Dave Albee
Marin Independent Journal
SAN FRANCISCO
From Steve Baker’s corner office on the 21st floor of Chevron’s former headquarters at 555 Market Street, one can be easily distracted looking around.
There’s a panoramic view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco Bay outside and, inside, there is a framed autographed Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey on the wall above Baker’s desk and a Jeff Garcia framed autographed 49ers jersey on the opposite wall and a flatscreen TV on the wall directly in front of Baker.
Baker, a professional sports attorney from Mill Valley, is usually too busy to sit and stare at any of them, especially in the past few weeks, what with the NFL players combine going on in Indianapolis and the NFL free-agent period starting this month. He had four clients – Garcia, tight end Eric Johnson, linebacker Jamie Winborn and fullback Paul Smith – all looking for new contracts at the same time and Baker had his office and two adjoining offices designated as “war rooms” according to their playing positions to strategize how to meet their demands and dreams.
“What I basically did is took four former 49ers, who were back-ups, and put them in much better situations (elsewhere), all where they now have a chance to be starters and potentially impact starters,” he said.
Baker somehow calmly and astutely pulled it off at numbers crunch time and, in the process, managed to make his wife – Fox News reporter Claudia Cowan – very happy. He surprised her with the promise of a getaway ski vacation to Utah.
“I said to my wife, ‘Listen, there’s two weeks that I’m going to be gone but then we’re going to have the best four days we’ve ever had.’ In a lot of ways, that was the most successful negotiation,” Baker said, smiling. “The final war room we had was ‘The Wife’s Trip.'”
You would think thus that Baker would be on top of the world right now. He already was. The negotiating process started on Feb. 20 with Winborn, a linebacker with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when Baker began re-working his deal while sitting on a bench at the top of a ski lift at Northstar at Tahoe resort. While he was parked there for about four hours in order to get better cell phone reception, Baker’s wife and twins, Benjamin and Sabrina, were skiing in the distance.
“I kept going up the lift with the kids to see if he was still on the phone. What else are we going to do?” Cowan said. “I tried to give him some wiggle room.”
The situation grew urgent. Baker was negotiating with a Bucs representative, whose pregnant wife was on the verge of giving birth, and Baker realized he had to tell his wife and kids that he had to go to Indianapolis sooner than he originally anticipated to facilitate the Winborn deal. He rented a car in Truckee, drove back to Mill Valley for a change of clothes then to San Francisco to take the next flight to Indy.
In Indianapolis, Baker resumed negotiations with Tampa Bay for Winborn and also researched the market for his other clients.
“Anyone who’s anybody is at the combine,” Baker said. “Everyone with significance in the NFL is within a one-mile radius.”
Baker took his combine experience and expertise back to the office and prepared for March 2, the first day of the NFL free agency. That morning Baker and Garcia were having breakfast at the Fairmont Hotel, talking about Garcia’s planned visit to the Oakland Raiders complex in Alameda that day. Within minutes, Bucs coach Jon Gruden and Texans coach Gary Kubiak called Baker, asking to speak with Garcia. Later, Garcia called Baker in his office and told him the meeting with the Raiders was going well, but also instructed Baker to go ahead with plans to book a flight to Tampa. Then, late that night, Garcia called Baker again at the office and authorized him to make a deal with the Bucs, bringing an end to an intense day of negotiating.
“At 9:01 p.m., we had four (telephone) lines going at once,” Baker said.
Garcia, according to Baker, likes the prospect of playing for Gruden and the Bucs, who have $20 million of salary-cap space to improve the team around him and make a quick run at the playoffs in the weaker NFC. The Raiders offered Garcia the chance to start, reunite with former 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Knapp and play closer to home (he’s from Gilroy). Garcia, however, was uncomfortable with the Raiders possibly spending the first pick in April’s NFL draft, on a quarterback, likely LSU’s JaMarcus Russell or Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn instead of drafting another potential impact player at another position of need, like, say, the Raiders offensive line.
“He (Garcia) didn’t fault the team for wanting to take a quarterback. He didn’t feel that that pick was going to help him win right now,” Baker said. “In Jeff’s decision matrix, winning right now, even if he wasn’t the starter, was the No. 1 issue. That’s why he publicly said he was ready to go back to Philly.”
And Eagles fans were anxious to have him back after he rallied the team following Donovan McNabb’s season-ending injury. Prior to the playoffs, Baker brokered a deal that sold 40,000 Garcia “A Fighter Fights” T-shirts in the Philadelphia area. But, while he was at the Super Bowl in February, Baker said the Eagles gave him an ultimatum to make a deal that would keep Garcia with the Eagles by March 2.
In the end, Garcia felt Tampa Bay was the best fit for him. The Bucs will pay him $5 million this season and, if he meets incentives, as much as $14 million over two years.
With Garcia signed by the Bucs by Saturday morning, Baker turned his attention to Smith, who was flying into Denver for a visit that same day. Smith, a special teams standout, felt the Broncos could provide him an opportunity to start at fullback to showcase his talents.
“Denver is running back heaven,” Baker said.
Smith signed with the Broncos that night so Baker focused on Johnson, who was flying to New Orleans to meet with the Saints. They had the No. 1 ranked offense last year, yet their starting tight end (Mark Campbell) caught only 18 passes.
“So it was a call (for Johnson) right out of central casting,” Baker said.
Johnson spoke with the Saints and was about to board a plane back to San Francisco when Baker notified him that another team back east was interested in signing him, too. Baker advised Johnson to stay an extra night in New Orleans to show the Saints he was serious about signing with them, which he did the next day.
Finally, Baker got around last week to finalizing Winborn’s new pact with the Bucs, which was off and running atop a ski slope in Tahoe on Feb. 20. Thus, Baker, to commemorate the long mountain-top dialogue with the Bucs, named incentive clauses in the contract “The Ski Lift Compromise”, “Bundles of Joy”, “North Star Nudge”, and the “Maternity Ward Void.”
“You can still do these deals with a wink and a nod,” Baker said.
Baker then sealed the deal with his wife. At the same time that Baker had his chief assistant, Blake Grossman, working in the “Quarterbacks” war room, Baker had another assistant working on the resort hotel details of Cowan’s ski trip to Utah. Baker was making decisions left and right about his clients’ futures when someone poked a head into one of the war rooms to ask Baker maybe the most pertinent question of the entire negotiating process.
“Fireplace or no fireplace?”
Dave Albee is an IJ staff writer. Write to him care of Sports, Marin Independent Journal, 150 Alameda del Prado, Novato, 94948-6150. His phone number is 382-7300; the fax number is 883-5458; the e-mail is dalbee@marinij.com.