Scott Boras Gave Teams 118-Page Handbooks About Bryce Harper When Their Meetings Ended
LAS VEGAS —
The meetings have lasted anywhere from five to 10 hours, with teams presented a parting gift in the way of agent Scott Boras’ 118-page handbook, telling you everything you want to know about Harper and more. You want the numbers assuring you that he’s a future Hall of Famer, a modern-day Mickey Mantle, and on a collision course with greatness?
You want to see comparisons of Harper to NBA icon LeBron James?
You want to see if Harper can really be worth $1 billion to your franchise?
It’s all right here, cover to cover, with research starting two years ago when Boras was already preparing to make him the highest-paid athlete in North American team sports history.
“My goal in this thing is to let teams know what they’re getting,” Boras tells USA TODAY Sports, “that’s why we brought in the LeBron comparisons. A lot of people don’t know what he’s done by the age of 25, and how that compares to what LeBron James did at 25. You get a very clear path on how hard it is to achieve a standard of excellence in an arena where you’re both No. 1 picks, both rookies of year, both MVPs, and set a standard that no one can meet.
Hand up, I’m not the best reader in the world. I usually draw the line at one of Francis’ blogs in terms of how much I can read without being distracted by my phone. The downfall of most of my standardized tests in school were the reading comprehension parts because the stories were so boring and long that I would lose interest and take complete guesses on the questions based off the first paragraph (not a good strategy shockingly).
If somebody hands me 118 pages of anything I’m going to pass. What could possibly be in this handbook? Bryce Harper is awesome and for sure a generational talent, but if Scott Boras thinks I’m reading 118 pages on his guy just to know his comparisons with LeBron James if they were playing in 40 degree weather in the rain I’m not doing it. I got nauseous at just the thought of reading 118 pages. I care about you Bryce no doubt about it, but I don’t care about my own family members enough to read this much. Good thing for interns. I’m sure Cashman and other GMs had their assistants and interns dissect this bad boy and pull all of the “valuable” information from it.
There’s a little piece of me that thinks Boras hid a clue in the middle of this just to prove teams read it. We’ve all taken those tests in elementary school where it says read ALL the directions before answering the questions and in the directions it says don’t answer any questions. There was always one kid who took the whole test like an idiot. I would guess the Mets fuck this part up and eliminate themselves from the sweepstakes before they even begin.
I definitely WAS NOT this person in school. Nope. Couldn’t be me.
Prediction: He goes to LA