The Curious Case of Matt Harrington
Posted: May 12th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 31 Comments »
A brilliant reader mentioned, in reference to agents and the A-Rod case, the tale of Matt Harrington. This immediately made me go back into the archives … and find this story I wrote in The Kansas City Star about Harrington back in 2006.
Consider a baseball fable. Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Matt Harrington, who could throw a baseball 95 mph. Some baseball talent scouts pointed their radar guns at him and calculated that he threw 96 or 97 mph, and a couple registered his fastball at 98 mph.
Radar guns are like that. They disagree like drunks in a bar.
Matt Harrington could throw a baseball hard, and the baseball talent scouts said he also had “good makeup” – meaning he was a sturdy and sensible young man. So Matt was selected by the Colorado Rockies near the top of the 2000 amateur draft. The Rockies liked this young man very much and offered him roughly $4 million. Matt came from a working-class background; his father installed tiles at the bottom of swimming pools and his mother scanned items at a Target store. Four million dollars to the Harringtons seemed fantastic – as such money would seem to most of us – and as unreal as being offered a free ride to Mars.
With the guidance of Matt’s representative, the Harringtons turned down the money. It was not quite enough.
The next season, the baseball talent scouts noticed that Matt Harrington could no longer throw 95 mph. Scouts pointed their radar guns and clocked his fastball at 93 mph or 91. Others said he threw slower than that. He was selected in the second round of the amateur draft by the San Diego Padres, who offered $1.2 million. Following the guidance of Matt’s new representative, the Harringtons turned down the money again.
The next year, Tampa Bay drafted Matt in the 13th round, then the Cincinnati Reds in the 24th, then the New York Yankees in the 36th. Every year the money offers shrunk and shriveled until finally there were no offers at all. Every year the baseball talent scouts saw Matt’s fastball decelerate. Finally, the scouts stopped pointing radar guns at him.
Matt continued to pitch in front of small but vocal crowds in out-of-the-way ballparks. A few drunken fans yelled at him directly; they called him greedy and a fool. They mocked his diminishing fastball and said it served him right. He wanted to jump into the stands after the taunting voices. In time, he stopped hearing the taunts. In more time, the taunts stopped altogether. Fewer and fewer people knew his name.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Matt Harrington, 24 years old, a husband, a father. He played baseball for an independent team called the Fort Worth Cats. He threw unobserved fastballs near the Fort Worth stockyards in the only ballpark in America that had four dugouts. He was paid $800 per month.
So: What is the moral of this little fable?
“I just want to play baseball,” Matt Harrington says.
* * *
Maybe the moral is “Don’t be greedy.” That’s simple enough. Matt Harrington was a high school pitcher who turned down millions to play baseball. What else could the moral be? Harrington’s first roommate with the Cats looked Matt dead in the eyes once and said: “You know I hated your guts.”
“Why?” Matt asked.
“Because I thought you didn’t care about baseball.”
Greed often overreaches itself. That’s what Aesop said. Could the moral be that simple? Maybe not. Saturday, a pitcher named Luke Hochevar signed a large deal with the Kansas City Royals. He had also turned down millions of dollars. He ended up making millions more. So what is the moral of Hochevar’s fable? Greed is good?
“I didn’t care about the money,” Matt Harrington says, and this adds another twist to the story. Matt sits in the stands behind the two dugouts along the first-base line. A hot Texas wind blows. He recaps the story of an 18-year-old kid who came out of Palmdale, Calif., with a great fastball and no idea about the world.
“They were offering $4 million, we wanted $4.95 million. What difference could that have made to me?” he asks. “I wanted to play baseball. I’d been working my whole life to play ball. The money wasn’t even something I could imagine.”
Matt Harrington’s father, Bill, had played some baseball. Bill saw baseball brilliance in his son. So Matt did not take vacations. He did not hang out much with friends. Matt pitched baseballs. He threw a weighted ball. He played long toss. He exercised with pulleys and weights. Matt insists that Bill didn’t push it was their shared dream. It still is their shared dream. Bill is at every Fort Worth Cats game.
