Attanasio content if Ichiro deal is his last

When Tony Attanasio started negotiating contracts, free agency was still a gleam in Marvin Miller's eye.

In fact, there were barely any agents, and those pioneering men in the early 1970s were regarded with extreme distrust by baseball lifers who had grown accustomed to having full control over their chattel.

Miller was just beginning to launch perhaps the most successful union in American labor history. The Players Association had two employees, Miller and Dick Moss, later a seminal agent himself.

Attanasio's first client was Bobby Valentine, and his first deals seem laughably minuscule in today's megamillion-dollar age.

"I got Bill Singer from $75,000 to $78,000. He thought I was a wizard," Attanasio said with a laugh. "I got Davey Lopes from 19 to 21. I got Bobby Valentine from 37 to 40. Those were unbelievable days. Owners were colluding like it was going out of style."

Attanasio lived through it all, right in the thick of the action. The landmark Andy Messersmith decision that gave players the right to shop their services. The advent of arbitration, which may have done more than anything to fuel the meteoric rise of salaries. Every strike, every lockout, every crisis, Attanasio was a player.

And last week, Attanasio, soon to be 68, might have capped his groundbreaking career by negotiating Ichiro's five-year extension that keeps him in Seattle through 2012.

While the listed value of Ichiro's deal is $90 million, the compounded 5.5 percent interest on the $25 million Ichiro will receive in deferred money upon retirement reportedly brings the value to more than $94 million.

And if you throw in all the perks Ichiro received, and the benefits of no state income tax in Washington, the deal could be interpreted as worth in excess of $100 million.

Not a bad way to end your career. Attanasio farmed out most of his players a few years back to a former client, outfielder-turned-agent Dave Meier, and said it's unlikely he'll negotiate any more player contracts. At least not until this deal expires, at which time Ichiro will be 38.

Though he still represents Valentine and Giants manager Bruce Bochy, Attanasio is down to just Ichiro among players. After 37 years of going nose-to-nose with every general manager who has come down the pike, he's content if that contract turns out to be his finale.

Several players have asked Attanasio to represent him. He has turned them all down.

"I won't do any other player unless Ichiro suggests or advises or tells me I should do that," he said. "This is the last one I can foresee."

In his day, Attanasio's stable of clients was unmatched in the business. He had Goose Gossage and Dave Stewart. He represented a slew of prominent Dodgers, including Reggie Smith, Pedro Guerrero, Lopes, Burt Hooton, Rick Rhoden, Joe Ferguson, Mariano Duncan, Rudy Law, Jerry Royster, Charlie Hough and Steve Howe.

He had Frank Tanana, Mickey Tettleton and Tony Phillips. Pete Incaviglia, Kevin Gross and Lee Mazzilli. Scott Brosius, Tim Teufel and Alan Wiggins.

And long before signing on with Ichiro, countryman Kazu Sasaki and steady utility man Mark McLemore, Attanasio had a grip on Mariners.

"At one time, I had more players with Seattle than any other team."

The list is vintage Mariners: Julio Cruz, Bruce Bochte, Mario Mendoza, Tom Paciorek, Larry Cox and Shane Rawley, among others.

"Every one of them was to a great degree like Ichiro," he said of his entire clientele. "They had tremendous personal discipline. And none of them were recruited. Not one."

Which isn't to say Attanasio didn't have his travails. Phillips went through a cocaine arrest. The tortured drug history of both Howe and Wiggins is well documented, and both died young.

"They were all really good guys, even the ones that got in trouble," he said. "Alan Wiggins was by far the most intelligent guy I ever represented."

A switch-hitting infielder himself, Attanasio got as far as Class AAA with the Portland Beavers in the Cleveland Indians' organization. When his career ended, he remained in Portland to work in the insurance business (going to law school at night). Attanasio eventually renewed his acquaintance with Valentine, a fellow native of Connecticut, when Valentine came through Portland with the Dodgers' Spokane farm team.

In the early 1970s, Attanasio moved to San Diego to join an old Marine Corps buddy who was beginning to represent basketball and football players. When Valentine was called up to the Dodgers in 1971, he asked Attanasio to help him with his contracts, and a career was born.

So, during that era, was free agency, which helped bring player agents into the forefront of the industry. For better or worse, some might say — including Attanasio.

"I wrote a letter to Marvin in 1976," he said. "I told him that what he should do is fire all agents, including me, because they weren't to be trusted. I would agree today."

Miller passed on the advice, and Attanasio became a power broker. He branched out to Japan in 2000, landing Sasaki as a client through Smith, who had finished his career playing and coaching in Japan.

Ichiro, the jewel of Japan, joined Attanasio's camp the following year, with Valentine the indirect liaison.

"I flew to Japan several times just to meet him," Attanasio said. "After watching him play, I tried to project him in the U.S. I saw a leadoff man who could steal 30 to 40 bases, hit .310, score 110 runs and be a great leadoff hitter.

"I didn't realize how great he would be, but I knew he'd be a hell of a lot better than everyone else thought, and so did Valentine."

And now Attanasio has navigated Ichiro through one more complicated contractual maze that will keep the Mariners icon in Seattle into the next decade. Was it the veteran agent's most satisfying deal?

"They're all satisfying, if you get the player where he wants to go," Attanasio said. "That's the biggest thing in the world. If you do it the right way, things happen for the best. If you do it just for the money, you'll find yourself miserable."

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com