Agent taken for ride during contract talks
Santa Claus did not get in the way of the Cleveland Indians coming to terms with free agent Edwin Encarnacion on Thursday. Neither did The Little Mermaid.
Encarnacion on Thursday agreed to a 3-year deal with the Indians worth $60 million. How it happened sounds like a one of those sappy Christmas movies.
Paul Kinzer, Encarnacion’s agent, told SiriusXM’s MLB Radio Network on Friday that he was at Six Flags Amusement Park in Georgia with his grandchildren to see Santa Claus when the deal went down. Kinzer added that Chris Antonetti, Indians’ President of Baseball Operations, made the deal while attending a performance of the Nutcracker with his family.
Antonetti later clarified that he and his family were at a live performance of Little Mermaid at the Beck Center in Lakewood, Ohio, when he closed the deal.
“It was somewhere between “Under the Sea” and “Part of Your World” [two songs in the show],” Antonetti told Paul Hoynes of Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer in a text.
Antonetti found himself in a bidding war with Oakland’s Billy Beane, the A’s executive vice president of baseball operations, forcing the negotiations to continue, no matter what fictional characters were involved.
“It ended up being a tough decision,” Kinzer said. “We had the Rangers and Oakland in it until the last minute. When Billy Beane decided to play poker, he came all in. He came in and made it really tough.
Kinzer said he was stepping off rides at Six Flags, while negotiating the deal on his cellphone. He said one time he had to step out of the room when his grandchildren were waiting to see Santa Claus.
“Chris actually stepped out [of The Little Mermaid] and I stepped off a ride and we talked,” said Kinzer. “And I had to talk to Billy and [Texas general manager] Jon Daniels. Billy Beane really brought this thing to a head. He heated up the situation to where it was time to make a decision.
“Billy almost pulled this off at the last minute.”
Guess you could say that whichever way it goes, every time Billy Beane calls, an agent get’s his wings.