Scott Boras calls MLB owners’ $3 billion TV contract a ‘rectal thermometer’

When Scott Boras wrote a leaden and unreadably boring op-ed for the New York Times six weeks ago, that should have been the first sign that baseball’s return was in grave danger. Boras — the most powerful agent in baseball and last seen in New York getting Gerrit Cole a record-breaking contract — tends to communicate in overheated and baffling metaphors.

So maybe his interview with Tom Verducci, published Wednesday, is a sign that normalcy is around the corner. Gone is boring crap like “How do we harmonize the concerns of health experts with the unwanted effects of those public health efforts?” Instead, Boras is calling Rob Manfred “the pancake commissioner,” and comparing Manfred’s misguided guarantee of a season to Herbert Hoover’s “chicken in every pot.”

His best work, though, as with the best baseball metaphors, has to do with butts.

“The TBS contract was the rectal thermometer,” Boras said. “It illustrated the truth to all the fans, and that is the content of this game has such value even in the heart of a pandemic that you get a record contract for your rights. When I say rectal thermometer, I say it as the truest form of the temperature of the game.”

Boras is accurately pointing out that the owners can’t cry poor in public and negotiate a $3 billion TV contract in private. Rectal thermometers, though, are only really necessary for babies and toddlers that have trouble holding a thermometer still in their mouths. Actually, that just makes the metaphor more accurate in this case.