“I worked my butt off to get where I was in high school,” Matt says. “I had a gift, sure, but I worked for it.” He was some prospect. He had what the scouts called “the makings” of a dominant slider, and “projectability” and “command beyond his years.” Mostly, he could throw really hard.
“It’s unusual to see someone throw that hard with very little effort,” says Josh Byrnes, now Arizona’s general manager but then in the Rockies’ front office. “That was what caught your eye.”
He was the prize of baseball’s amateur draft in 2000. That is not entirely a blessing. That title – best player in the draft – carries with it the burden of getting as much money as possible up front. Agents call it “fair compensation.” Baseball teams call it “failure money,” as in: “Money he gets even if he fails.”
Matt Harrington’s agent wanted $4.95 million. He felt this was fair compensation. The Colorado Rockies took Matt Harrington with the seventh pick – the first six teams, including the Kansas City Royals, had been scared off by the money demands – and they felt that $4.95 million was too much failure money to spend.
That sort of difference of opinion was common. The rage was not. Insults flew. Threats. Cheap shots. Hurt feelings. There would be lawsuits. Matt did not sign.
“If I have one regret,” Matt says, “it’s that I let people push me around. I didn’t just say, ‘OK, enough of this, I want to play ball.’ I didn’t know that was going to be my chance. I was 18. What did I know?
“The team and my agent were fighting back and forth, and after a while all they cared about was who would win. They forgot that it was supposed to be about me.”
* * *
Maybe the moral is something practical like: “Get yourself an agent you can trust.” But how could you not trust Tommy Tanzer? He had built his agency with heart and sweat and an explosive loyalty. He fought like a cornered bear for his clients. “Sometimes it may be disproportionate,” he says. “But that’s who I am and what I will do for my people. I will go to the wall for them. It might be over 11 cents. But I’ll go to the wall.”
Tanzer had always gotten his clients signed. Always. Then he got Matt Harrington. “The day Matt Harrington hired me was the day I thought, ‘I have arrived,’ ” Tanzer says. “How (bleeping) ironic is that?”
Tanzer insists the Rockies agreed to his $4.95 million demand before the draft. Josh Byrnes insists that is not true. Tanzer insists the Rockies saw the Harrington’s modest home in California and decided to lowball. Byrnes insists that the Rockies made a fair offer. The fight raged in the stadium, to the street, to the mud. And finally, there was too much bad blood. The Rockies and Harrington parted.
“The Harringtons are principled people,” Tanzer says. “And the family was so hurt.”
“When it gets emotional, I don’t think anyone benefits,” Byrnes says. “I think that was one where nobody benefited.”
The next year the Padres took Matt, and Tanzer says now he begged the kid to sign for $1.2 million. He says Matt wanted to go to the independent leagues and show San Diego that he still had the old fastball. Matt remembers it differently; he says Tanzer played with his life, which is why the family fired him and hired Scott Boras. In the end, does it matter? The gap between Tanzer and Matt was filled with lawsuits and settlements.
“Matt’s a good boy – can you be sure to put that in there?” Tanzer says. “He was always a good kid. The Harringtons are good people. They just had a lot of people giving them advice.”
“Would you do it the same way, Tommy?”
“It would be terrible if I looked back on that and said, ‘I would do it exactly the same way.’ The whole point of my life was protecting and defending my people, and I wasn’t able do that for Matt. If I had to do it over again, sure, I’d do it differently.”
“Do you think about it a lot?”
“You know, that was one of the worst things that ever happened to me in my life. It’s without a doubt the worst thing professionally. I don’t feel what happened was solely my responsibility. I know the role that everybody played. But I was there, too. I didn’t find a way to get Matt signed. I’d do things differently. It’s sort of the way I’ve directed my life since then. I haven’t had contact with Matt in a long time. He didn’t need me saying, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ They made their bed. They went with Boras. But I want so much for the kid to get his chance. I do want that. Can you put that in?”
