if he could come work for me. It’s going to be tough on a lot of guys.

“But we can’t change. We can’t cut back. We’ve got to ride this out, just like everyone else.”

*

It’s a cutthroat business, so perhaps it’s only natural that no one is reaching out to provide financial or even emotional assistance to hundreds of agents.

If agents sense that one of their brethren is in trouble, some will swoop down and try to woo clients away. The less competition, the better. One man’s anguish is another man’s joy.

“I’m sure not too many people are feeling sorry for us,” said San Diego-based agent Barry Axelrod. “People forget that we’re humans too. Not many, but there are some.”

Axelrod, a veteran of 18 years in the business, has 10 players in the major leagues, including Jeff Bagwell, a shoo-in for the National League’s most valuable player award.

Bagwell, who earned a base salary of $2.4 million in 1994, normally would be able to parlay his season into a five-year contract for about $5 million a year. If nothing else, he’d be eligible for arbitration, which would guarantee that his salary would at least be doubled.

Now, who knows what will happen?

“I feel like an idiot,” Axelrod said. “The reason my clients retain me is that I’m supposed to be able to assess the situation.

“Well, I’m clueless. I don’t have any idea what will happen. I don’t have any idea where he stands now. He could eventually be in a situation with no rights.

“I feel bad for Jeff, too. Assuming he is the MVP, I think it will always be tainted. I think any of us associated with this season will always have that feeling.

“It’ll be like (client) Rick Sutcliffe’s 1981 World Series ring. He keeps it in a drawer because it wasn’t a true season.

“It’s just so hard to get excited about anything associated with baseball anymore.”

Axelrod, whose only staff member is a secretary, says that he, too, will survive the baseball strike. He also represents a handful of actors and actresses, and that has helped offset the baseball business.

“The difference is that it has created cause for a couple of family meetings,” Axelrod said. “Believe me, there won’t be any vacations or new cars this year.”

The strike certainly is coming at a rotten time for Manhattan Beach agent Alan Meersand, 46, and his family. He already had started construction on an addition to his home that will cost more than $100,000.

When you have 11-month-old twin sons, Meersand and his wife learned, the house can get awfully small in a hurry.

“I personally can handle the 29% hit,” Meersand said, “but I’m not one of the unfortunate people in a front office who have lost their job. The owners almost seem to be reveling in the bloodshed.”

Meersand, who represents four free agents--Tim Wallach, Darrin Jackson, Damon Berryhill and Jesse Orosco--says the most troubling aspect is the uncertainty. He’s unable to negotiate a deal for any of the free agents, much less market his free agents during the strike.

“I’m trying to rally our guys to stay in there,” Meersand said. “I think there has to be fear by everybody. Every player is worried. Come on, you tell me that Bobby Bonilla isn’t sick about losing $31,000 a day.

“I know everybody has the right to do what they want, but I tell them there’s no way they can cross the picket lines unless they want to pay for the rest of their careers. You’ll get frozen out. You’ll get thrown out.

“You can’t cross the union. Players may not agree with every move they make, but as long as you pay for their leadership . . .”

Said agent Paul Cohen, who represents potential young stars such as Dodger outfielder Billy Ashley and Angel outfielder Jim Edmonds: “Everybody has their own issues. My players tell me that 2% or 3% of the guys are going to do what’s best for them. But it’s not like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do now?’

“I think the real test will be April, May and June. It’s just absolute craziness right now.”

*

Agent Scott Boras of Newport Beach said this normally is the time of year he would begin preparing arbitration cases for his eligible clients. Instead, he found himself recently writing letters to players explaining the antitrust agreement.

“A lot of players didn’t even know what the antitrust agreement was until a couple of years ago,” said Boras, who represents about 45 major league players and 25 in the minors.

Boras’ predicament is that in a year in which he represents such free agents as Kenny Rogers, Kevin Brown, Jim Abbott, Tim Belcher and Bip Roberts, it might be the worst year to be a free agent. If every club really is losing money this season because of the strike, who’s going to turn around and unleash a spending spree on a free agent?

Little wonder Boras and his staff have sent out 20- to 30-page briefs on the merits of his free-agent players to every general manager.

“I anticipate clubs will sign players to contracts,” Boras said, “but I would suspect there might a catch, like, ‘You have to report by March 1.’ I also don’t think you’re going to see the lucrative signing bonuses.

“It’s legally fascinating what’s going on in the sports world right now. But it’s a little frightening also.”

Arn Tellem, who is grateful he negotiated a three-year, $14-million contract for Angel starter Mark Langston last spring instead of testing the free-agent market, says agents now are forced to explore every option for players. He, in fact, recently hired a Japanese lawyer in anticipation of possibly sending some of his players to Japan.

“In a weird way, it may be advantageous to be a free agent,” said Tellem, who represents free agents Bo Jackson, Matt Nokes and Rex Hudler. “If there’s no season, what good does a contract do?

“If you don’t have a contract with one club, it gives you the opportunity to go overseas and make a living.”

Then, again, many of the players might have other ideas.

“When the players first had time off,” San Diego agent Tony Attanasio said, “it was like a vacation for the first five, 10 days. After that, they began to use their minds and imaginations in other things.

“I’ve had guys ask about everything from investing in property to getting involved in boxing exhibitions.”

Said Axelrod: “We all know when players have idle time, they have weird thoughts and different ideas. They can’t go to the clubhouse anymore, so they lost their support-group network, and now they’re bouncing those ideas off their agents.”

The days of players picking up a quick $10,000 are over, too, their agents say. The card-show market has soured, and considering the popularity of baseball, who in their right mind is going to spend big bucks getting players to endorse products?

“This isn’t exactly the best of times,” said San Diego agent John Boggs, who watched possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in endorsements evaporate when the season stopped Padre outfielder Tony Gwynn’s bid for .400. “You just don’t see the big baseball-card shows, and at this juncture, you don’t have the marketing opportunities.

“You can’t take away the fact that Tony won his fifth batting title, but imagine what kind of interest there would have been in Tony if he had made a monthlong run of batting .400.”

So for now, agents simply will have to wait. They may not be in danger of standing in an unemployment line, but surely, there are those wondering if this still is a lucrative business.

“I never thought I’d say this, because I had mixed feelings about it,” Tellem said, “but I’m very thankful now my wife is a hard-charging professional. She’s an executive at Warner Bros., which I’m very thankful for.”

Said Thurman of the Beverly Hills Sports Council: “Right now, I think all of us are too concerned about the players to worry about ourselves. We’re the ones who have to reassure them.

“But what has changed for all of us is the mystery of the unknown. That’s the greatest fear. And that’s not going away.”