As Shohei Ohtani (29) is about to sign the highest contract in North American sports history beyond the Major League, attention is also being paid to his agent’s turbulent life history.
Japanese media Full Count shed light on the life reversal of Nez Valero (60) on the 5th, saying, “Ohtani’s agent has a heroic past in which he gave up his major league career due to a full-body fracture in the past.”
Ohtani is the hottest topic in the Major League recently. The total amount that he is expected to receive has already exceeded 500 million U.S. dollars. On the first day of the Winter Meetings, the news that another big market team, the Atlanta Braves, participated in the event, raising the possibility that Ohtani will receive 600 million dollars for the first time in baseball history.
Ballerino under his agency CAA is smiling. Typically, agent fees are 5 percent, and if the fee exceeds 600 million U.S. dollars, Ballerino will receive 30 million dollars. 스포츠토토
Another U.S. media outlet, The Athletic, reported that Valero’s life was not easy at all. He was once a promising infield player. He joined the Seattle Mariners in the fourth round of the MLB Rookie Draft in 1985, and was competing with Oma Vizkel, 56, who collected 11 shortstop Gold Gloves.
He was recognized for his potential as a double-A player just one year after joining the club, but the 23-year-old was newlywed and was not paid enough to live a family. Like any minor league player, Valero worked in the manual labor market on the side. Eventually, he stomped on the construction site and fell 40 feet (about 12 meters) below the construction site, sustaining serious injuries including fractures of his back, pelvis and ribs and severe concussion.
After spending 17 days in the hospital alone, he returned to the ground after rehabilitation, but failed to regain his skills and was released by Seattle in 1988. He also played in the Italian league afterwards, but eventually retired at the age of 27 and began his career as an agent.
Players who played with Valero didn’t forget about him. Vizkel from Venezuela told The Athletic, “I wasn’t good at English then, but Valero taught me passionately. He was quite outgoing and optimistic and always talked to everyone and was kind. That’s why I’m not surprised that Valero was successful as an agent.”
Valero, who has been on a roll as an agent, will meet someone who will make a big mark on his career in 2017. It was Ohtani who is about to challenge to the Major League. Ohtani came back from Japanese pro baseball after pitching and hitting, but most major league teams at the time did not see high possibility as feasible. “At the time in 2018, Ohtani’s pitching and hitting combined was more of an idea than a realistic one,” The Athletic said. “However, Valero suggested the possibility to make it a reality and eventually realized it at the Los Angeles Angels.”
Valero’s ability to bring out conditions for both pitching and hitting without any restrictions rewrote the history of the Major League. Ohtani won the unprecedentedly unanimous MVP twice as he continued his six-season pitching and hitting career, which no one has realized since Babe Ruth. He played a total of 701 games as a batter with a batting average of 0.274, 171 homers, 437 RBIs, 428 runs and 86 steals, a slugging percentage of 0.556 OPS 0.922, a pitcher with a 38-19 loss, a 3.01 ERA, and 608 strikeouts in 481 ⅔ innings.
The race to recruit Ohtani is relatively quiet considering his size and reputation. Recently, his destinations have been narrowed down to five, namely the Los Angeles Angels, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the San Francisco Giants, and Valero is reportedly touring the home stadiums of the three teams with Ohtani. It was not until Thursday that he met with senior team leaders including Farhan Zaidi, new manager Bob Melvin and Buster Posey at the Oracle Park, San Francisco’s home stadium, which gave an impression of his tight security.
“A man who had a baseball career with many twists and turns holds the key on Ohtani’s big day,” Full Count said, noting whether Valero and Ohtani could face a second happy ending.
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