A few days after he negotiated the largest deal for an athlete in North America, Giancarlo Stanton’s 13-year, $325 million contract with the Miami Marlins, agent Joel Wolfe was doing what he normally does: sitting in Los Angeles traffic.
“I am just happy that the kid is happy,” said Wolfe, Wasserman Media Group executive vice president of baseball, by telephone from his car, stuck on a Los Angeles freeway. “That is my job — to take care of him.”
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WOLFE
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Wolfe has represented Stanton since 2008, and the deal he negotiated for him last month is a record in guaranteed dollars — all $325 million of it is guaranteed — as well as for the length of the deal. The record in baseball had been 10 years.
Wolfe said he is glad for all players that the record has moved higher, but sports records are made to be broken, he noted, adding that he hopes this one will be, too.
As for how it has changed his life, it hasn’t, Wolfe said. “It’s just business as usual.”
When Wolfe says that, he means it, said Golden State Warriors general manager Bob Myers, who worked side by side with Wolfe for years as an NBA agent in Wasserman’s Los Angeles office. “That he is connected to the biggest deal in North America doesn’t change him,” Myers said. “It really doesn’t.”
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Giancarlo Stanton signed a 13-year, $325M contract last month with the Miami Marlins.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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Myers and Wolfe grew up in the sports business together, working for agent Arn Tellem first at Tellem & Associates, then at SFX Sports, and later at Wasserman. Both went to UCLA, where Myers played basketball and Wolfe played baseball. While Myers never played professionally, Wolfe did, selected No. 99 overall in the third round of the 1991 draft by the Oakland A’s. Tellem was his agent, and after Wolfe played six years in the minors he took up his agent’s offer to learn the business from him.
Tellem hired Wolfe in 1997 and Myers in 1998. Both of them worked in the same office in the daytime, learning the agent business, and attended law school at night.
Myers left Wasserman in 2011 to join the Warriors, but he and Wolfe stayed in touch, and as the news of Stanton’s record deal was breaking, Myers was texting him jokes.
“I said, ‘Now you can buy an NBA team and I will come work for you,’” Myers said.
Humor aside, Myers said he counts Wolfe as one of his best friends. “We let the career define us in how we are perceived in society,” Myers said. “But the best thing I can say about Joel is who he is. He is one of my favorite people because of who he is, his character, his humility.”
Tellem, who is now Wasserman Media Group vice chairman, echoed Myers’ description of Wolfe, describing him as “dedicated, reliable, unfailingly polite and a man of his word.”
Although the Stanton deal won’t change Wolfe, Tellem says, it establishes him as “one of the most masterful agents in the sport.” Tellem said the Stanton deal is significant not only in the length of it and the guaranteed dollars, but because, at the same time, it gives the player control, as it contains a no-trade clause and a player opt-out, which Stanton may choose to trigger when he is 31.
The deal has been criticized by some because it is not a record average annual value and it is back-loaded.
But Wolfe says, “It is not an AAV deal. It’s a total dollars deal.” Stanton could have done a shorter deal with a higher AAV, but he wanted a lifetime deal, Wolfe said.
Wolfe described Stanton as “a very, very thoughtful person,” adding that the big money couldn’t have gone to a nicer person.
“He wants to do some good with it, some charitable good,” Wolfe said. “He cares a lot about underprivileged kids and he cares a lot about animals.”
Wolfe, meanwhile, will keep fighting the Los Angeles traffic and working for his clients, the same as before the record contract.
“Of all the things I would choose to be famous for, this would be last on my list,” he said.
