Joshua Kusnick is a former MiLB/MLBPA certified agent, who represented many All Star, World Series winning, and Minor League players over the last 20 years. Now retired, this is his first interview in almost 3 years, talking about cards, his career and current life. Joshua and myself happened to cross paths on a Facebook card group that he runs, and posts to daily with news regarding all things Baseball.
Randy Nuñez: “Hey, Joshua, can you tell us what your background in Sports is, or as an Agent in general?”
Joshua Kusnick: “I grew up going to Minor League and (Junior College) games, getting autographs, and collected cards as a kid with my Dad. One day (after taking half a year off after graduating High School) as I was asking some of the Minor League players how they got Agents, one of the players told me “If you buy me a glove, you can be my Agent”, he was the first player I signed, and also the first player to fire me.”
RN: “What did it take to become a Sports Agent, if anything?”
JK: “Nothing, really. I just had to want it more than everyone else. And you can’t go saying “I have a family, kids, and a mortgage,” It doesn’t matter, what matters are the player’s needs, not yours. You have to be willing to give up a lot to be a good agent.”
RN: “What is the difference between saying “I’m player X’s Agent” and being a MLBPA Certified Agent?”
JK: “You can call yourself an ‘Agent’ for a Minor Leaguer, or someone, anyone really, but if you aren’t certified by the MLBPA, you aren’t **** in the industry.”
RN: “So, you’re saying that you have to become certified by the MLBPA to be a ‘real’ Agent? Like take a test, quiz, or is there something else?”
JK: “Now, you’re required to graduate from college, go through a background check, pay a fee, all of that stuff, but what’s most important is that you have a client on a team’s 40-man roster. Without that, you can have all the High School kids, Minor Leaguers, Independent League players as clients, but you won’t ever negotiate a Major League Contract.”
RN: “That’s insane, thinking that you have to have a 40-man player to become certified.”
JK: “It’s great! It keeps all of the idiots out, it’s supposed to keep idiots out. I mean, there are a lot of idiots literally doing it uncertified, making all the mistakes, spending all of their money, keeping these guys warm, for a person in my position to steal them. Every single time. Then they talk about their dreams and feelings and their career, as in 1. I’m supposed to care, and 2. I’m supposed to care about how their dreams and feelings affect all of this when the job is 100% client driven. What I think, what I want, it doesn’t matter, do the best you can for the player. Have your set of morals and beliefs, try not to change them.”
RN: “We talked a little bit before, and you drove the fact that the business is 100% client driven, it’s not for everyone. Can you expand on that a little more?”
JK: “Right! Here, I’ll give you a story, it’s definitely gonna be seen by the guy that talked to me, it sucks, but I won’t say any names. It’s a guy, a younger guy, not really young, y’know, before his 50’s. He’s got a regular Corporate American job. And now he’s representing Minor League Players. Three of them. As a part-time side hustle, I’m calling it what it is, right?”
RN: “Uhuh, yeah.”
JK: “Do you agree with me? We’re just having this talk, I hope you’re transcribing this because I love this. Okay, so he has a regular nine to five job. One day, this man with a family who’s younger than 50 with a regular job and commitments: bills, house, kids, school, wife, normal s**t; I don’t have those things, I’m an Agent. I knew that from day one at age 20. I’m very fortunate that I made those choices, because those are things that would’ve held me back at the time from doing my job. But if you have those responsibilities, then you have those responsibilities. You can’t just one day decide to become an Agent as a part-time gig. But that’s exactly what this guy is doing; He is spending money to sign Minor League players. He doesn’t care who they are, he signs anyone who hires him. And he is funding them, and he’s relying on that financially, to breed loyalty from these players, right, who think ‘This guy was with me, spending money on me when I was nobody’. That’s what he expects.
RN: “Yeah, sounds like it.”
JK: “I want you to know that it’s bull***t. I f***ing hate it, it’s one of the worst fallacies in the industry, and I wish people would stop doing it. Every single person who says that to me, deserves to lose every cent and player that they go after, because it’s ridiculous, because you wouldn’t give a s**t about any of these kids if they didn’t play baseball.”
RN: “Yeah, if they weren’t making millions of dollars (from possible signing bonuses)
JK: “Or the potential to. It’s not like they were going around to like the Undrafted Free Agents hitting .150, buying them gloves, you know what I mean? The back end for them, what does that tell you? It’s bull***t. The guy was doing it for himself, he wants to be an Agent, he wants to go to games, he wants to do the interviews. Bro, I didn’t want any of that s**t, it was there, right. So for me, if it’s there, you gotta do it, and I was fine with it. But like, my point is with this guy, who’s in this position, he messages me, asking for advice, and I tell him the truth about what the industry is like; I tell him the hardest truth he’s ever gonna hear. It’s there’s no such thing as [being] a part-time Agent. It’s impossible; Because if I’m doing it full-time, that means I can already do a better job than you. Because 100% of my career, focus, effort, money, job, energy, is being an Agent. Those eight hours a day when you’re at your regular job, you don’t give a s**t about those Baseball players. That’s why nobody with a job should try to be an Agent. Well his answer to me was: “Didn’t you do this back in the day? [as a student]” Bro, I was on food stamps, living on couches. My dad helped a ton, he was a lawyer; he did the legal stuff rather than me having to find an attorney, he was great at it. My point is, if you’re not willing to give everything up, there’s no point in even trying. So my last piece of advice to him, he made a comment to me, which I get a lot. He said, “Everyone tells me to quit.”, and I tell this guy, “After berating you for half an hour, not once did I tell you quit. I said, go all in, or f**king quit” And that’s what I told him. I have no idea what he’s gonna do, but I hope he does one or the other. Quit his job and kill it, or stop f**king cosplaying as an Agent, it’s just good for your ego.”
