FanHouse Arn Tellem

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

Season's Greetings. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

As baseball fans across the country gather to celebrate the holiday season with their loved ones, we here at MLB FanHouse have come up with a present we'd like to give to fans of every team -- even the ones who root for the Yankees, it turns out you folks don't have quite everything just yet.

On a day like Christmas, baseball season can seem an awfully long way off, especially here in the Northeast, where the snow banks are piled four and five feet high. In reality, pitchers and catchers can report to Spring Training in a mere 52 days.

Enjoy the hypothetical gifts for now; it won't be very long before we can all unwrap a very tangible one -- a brand spanking new baseball season.

Rafael Furcal and Arn Tellem are way beyond personas non grata in the Atlanta clubhouse at this point; it seems too, that most of the insiders and outsiders following the baseball world tend to at least agree with Frank Wren with regard to how that deal didn't go down.

Which may explain why, after finalizing a deal with the Dodgers last week, Furcal has come out to say his peace piece and deny that there was ever a deal with the Braves.

"We never gave the nod to the Braves," he said Sunday after arriving to play winter ball for the Aguilas of Cibaenas.

"That is not true," Furcal said. "We never, not my agents nor me, agreed to anything with the Braves."

Hearing Furcal deny the deal is no surprise -- he's technically telling the truth I suppose, and it's not as if he would actually point out that he screwed them over even if he did. What seems far more interesting, to me, is part of the statement that Tellem released:

4. Furcal ultimately decided to accept the Dodgers' offer, taking into consideration a number of factors the most important of which was his desire to continue playing short-stop and not make the position change to second base that the Braves were requiring.

Now, this little nugget comes amidst a bunch of legalese styled yada-yada that includes Tellem stating that the Braves "must entertain" opportunities from their clients "in accordance with the rules of Major League Baseball."

It's not a terribly huge surprise that the NBA will be welcoming it's next big thing, lock job first round pick Derrick Rose, who has already stated he will "test the waters" (read: figure out what agent is going to offer me the best deal) and now, according to Darren Rovell vis a vis sources within Memphis, Rose is going to name his agent today, making him "our" (NBA junkies) property.

No, instead, Derrick Rose -- who took his Memphis Tigers all the way to the National Championship Game and could be the No. 1 overall pick -- is going to pick Arn Tellem of the Wasserman Media Group to represent him in the NBA Draft in June.

Tellem, who is already representing the Lopez brothers from Stanford as well as Anthony Randolph from LSU, didn't return a call seeking comment.

This was a shock because Derrick Rose was so connected to William Wesley, who had steered clients towards Leon Rose, agent of LeBron James and Allen Iverson.

All of this is important for two reasons. First, Rose is not going to be playing in college anymore (duuuuh). Second, as Rovell points out, if he is picked first overall, he will get a three year deal worth 15 million dollars. Since that's some fairly serious cheddar -- and so is the supposed 1.5 million/10% for the agent -- you have to wonder if that will be the full amount coming Tellem's way.

Obviously, Rose had his choice of agents to pick from, and Tellem, as noted, already has a few clients that could make him some money in June. Which means that there's a pretty decent chance that he offered up to take seven percent or something like, or guaranteed a bigger shoe deal from Reebok/Adidas perhaps. Or, maybe Leon made the same assumption -- that Derrick would sign with him because of the Wesley connection -- and refused to budge off of his initial offer, only to see it backfire on him. Pat Riley could not be reached for comment on which agent he preferred; apparently there was a big Lil' Ballers championship game at the greater Tampa area YMCA.