Everybody was watching because it wasn t just baseball. The importance of sports as an entertainment property for media giants like Fox Entertainment Group Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc. who own teams and expensive broadcast rights is expected to create new options for retired jocks. And those analysts often end up pitching the team s sponsors and developing relationships with them. And, as Art Shamsky has shown, you don t have to be a future hall of famer like Molitor to be in demand. Berke and Werner both said that any athlete can make enough contacts during his playing days to segue smoothly into a second career.
Nothing goes further, however, than maintaining a presence in a single market.
Yankee fans alone allowed Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle to make an incredible living in retirement, and that s because they were identified as Yankees. Both the Yankee Clipper and the Mick made millions per year in retirement in the autograph and memorabilia market, which is where Werner started by promoting card shows while still in high school. Five years later, Sandy Koufax became his first client. He has since added Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Joe Namath and last month Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Werner pitched him a five-year plan to revive his image, and then began a campaign to choose Ali to light the Olympic torch at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.