RN: “That’s quite the story, man. But I can understand where you’re coming from, that’s what you have to do, go all in.”
JK: “The other piece of advice that I gave him, that I give to everyone. I said ‘If you’re going to be buying up Minor Leaguers, and giving them free s**t, don’t sign Latino players unless you speak Spanish.” That seems like pretty normal advice that you could give to someone, right?”
RN: “Yeah, that seems like pretty obvious advice, really.”
JK: “You’d think, okay. By the way, that took me ten years to figure out. I lost so much money. I lost José Tábata, Iván Nova, Eduardo Núñez, Luis Peña, they all fired me. I had a translator. Here, I’ll save everyone thousands of dollars in a lesson. Nobody hires an agent to talk to a f**king translator, they want to talk to their f**king agent.
RN: “Um, yeah. I can see that.”
JK: “That guy told me ‘I have three players, two of them are Latino and they talk to my translator.” I told him, “Bro, I already know the ending of this story, if either of those two guys get good, you’re getting fired.”
RN: “Yeah, the players want to be able to talk to their Agent directly, not some middle man.”
JK: “So the reason I went through that whole exercise wasn’t to bash the one guy, he was an example. You either go all in, or don’t do it all. It’s some Yoda advice, ‘Do or do not, there is no try.” (laughs)
RN: “I love it, the Yoda advice totally works for it.”
JK: “I’m serious! You hear how offended I get, I’m offended by it. The guys who have two jobs, you’re an accountant and an Agent, splitting it up through the week. Please stop. I don’t mean a lawyer/Agent, that’s a whole different animal. I wasn’t a lawyer, I was a different kind of agent.”
RN: “So when you say that you were a different type of agent, what do you mean by that?”
JK: “Well I wasn’t a lawyer. So, I’m different anyway. I was certified by the MLBPA, I wasn’t a lawyer, so I just did the negotiating. Then the lawyers would draft it [contracts], and look at what I [and the team] said. You could go become a lawyer and strictly work on arbitration cases, or work for a sports agency. I had to hire attorneys after my dad helped me out in the beginning.
RN: “You stopped representing players around 2021 or 2022, is that correct? And Why?”
JK: “That’s right, I stopped representing players in 2021; I just got tired of being an Agent after 20 years, and it wasn’t the same after the 2020 lockout. That was actually when I was the happiest for a long time, I found that I was happier not being an Agent more than when I was being an Agent.”
RN: “Are you still on good terms with some of the players who you represented?”
JK: “Yeah! I just talked with Lo[renzo Cain] yesterday, actually. Lolo and I go way back. I wish he’d write me a check for reparations, but whatever (laughs), but no, Lo’s good people, he’s a really good dad, it’s good to see. Manny Barreda, who was on Team Mexico for the WBC, we talk a lot. I have some guys that are actually on the page, and we chat from time to time. A lot of papers say that I have bad relationships with past clients, but it’s not true; Some of them I don’t talk with anymore, but we’re on ‘no terms’ with each other.
RN: “Circling back to cards, we actually have a DJAWN user question: ‘What are your thoughts on why pitcher’s cards are not as sought after as position players?'”
JK: ” I think you know the answer to that already. They only play every fifth day, and relief pitchers even less, sometimes. Who are you going to buy, the All Star position player, or All Star relief pitcher who falls off the next year? Same thing goes with Catchers, they don’t usually play as many games as everyone else does.”
RN: “So, I think it’s fair to say that you don’t care about what you say to people, or what people think of you. I noticed that you have your Twitter Profile Cover photo as a New York Post quote of just “F**k You”, with no context.”
JK: “Oh man, that was to David Sampson, I hate that guy. His mom just happened to know the right people, and that’s how he got his job. I said that to him on Twitter, then it got picked up by the NY Post, and they ran with it. And no, I don’t care about what people think of me, or what I say to them. Actually, when I do my stand up comedy down here in Florida, if someone comes up to me and tells me that I was funny and they liked my set, I’m like “Okay, thanks. I guess?” or if they tell me that I sucked, I could care less about what they thought. It’s about whether or not I felt good with my performance, that’s all I care about, and that goes for everything I do. I’ve failed so much. I’ve had clients fire me, a video game company fail, but I don’t have that self-doubt that a lot of others have, so I don’t sit there and cry about it. I don’t do that, I just move on to the next thing. Sure, I didn’t make $100M as an Agent, but I’m still me, at least.”
RN: “Well, thanks for the chat, you have some great stories and information, I’ll catch you on the page sometime! Have a great day.”
JK: “Yeah, it’s my first interview since I called in to the (MLB)PA. I mean, I did some Q&A’s during the labor stoppage, but nothing like this. You have a good day too, man.”