“What’s the moral to this story, Tommy?”
“The moral? I think it’s something like this: Sometimes you have to lay down your weapons. This isn’t the Middle East. Most of the time, you just have to make peace.”
* * *
Maybe the moral is something blunt and cold like: “Don’t lose your fastball.” In the end, isn’t that what cost Matt? Luke Hochevar had nasty negotiations too, he turned down millions too, he went to pitch for the Fort Worth Cats. But his fastball still buzzed. And see: the Royals picked him even higher in the draft and heaped even more money on him. They held a “Welcome Luke!” news conference at the stadium on Saturday.
But Matt’s fastball? Gone.
“When Luke was here, we always had Matt follow him (in the game),” says Dan Smith, a financial adviser by day and Fort Worth’s pitching coach by night. “We figured that way the scouts who were there to see Luke would see Matt too.”
The plan worked, but not how Smith and the Cats had hoped. Thirty radar guns pointed at Hochevar, who lit up the LED panel to the tune of 96 or 98 mph. Then Matt came in. One scout pointed the gun and saw an amazing number: 81. He pointed again and saw an 83. Other scouts saw similar numbers – radar readings that say, in Goodyear-blimp-size letters: “Non-prospect.” And that was that. Hochevar pitched for enthralled scouts, and when Harrington entered, the scouts would stand and walk out the way people do when the credits start to roll at the end of a movie. “It was so sad,” says Art Stewart, the longtime Royals scout.
Where did his fastball go? Nobody knows. There were injuries. Inactivity. But none of that explains the fall. “That velocity is somewhere inside that body,” Smith insists. “If I didn’t love him so much, I would have told him, ‘Look Matt, you’re through.’ But I do love him like a son, and so I said: ‘Let’s keep looking. We’ll find it.’ ”
The search has been going on for four years. Matt was drafted three more times, but he says none of the teams made a serious offer. He says the Yankees came closest, but then he had an injury and that dream ended. Teams have stopped paying attention, and he wants them back now because he says he’s broken through. He’s gone to his old training habits. He has dropped 25 pounds. He is 5-1 with a 2.61 ERA and the league is hitting .175 against him. And he says his velocity is coming back. He can feel it.
“I can just tell I’m throwing harder,” he says, and it sounds like a prayer.
* * *
Maybe the moral is there is no moral. You know: Life ain’t fair, them’s the breaks, no second chances and all that.
“I can’t say I regret what’s happened,” Matt says. “I met my wife here at this ballpark. She came out to a game, and we started talking. If I had signed, that would never have happened. So I can’t say that I regret.”
He still thinks there can be a happily ever after to his fable. He has a plan: Work hard on baseball this offseason, get an invitation to a team and make all those childhood goals happen.
“I know I can do it,” he says. “I’m still young. I’m only 24. I still would like to have a 10- or 15-year career in the major leagues, make the All-Star team, maybe even go to the Hall of Fame.”
“Are you bitter, Matt? About the money?”
“No. I just don’t think about it. If I thought about it, I’d eat myself alive every day. You can’t live like that. I still have a chance.”
Not far away, Dan Smith sits in one of the LaGrave Field dugouts and drinks water. He was once a first-round pick. He signed right away. He moved rapidly through the minor leagues by doing what everybody told him. He made it to the big leagues. And then, when he was 23 years old, he blew out his arm. He was done. It’s a common tale. Baseball has more than its share of heartbreaking stories.
“All it would take would be $1,000 and a team could take a chance on Matt Harrington,” he says. “What would they have to lose? I know he has this reputation as the guy who turned down all that money, but that’s not Matt. He was just a kid. He made a mistake. He listened to the wrong people.”
“Do you think he will get that chance? Scouts say he’s not a prospect.”
“I don’t know. I think so. I hope so. He shows signs of throwing like he did in high school. I think it would be worth that risk for some team – it isn’t even a risk. You know, if I’d gone through everything he went through, I’d be bitter. I’d have walked away from this game a long time ago and cried about what I missed. But he’s still going at it. He’s still pitching. I admire him. I’m telling you, $1,000 and a chance.”
