Interviews With Joe Rosen And Jeff Frye

In the past few weeks, hotstove.com has had a couple of agents on its Hot Stove TV column.  One is Joe Rosen of Orpheus Sports and the other is Jeff Frye of Franklin-Frye Sports.

Joe Rosen’s big client is Hideki Okajima.  It doesn’t hurt that he is based in Boston (allows for a lot of face-time with his major client).  Rosen started out as a Corporate and Securities lawyer after graduating from law school.  He worked at a couple of big firms in Boston.  One of the firms allowed him to build a sports and entertainment practice.  A point Rosen makes that I believe in, as well, is this – “Not every agent is a lawyer, but you need to be associated with one to do a good job.”  A big benefit of going to law school is being able to effectively negotiate, analyze, and evaluate contracts.  Morals clauses, termination clauses, etc. are important clauses beyond the core money clauses.  Rosen’s first client in the sports business was a female Olympic bobsledder.  He helped her negotiate an endorsement contract.  He then did some naming rights deals.  His big moment was when the Red Sox were sold in 2001.  He represented the primary New England based group looking to buy the Sox.  While that group did not win the rights to the Red Sox, that was when he decided he needed to be in this business.  Rosen is trying to learn Japanese in order to better communicate with Okajima.  Good luck with that!  Rosen says his big goal right now is to make Okajima more visible in the community, and he believes that him being based in Boston will help with that effort.  Rosen talks a little bit about his minor league players and how there is little contract negotiation involved between being drafted and becoming arbitration eligible.  The equipment deals are important, though.

Jeff Frye is a former Major League player who is now a baseball agent.  His best friend (Jay Franklin, brother of Ryan Franklin) played professional baseball, went on to work at Scott Boras Corp, and ended up teaming up with Frye to start an agency.  Frye believes that having someone who played in the Major Leagues is invaluable as far as representing athletes.  He rocks an anti-agent look (tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a ball cap) and he says that he is not a salesman.  Interesting distinction that Frye makes when he says he advises the family, not the player.  One of Frye’s clients is Ian Kinsler.  They seem to have a real good relationship; they even play Wii Bowling together.  Frye takes his clients hunting and fishing as their client “getaway”.

The interviews are pretty long, but the hosts do a good job with the questions.  I will be doing an interview with Hot Stove TV tomorrow.  Look out for it.