Sports Agent and Sports Lawyer Blog

Sports agents can be easy targets sometimes, because the bad apples in the industry get an undue amount of attention. Sometimes, however, people go too far in impugning sports agent.

See if you can follow this saga of a potential problem with a sports agency. A major league ballplayer fires his agent. The cops are investigating a former employee of the agency for stealing money from the player. Somehow, a sports writer links this alleged theft with an entirely separate lawsuit filed against this sports agency.

Got all that? Me neither. Let’s see if we can sort out this scenario and figure out the preposterous implication made by this sports writer, a former lawyer who usually does outstanding work in my opinion. Last month, Angels first baseman Kendry Morales fired Hendricks Sports Management. Last week, the news was reported that an employee of Hendricks is being investigated by Coral Springs police for the disappearance of more than $300,000 from Morales’ bank account. Sounds like a fiasco, right? Clearly, the authorities will sort out whether money was stolen, and if it was, the responsible parties will face criminal charges.

The next part is what makes no sense. In December, heralded Cuban prospect Aroldis Chapman switched agents from a relative unknown to Hendricks. He then signed a 10-year, $30.25 million contract with the Cincinnati Reds. His former agent, the relatively unknown Athletes Premier International, sued Hendricks as a result of Chapman’s switch. Somehow, the writer links Chapman's choice to retain Hendricks with the alleged criminal actions by a Hendricks employee.

I cannot figure out what the alleged criminal activity by the apparently rogue employee has to do with Chapman’s switch. A Hendricks employee allegedly stole money from a client. A player switched from another agent to Hendricks, spurring a lawsuit from the old agent. How are these things an indication that a player should not sign with Hendricks. The Hendricks brothers have been around for decades so they do not need this blog to defend them, but it seems to me that their name is being unnecessarily dragged through the mud.

When Aroldis Chapman’s former sports agent sued his new agent this week, the lawsuit threatened to put the entire system of sports law and sports agent representation on trial. I mean this in a literal and figurative sense – the unsavory practices of the business of sports agents may be brought to light publicly, as well as in the courtroom.

The facts of the lawsuit are undisputed. Chapman, a recent Cuban defector who is considered a sure-fire superstar, signed with Athletes Premier International and Edwin Mejia after his defection. He became disenchanted, and subsequently signed with a more established agency, Hendricks Sports Management. So API and Mejia sued Hendricks, alleging tortious interference with their business relationship and also unjust enrichment.

This article from the Associated Press contains a hint that if this matter goes all the way to trial and up the chain of appellate courts in Massachusetts, the entire realm of player representation could be on trial:

Stealing clients is a longtime and lucrative practice among some sports agents, who can earn up to 5 percent of salaries reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is probably an accurate statement that most people who aren’t in the sports law or sports agent business don’t understand or don’t realize. A former college baseball teammate of mine who is now a high-ranking executive in the front office of an American League team told me that it happens every day in baseball and he has never seen such a switch result in litigation. Sports law experts apparently agree, as the article notes:

"Generally speaking, players can change agents at their discretion," said Michael McCann, a sports law professor at the Vermont Law School. "There is certainly evidence of agents poaching clients (in cases) that don't result in litigation. Maybe it's unethical; maybe it's wrong; but it happens."

In most industries, if you sign a contract, you are bound by the contract. As we blogged earlier, it’s not always that way among college coaches. Still, that does not mean that an athlete, coach or even an agent should give up his right to pursue justice because standard business practice in his industry involves breaching contract. While the industry may view contracts as not worth the paper they are printed on, courts will often see things differently. Anyone who thinks he has suffered damages from a breached contract or because a competitor has interfered with his work should consult a qualified sports lawyer for legal advice.

Here is a story which is important for sports lawyers to monitor in light of the recent Louisville Slugger baseball bat verdict. A Massachusetts youth baseball league has decided to return to using metal bats after an eight-year run of using only wood bats.

The father of the child who was severely injured by a ball hit off a metal bat was shocked and angered by the move:

“[Aluminum] bats hit the ball harder, so those kids are in greater peril,’’ said Richard Hughto, an environmental consultant from Wellesley. “They’re deciding to put some kids in danger so some kids can get more hits . . . [With aluminum bats,] players will hit the ball more often and the good hitters will hit it that much harder’’ toward the pitcher’s mound, which is 46 feet from home plate as opposed to 60.5 feet from home in professional baseball.

The safety of baseball equipment is an issue which Sports Agent Lawyer Blog will continue to monitor, as it heavily impacts the field of sports law.

