License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent [Hardcover]

Jerry Crasnick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2005

The movie Jerry Maguire and HBO series Arli$$ barely skimmed the surface. Now the true inside story of the sports agent business is exposed as never before.

During baseball's evolution from national pastime to a $3.6 billion business, the game's agents have played a pivotal role in driving and (some might say) ruining the sport. In a world of unchecked egos and minimal regulation, client-stealing and financial inducements have become commonplace, leading many to label the field a cesspool, devoid of loyalties and filled with predators.

Matt Sosnick entered these shark-infested waters in 1997, leaving a job as CEO of a San Francisco high-tech company to represent ballplayers--and hoping to do so while keeping his romantic love of baseball and his integrity intact. License to Deal follows Sosnick as he deals with his up-and-coming clients (his most famous is the 2003 rookie-of-the-year pitching sensation Dontrelle Willis). We become privy to never-before-disclosed stories behind the rise of baseball's most powerful agent, Scott Boras. And we get a novel perspective on the art of the deal and the economics of baseball.

By one of baseball's most respected sportswriters, who is now ESPN.com's lead Insider baseball reporter, License to Deal, like Michael Lewis's bestselling Moneyball, will provide fuel for many a heated baseball discussion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Matt Sosnick co-runs a small California agency representing nine major league baseball players, including All-Star pitcher Dontrelle Willis. Crasnick, a baseball writer for ESPN.com, spent months at Sosnick's side, watching him work with clients and try to sign up new prospects. This in-depth profile is especially good at capturing the earnest but earthy young agent's contradictions: he feels so strongly about integrity that he can complain that a competitor's luring away of a player "doesn't add to the goodness or the kindness of the world," yet he plots pragmatically to pry loose some talent for his own roster. The story loses some focus when Crasnick elects to broaden the perspective, abandoning Sosnick and his players to check out the competition, including super-agent Scott Boras. But these outside views prove helpful, rounding out Sosnick's portrait to show the less flattering light in which others see him. The success of Michael Lewis's Moneyball has aroused interest in the behind-the-scenes financial maneuvers that decide who gets to play, and while this sympathetic look at the frequently maligned role of the agent can't quite match its predecessor's vitality, it should still attract moderate attention. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Dontrelle Willis, an early-season favorite to win the National League Cy Young Award with the Florida Marlins, has a tattoo of the logo of his agents' company on his arm. License to Deal is the story of what those agents, Matt Sosnick and Paul Cobbe, have done to earn the support of Willis and their other clients. ESPN writer Jerry Crasnick, who accompanied Sosnick and Cobbe over the course of a year, paints a portrait of the sports-agent business that is fascinating but far from pretty. There's the monumental investment of time and money the agents pour into wooing potential clients around the country; the constant care and feeding of signees (from the scene of a serious accident in early 2003, Willis' first call was to Sosnick); and the brutal competition from larger, more glamorous agents (like Scott Boras), who regularly make off with the players of smaller agents like Sosnick and Cobbe. An excellent account of a critical but rarely explained component of major league baseball. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; 1ST edition (May 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594860246
• ISBN-13: 978-1594860249
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #363,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Original, June 5, 2005

By 

Tommy Henrich "Old Reliable" - See all my reviews

This review is from: License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent (Hardcover)

This book is a wonderful read for any baseball fan who wants to learn of the intricacies of the business. However, it is much more than that. It is a novelistic portrait of a fascinating, Gatsby-esque character, the young baseball agent, Matt Sosnik. It describes his struggles to succeed while retaining his integrity and his basic human qualities, his capacity for honesty and true friendship in a cutthroat world. It is a wonderfully drawn portrait of the unlikely friendship between Matt, a white, Jewish, introspective entrepreneur and Dontrelle Willis, a black, gifted pitching prodigy. We come to understand the way each influences the other and along the way we get to see how frequently basic human relationships are undermined by the quest for fame and fortune. Yet in the end the Sosnik-Willis relationship seems to remain strong. The book is also novelistic in the way we see the central character, Sosnik, maturing as he struggles with his own inner demons. Crasnik has written an engrossing, often funny account of people we come to care for deeply.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Job that Looks Very Glamorous, June 8, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent (Hardcover)

After the movie Jarry Maguire the role of the sports agent became famous even though the movie was pure fiction. In reality, this is a business anyone can enter. There are no licensensing or special educational requirements.

In reality though, it isn't all that easy. How do you get started? How do you first find a promising young star and second, convince him that you can do as good a job as one of the bigger, much better known agencies? How do you even go about convincing the young athelete that you can do a better job for him than he can do for himself, and save your fees?

This is the story of Matt Sosnick, a west coast businessman who decides to change his career from the high tech industry to being a sports agent. For several months the author a baseball insider worked with Mr. Sosnick, watching, following him around the country to provide the first real insiders view of the glamorous world of the sports agent. After reading the book, you come to believe that it's not so glamerous after all. It looks like a lot of hard work.

Filled with insider details, this is a very interesting book.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great topic, mediocre writing = a fascinating book, October 26, 2005

By 

Tim LBC (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent (Hardcover)

Despite the fact that the book seems quickly written and is organized rather poorly, Jerry Crasnick offers a fascinating study of the sports agent's life. "License to Deal" causes one to root for the up-and-coming agents and against the behemoths, like Scott Boras, that control so many of the top free agents in baseball.

After reading the book, I have a new understanding of the business behind baseball and the battle for new prospects still developing in the farm systems and high schools. In recent months, Sosnick was in the L.A. media surrounding the signing of Luke Hochevar, the Dodgers' top pick this year. Hochevar's negotiations with the Dodgers were strained when he switched from Matt Sosnick's agency to Scott Boras in mid stream. (See the excellent article in "Baseball America" by John Manuel and Kevin Goldstein on September 9, 2005.)

I highly recommend this book for its fascinating portrayal of Matt Sosnick and his agency.