Posted on 11/17/2007 6:51:45 PM PST by STARWISE
Investment king Warren Buffett gave A-Rod the push to crawl back in late October.
Days after contract talks broke off with the Yankees, a distraught and humbled Alex Rodriguez took the advice of his pal, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, on how to get back into the team's good graces: Kick his agent to the curb.
After speaking with Buffett, and then using two Goldman Sachs money men as go-betweens, the slugger, hat in hand and without agent Scott Boras, flew to Tampa last week to meet with Yankees bosses Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"I don't know why, maybe he was shy about calling back," Hank Steinbrennertold The Post, when asked why Rodriguez did not approach the team directly. "There were mistakes made by his agent."
Facing public backlash for thumbing his nose at previous Yankees offers, the third baseman dialed his financier friend in late October to figure out how he could re-enter talks with his old team, according to the Journal.
Buffet told him to approach the team without his contentious agent.
"A-Rod really loves being a Yankee," the investor guru told the Journal, declining to comment further on his conversation with the slugger.
Rodriguez and Buffett, an avid baseball fan, have been friends for years. The two met when the slugger flew out to Omaha to meet with the financial whiz. Since then, they've met socially for years, and an autographed A-Rod jersey reportedly hangs in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway headquarters.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
A-Rod panicked when he realized that no one would pay him the insane amounts of money he wanted, other than the Yankees.
He had no choice but to return, whether he really wanted to or not.
Related thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1927280/posts
Ya know, it is hard to fathom being worth 40-50 billion.
You can pretty much push anybody around. Too bad Warren is a f’ing lib.
Absolutely.
Next to Barry Bonds*, Scott Boras is the worst thing that ever happened to baseball.
I know .. what the Yankees are spending
on just Posada, Rivera and A-Rod is
breathtaking.
Just reading on Wikipedia (if it’s
accurate) what Boras has negotiated
for his players. Stratospheric ..shame
that that’s the biz I guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Boras
As a lifelong Red Sox fan I was really hoping we’d offer him $350 million for 10 years.
[that’s SARCASM folks!!!]
Obviously with the numbers he puts up the guy is worth a lot to any team, but not as much as Boras though....... but on the other hand the Yankees with A-Rod and their $180 (?) million payroll have not been able to win (or get to) the World Series in 4 years, so a team might well be a lot better off having 3 or more really good stars (at $8-10 mill. per year or less) than one uber-mega-maxi-SUPERSTAR like A-Rod for $27-30 mill.
Did you encourage A-ROD to pay lot and lots and lots of $$$$$ in taxes.
LOL..
>>.. what the Yankees are spending
on just Posada, Rivera and A-Rod is
breathtaking.
bumper sticker seen often in New England:
George Steinbrenner RUINED baseball
Though in recent years, the spending spree hasn’t
necessarily meant a team like the Yanks can go all the way.
How about the year they got beaten in the WS by the
low-spending Marlins? (Though big spenders usually do
pretty well, at least GETTING to the playoffs, and
my Red Sox have done their share as well.)
Red Sox fans can laugh about Boras, etc., but keep
in mind he’s the agent who has gotten contracts
for Varitek and Dice-K (though in the latter’s
case it involved paying $51 million “just to talk”
with the Japanese team)
From the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo (a subsidiary of the New York Times): “Johnny Damon made the call on Alex Rodriguez returning to the Yankees at the general managers’ meetings (4-9 Nov). A little inside info? (He also has Scott Boras as an agent)”
Boras is shrewd. Boras was thoroughly involved with A-Fraud negotiating directly with the Skanks. He simply was not present for the meetings.
I think its funny that A-Fraud (and Boras) found out that nobody else was all that interested in his team-destroying act. I, for one, am glad he will keep the Curse of the A-Rod in New York.
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