Sports lawyers in Taiwan must be having a field day with the most recent allegations of game-fixing and gambling. According to the article, a team has cut two players, and now plans to sue them for their role in the baseball game-fixing scam.

Apparently, this is not just an instance of a few rogue players going too far with a gambling scheme. The saga gets even murkier, according to the article:

Prosecutors yesterday summoned three additional Bears players — pitcher Hsu Wen-hsiung and outfielders Huang Hsiao-wei and Chiang Chih-tsung — as defendants for playing fake games for money.

Playing fake games for money? I’m curious as to what exactly constitutes a “fake game”? This is an intriguing legal saga that bears watching, not only for the fact that it sounds like something out of a bad movie. It's also important for sports agents in this country to monitor stories like this. The last thing an agent wants to do is send his client overseas to play in Taiwan only to find out that the entire league is embroiled in a massive scandal which makes it a miserable place to play baseball.

Typically when a baseball agent is released from prison, it is not necessarily a time to celebrate. The case of Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, a sports agent imprisoned in Cuba for the past 13 ½ years, is different. I am not sure that we can lump Nodar into the category of disgraced sports agents.

The fact that he was imprisoned in after a trial in Cuba which does raises some doubts as to his actual guilt. He allegedly helped Cuban baseball players defect to the United States. Another noted sports agent, Joe Cubas, said that Nodar was made an example by the Cuban government.

``We had half the Cuban Olympic team ready to defect at a tournament in Mexico'' in 1996, Cronin told El Nuevo Herald in a telephone chat as he boarded a plane for Miami so that he could meet Hernández Nodar upon his arrival. ``But the government made a lesson out of Juan Ignacio and El Duque, and everything went cool.''

I personally do not know whether Nodar would have been convicted in an American court, although it seems doubtful.

Does the baseball bat verdict alter the way pro and amateur baseball is played?

When a jury in Helena, Montana ruled in favor of the estate of a baseball player killed when he was hit by a line drive from a metal bat, the entire baseball community took notice. Immediately, one had to wonder about the future of metal bats in amateur baseball. Almost all amateur teams use metal bats for the simple reason that they do not break, which means that they are more cost effective than wood bats.

It has always been common knowledge that balls hit off metal bats travel significantly faster than balls hit of wood bats. The Helena case did not necessarily signify the final out for metal bats; the actual verdict showed that the bat maker was negligent for its failure to properly warn that its bats were dangerous. So what are the implications of this ruling? If bat makers imprint a warning on each bat, would that be significant to evade any future adverse verdicts?

Only time will tell. It is important to note that change may be a virtual certainty, at least at some point down the road, because this is not a new problem. According to this entry in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, people inside Louisville Slugger were aware of the problem going back more than a decade, and probably longer.

As an attorney who handles lawsuits exactly like this one, in which there is a terrible tragedy which was a rare occurrence (in the substantial majority of the other people engaging in this activity do not suffer in this way), I think this lawsuit had merit, and this is not an instance of a runaway jury or an absurd verdict which highlights the problems with our judicial system. The fact that the jury did not find the bat defective probably meant that the impact of this verdict will be somewhat limited, in that it will not force the entire amateur baseball world to switch back to wood bats.

For more information on sports or baseball lawsuits, contact sports law firm Koch & Trushin, P.A.

Baseball scouting in the Dominican Republic is a well-documented problem these days, as a few high profile players have been caught misleading their teams about their age. Now, a Dominican Republic court has ordered the Washington Nationals to pay about $75,000 in damages to former scout Jose Baez who was fired after signing a Dominican prospect who lied about his age.

As usual, ESPN The Magazine’s Jorge Arangure Jr., is all over the story (he is one of the only top-level American journalists covering the inner workings of baseball in Latin America). Based on Arangure’s summary of the testimony, the reason Baez was fired was because he was believed to have participated in the player’s scheme to lie about his age.

Bottom line here: This is just another sordid chapter in MLB’s decades-long mismanagement of baseball in the Dominican Republic. Change is inevitable, but there is no agreement on the best way to reform the system. While some people call for a global draft as the panacea to solve these problems, there are numerous reasons not to have a worldwide draft, such as the inevitable destruction of local baseball (see Puerto Rico for an example). My proposed solution is for MLB teams to invent a new classification, which would be below the current “Rookie League” level, and play two or three teams in established leagues. Those who succeed would eventually be promoted to Rookie League or low Class-A teams in the U.S. As they would be taking kids as young as 16, the teams would be charged with educating the kids and keeping them until they age out of the system a couple of years later.