“Will this story have a happy ending?”
“I think it already has a happy ending. He didn’t quit. He kept on going. No matter what happens, that’s a happy ending for Matt.”
“Is that the moral to this story, Dan?”
“I think it is. He didn’t quit. I think it’s the key to every happy ending, isn’t it?”
* * *
Postscript: Shortly after this story came out, Matt Harrington signed with the Chicago Cubs. He did not last through spring training, he went back to Fort Worth and then, after injuring his shoulder, he quit baseball for good. He now works in Costco auto where he changes tires. He is, according to this fine story by Amy Nelson, pretty well adjusted to it all, or anyway better adjusted to it than his father, and that’s how I saw him too.
Matt re-emerged in the news recently … in of all places, England. Ray Ansbro wrote in the Sunday Star this past Sunday a short item — and the lead paragraph more or less sums up the theme: “Can you remember the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Well, don’t worry, Matt Harrington can top it.” Ray wraps up the item like so: “Sportsmen: What God gives them in strength, speed and skill He takes away in brain cells.”
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A very fascinating story about what would probably happen to a lot of us if we were in that situation.
Costco … that’s not too bad. Better off than a lot of people these days. Plus he had the insurance.
It sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders. He will be just fine.
After the first few lines I remembered reading this when you first wrote it in 2006. It makes one think. Thanks for sharing it again and for the post script.
I wish I remembered this (or Amy Nelson’s article which just appeared on ESPN.com) when making my post on your Boras entry (#52)…
Agents are supposed to have their clients best interests at heart, but they don’t always make the best decisions for them…
Sure, guys like Driefort, Park, Drew, etc. make their money and are pleased with their haul whether they perform or not… Wonderful for them… But maybe it’s lost on some of these athletes that there are other things to consider besides the money…
I would bet that most agents whisper in their clients’ ears that money equals respect… And, getting lowballed is a sign of disrespect… They play to an athlete’s ego, and do it well… Ultimately, they are no different than the athlete’s schoolyard buddy who gets dragged along on the ride called professional sports…
Agents equate money with respect, they turn teams and players against each other and ultimately get judged by dollars and years… And they do anything to win…
Honestly, does anyone out there believe that the agents are completely innocent in the whole Selig Era? Seriously? Everyone blames the commissioner, the owners, the players, the players’ association, etc., but who ever blames the agents? They are often closer to their players than the team, and have a stake in their performance…
OK, enough of a rant… Off to Oakes, North Dakota!!!
Aaron Crow needs to read this post. I sort of hope the Nationals draft him again with the #10 pick.
#5: “Everyone blames the commissioner, the owners, the players, the players’ association, etc., but who ever blames the agents?”
That’s a joke, right?
i wonder what will happen with strasburg
At #6– the Nats can’t sign Crow even if they want to. A player has to consent to be redrafted by a team and I’m pretty sure I read Crow did not consent to be redrafted by the Nats.
Me, I’d rather the money go to millionaire kids than billionaire owners (who charge the same ticket prices no matter what they pay their draft picks), especially in a case of a team like the Nationals that got $600 million in public money to build a new (empty) stadium.
James (#7)–No, it’s not really a joke…
How much heat have agents taken for steroids compared to the four groups I’ve mentioned? Real heat–media scrutiny, books, a “report”? Not much that I’ve heard, although I’m open to be proven wrong…
There is no way they didn’t know, and I’d bet some had a hand in helping their clients obtain them… Just a guess…
That coud be a sad story, but Harrington seems to be a wise kid. He respects life and enjoys his family. So it’s not so sad after all. $4 million could have made life easier for his family. But money isn’t everything. And sometimes it allows a person to reach the baser part of their nature. Who knows.
The bottom line is what Mr. Posnanski does best: The story makes you think.
