Agents: you either love them (if you’re a player) or you hate them (basically everyone else).  Ask most sports fans to describe a typical agent and they will provide a caricature of a shameless, greedy shyster who gets inside the player’s head and makes him move to a club they don’t really want to go to.  This is particularly the case in football where a new team means a lucrative new contract, on improved financial terms, and a ten per cent cut of the sizeable transfer fee.  The players are merely the pawns in the agent’s money-making game.

As with any caricature, this combines elements of truth with some unfair fantasy.  Continue reading →

Picture the scene: there are twenty-nine General Managers sitting on the riverbank, fishing rods dangling into the water below.  Some have modest objectives and are hoping for a few small fish to tide them over.  Others have great expectations of landing a monster and visions of walking away at the end of the day with the others glancing at them enviously.

And then Brian Cashman comes along.  He sits down in the prime position on the river, sets up the flashiest fishing equipment on the row, casts away and lands himself the most desirable fish known to be in the water.  The others sit there demoralised, only for Cashman to put his Great CC to one side, cast again and land yet another big fish in A.J. Burnett. 

The fishing competition isn’t quite over, but the Yanks have an unassailable lead.  Continue reading →

The global economic crisis has bypassed the Sabathia household.  A potential seven year/ $161m deal with the Yankees is on the table waiting to be signed and all that stands between CC and a fitting session for some new pinstripe clothing is a medical.  After a month or more of being told (not directly by the man himself, it should be added) that the standout pitcher preferred to play on the west coast and in the National League, he has ended up on the east coast playing in the junior circuit.  The Yanks’ offer was just too good to turn down.  Continue reading →