There’s always so much more behind the story… I had a very close friend in high school who went through an incredibly painful experience that unfortunately ended up becoming the subject of several newspaper articles. I remember reading them and thinking that the story, and the person they were written about, sounded worlds away from the person and the story that I knew. It’s so easy to forget that.
Deep breath. I will admit that, as usual, Joe forced me to think about Matt Harrington from a different perspective, but I still don’t get it. Ultimately, the player, and depending on his age, his family, is the employer, and the agent is the employee. What this piece does not address is what actually happened when the Rockies dug in their heels at FOUR MILLION DOLLARS? Was it the agent who advised Matt and his family to ignore the money, that there was a bigger pot of gold at the end of next year’s rainbow? Does anyone doubt he was thinking about his cut being a little fatter a year later? What was his parents’involvement? Who ultimately made the decision to turn down big money, TWICE, and why?
The agent’s excuse, that the team decided to “lowball” his client when the Rockies saw the kid’s house, seems staggeringly dishonest. A counteroffer of more than eighty percent of the asking price, of $4 million to a $4.95 million dollar demand, is simply not a lowball offer. For context, did the Rockies start at $4 million or actually begin by offering less than market value then work their way to that figure?
This story reminds me of a Boras-like trial lawyer acquaintance who talked his clients into trying their case to a jury instead of taking a seven figure settlement offer made before trial.
The jury returned a verdict in favor of of the defendant. Care to guess who was sued then?
Does anyone know what the first six draft picks signed for that year?
I could almost feel sorry for the kid, but…
“They were offering $4 million, we wanted $4.95 million. What difference could that have made to me? I wanted to play baseball. I’d been working my whole life to play ball. The money wasn’t even something I could imagine.â€
You’re going to fight and claw and battle over that? If the kid didn’t care about money then he should have just signed. Baseball needs to regulate agents and get them to represent clients ethically. The athletes are always the ones who end up looking bad and losing out on money. I’m sure his agent just shrugged it off and moved on to his next client.
Break in topic: greatest no. 33
I realize Bird has a mystique about him that Abdul-Jabbar does not. People remember the old Kareem in the 80s with his goggles, very little hair, sometimes getting pushed around, not rebounding as a dominating center would. But that’s in his second half of his career. Bird played 13 seasons, and if you compare KAJ’s first 13 seasons, this is how they stack up:
Kareem 27.8 ppg, 13.7 rpg, 4.3 apg, 1.1 stls, 3.3 blks, 55.8 FG%
Bird 24.3 ppg, 10 rpg, 6.3, 1.7 stls, 0.8 blks, 49.6%
In those first 13 years, Bird won 3 MVPs, Kareem won 6–SIX! Bird won three titles with a stacked Celtics team, Kareem also won three titles: one with an old Oscar Robertson at the Bucks, and two more with a stacked Lakers team. In these 13 years, Kareem’s PER at 26.5 is measurably higher than Bird’s 23.5, and Kareem played more games, more minutes.
Of course, KAJ also played 7 additional seasons. So he pushed his scoring and rebounding edge on Bird to:
16596 points (that’s more than James Worthy or Joe Dumars scored in their careers)
8466 rebounds (more than Willis Reed, Chris Webber, Bob McAdoo, etc.)
Now you could say those were just “padding” stats for this conversation, and it’s true those 7 seasons represented his decline. But his career average with those additional seasons is still at 24.6 ppg, 11.2 rpg, 3.6 apg, with 55.9 FG%, and a 24.6 PER.
So what we have in Kareem is a guy whose career averages look comparable to Bird’s, might have had a higher individual peak, won 3 extra MVPs, won 3 extra titles, has career totals that dwarf Bird, and even has more accolades for his much maligned defense (11 all NBA defensive team honors to 3). And as great as Bird was in college, KAJ would probably be the concensus pick for greatest college player of all time.
No disrespect to Bird, whom I would rank as one of the 6 or 7 greatest players ever, but I cannot see a legitimate reason to rank him ahead of Mr. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was a titan of basketball, and people seem to forget this.
[...] The Curious Case of Matt Harrington » Joe Posnanski [...]
Best. Sportswriter. In America.
That is all.
Maybe if he had signed he would have gotten professional coaching/training through the minor league system and his fast ball wouldn’t have been lost. OR maybe he should have thought about college, who wouldn’t have given him a full ride scholarship? All hindsight now I guess. Now he is like the rest of us-trying to figure out what to do when they grow up!
I am continually baffled by the general confusion and anger generated by adversarial systems such as MBL player v owner, and the massive disproportion of that anger directed at agents.
Throwing everything else out, baseball is an employer/employee system that has rules hugely slanted towards the employer, so much so that it takes an Act of Congress, literally, for them to continue. How many of us work in industries that allow the employers to unilaterally select who will work for them, and then restrict those selected from shopping their skills to any other employer in their industry for a period of several years? But only if you are an American citizen, if you are from another country, you can work for an employer you choose.
Under such a system, the US employee player has only one negotiating tactic available: Withhold his labor for a year in return for more money. He can’t go work at the company across the street, he can only choose not to work for a year and then submit himself to the same process again. He can only work for what is offered, or not work. To make things more confusing, if he determines he wishes to work, he often signs a multi-year contract and submits himself to a ridiculously confusing system of salary, arbitration awards, minor leagues, etc.
Is it any wonder that confronted with this complex employment situation, most employees seek a expert to serve as their advocate? That expert’s goal is, generally, to maximize the return the employee can get over his career. Problem: That could be 5 minutes of career or 20 years, and a large percentage of future pay will be determined by performance, and the opportunity to perform will largely be in the hands of the employer, who might choose to give you really bad work assignments for several years.
Think about this: What if a Matt Harrington-like player signed a deal because he “just wanted to play ball” that was for 200K, when withholding his services for awhile might have gotten him 1 million, and then he promptly lost 5 mph on his fastball, got injured, and never played again? Most of us don’t have to face situations like this, and we are really bad at considering the risks and rewards of various courses of action.
With this as the background, I am just stunned that most people think that agents are the problem, a problem, or anything else. If any of us worked in an industry like this, we would call it communism, stomp our feet and whine like hell.
Jeff, I am not sure I follow. I do not take agents in general to task; they generally serve a useful purpose, and earn their money. In Matt Harrington’s case, the agent comes across as grasping at straws to account for his advice to the family. I limit my critism to him alone, and perhaps only in his advice to Matt Harrington. In this, the agent was “really (stunningly!)bad at considering the risks and rewards of various courses of action.”
“What if a Matt Harrington-like player signed a deal because he “just wanted to play ball†that was for 200K, when withholding his services for awhile might have gotten him 1 million, and then he promptly lost 5 mph on his fastball, got injured, and never played again?”
Actually, Matt Harrington at one point collected on a seven-figure “loss of ability” policy his family had taken with Lloyd’s, but assume he did not. Isn’t the answer that he would be exactly $200,000 better off than he is today?
edit: “criticism” for “critism”
The problem with baseball drafting, and especially drafting pitchers, is the risk. If you wind up spending too much money on the Matt Harringtons, you won’t keep your job long enough to draft Alex Rodriguez.
Now maybe I’m just weird (okay, no maybe) but as a professional computer game maker, my thinking is like this:
Rockies: We’ll give you $4M.
Harrington: I want $4.95M.
Rockies: We can’t risk that much on a high school pitcher.
Harrington: Okay, lets work it like this. You give me a $2M signing bonus, half of what you want to pay me. And the contract has in it that I get a $700,000 bonus for each promotion I earn: low A (from Rookie League), high A, double A, triple A, majors. One day on the roster at the next level (and if I skip a level, the skipped level gets paid too) qualifies me for the bonus. If I make it to the major leagues, you wind up paying me (and my agent) a little more, although you save some float (maybe several years of float).* But if I wash out, you wind up paying me less, maybe much less.
* And if there’s mistrust, make half of the bonus payable by the original team no matter which teach owns Harrington when he makes a level. It’s the same as a player being cut and then his old team paying most of his salary after he signs for the minimum somewhere else. Yes, some other nasty team might sign a bonus baby and promote him just to cost you some money. But what goes around comes around. And you can put in a clause like the original bonus baby clauses that if you promote a bonus baby you must keep him on the roster at that level the entire season. It isn’t rocket science.
It would work similarly for the Luke Hochevars. Say he wanted $8M (I don’t remember how much he wanted). Pay him $3M up front, and $600K/promotion, and $2M extra for his first day on the 25 man roster. The team limits its risk, Hochevar gets his full amount (or maybe a smidge more) if he makes it to the majors, win win all around.
The problem (IMO) is that everybody wants to win the negotiation. The agent won’t get paid based on that bonus unless the kid earns his way to the majors. The team will take the $2M as the new starting figure. Hardball ensues, and both sides lose.
Geeze, maybe I should become an agent
. Or an arbitrator.
Ray Ansbro’s a jerk. He’s sadly not unique amongst his colleagues, but I can’t help but wonder what he could have been had he not done something ill-advised along the way?
Reporters: What God gives them in arrogance,…well, you know the rest.
Thank you, Joe, for showing them what they could be.
Best. Sportswriter. In America. Seconded.
Kirk #15 –
Agree with you 100%; couldn’t have said it better.
If you need things to add (not that you do), there is Lew Alcindor (pre-name change) at Power Memorial HS, where they had a 71-game winning streak and an overall record of 79-2; the freshman UCLA team (with him) beating the defending NCAA champion varsity UCLA team in the first-ever game at Pauley Pavilion, 75-60; the no-dunks rule enacted primarily (if not solely) to hamper his game; and the “Game of the Century” that pretty much made college basketball a national sport.
Isiah Thomas notwithstanding, Larry Bird was one of the greatest players in NBA history. Nevertheless, he is only the 2nd-best #33 in the poll.
[...] thing. Oh, it’s not a rational reaction. Just because I have reverse-sugarplum nightmares of Matt Harrington, doesn’t mean that Crow’s path is indicative of a prospect who’s more likely to [...]
And Boras apparently wants $50 million for Stephen Strasberg, who wasn’t even drafted out of high school three years ago. Um, um — better take the $12 million of $15 million that is offered Strasberg and read about Todd Van Poppel, David Clyde and our boy Harrington!
I am surprised no one has mentioned the obvious…he has a huge fastball in high school (no steroid testing) and then sits out the year MLB starts testing and THEN goes to minor leagues and loses his fastball???
Isn’t this a legitimate question? I just find it strange how he loses 10 miles off a fastball in one year as a kid.
I feel bad for the kid and I hate these agents for what they did to him but….
Doesn’t anyone question his insane decline in speed?
I guess we don’t have baseball people here.
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Curious Case of Matt HarringtonA brilliant reader mentioned, in reference to agents and the A-Rod case, the tale of Matt Harrington. This immediately made me go back into the archives … and find this story I wrote in The Kansas City Star about Harrington back in 2006 …Read More [...]
wat a douche…aha
thats wat he gets…
[...] Meanwhile, the Royals are waiting for Crow’s side to say, hey, $3 million (or $2.5 million, or $3.25 million, or…whatever) is a lifetime worth of wealth and this is an organization we’re comfortable with, and who are we kidding? There’s no way we want to sit out another year, delay our big league debut and potential free agency two years and risk becoming the next Matt Harrington. [...]
I’m not a baseball expert but I had a friend who played for the Cats & I met Matt. This was in 2004, when he still had prospects. He is a genuinely nice guy. One of his teammates explained to me that his contract with his agent did not allow him to sign with a team without his agent’s consent. And that since then, he actually won a lawsuit against the agent for lost wages. I do know in lawsuits of this type, you often can’t comment on them. So Matt & his family probably couldn’t mention this in these articles. But I hate to see the ESPN article put such a negative spin on a great guy.