SPRING HAD MELTED INTO SUMMER, AND the “Hundred Days’ War” was turning hot. It was 1979, and Bob Woolf was the attorney and agent offering the talents of Larry Bird, hailed by some as the greatest basketball player of all time.
Woolf was standing nose to nose against one of the deities of New England, the unsmiling, cigar-puffing president of the Boston Celtics, Red Auerbach. Both of them knew Bird would sign the largest contract in the history of the Celtics, but for months they had circled each other like a pair of lions.
Woolf received obscene phone calls, his kids were harassed in school, a newspaper cartoon portrayed him as a bandit. One night, driving back to Boston after a speech, he asked directions of the man in the next car.
“When are you going to sign Larry Bird?” the man demanded.
Woolf said he didn’t know.
“Then I don’t know how to get to Boston,” the motorist replied as he drove off.
For nearly 30 years, Woolf has been striking bargains about money, performance and the law — but here he was, the great negotiator, stuck at a traffic light with nothing to say.
Eventually, of course, Woolf did his job: He reached an agreement with Auerbach and the Celtics, and New England has had a love affair with Larry Bird ever since. Today, at 63, Bob Woolf is perhaps the foremost sports and entertainment attorney in America. He practically invented the field.
He wears a diamond-heavy ring from Hall of Fame baseball star Carl Yastrzemski and has strolled on Hollywood beach with Florence Griffith-Joyner — the fastest woman in the world and one of the most glamorous. Larry Bird is his next-door neighbor in Brookline, Mass. Larry King recovered from a heart attack at Woolf’s home in Hallandale. The New Kids on the Block have slept in his house and gone swimming in his pool. A television series based on Woolf’s life is in the works.
“It’s a Walter Mitty existence,” he admits.
He has negotiated well over 2,000 contracts worth more than $1 billion, yet some of his most delicate dealings aren’t about money at all.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, he soothed the egos of Ted Koppel and Larry King by working out a deal to have Michael Dukakis appear on their shows the same night. Woolf has friends at high levels on both sides of the never- ending Arab-Israeli dispute. As a part-time resident of Jerusalem, he halfway thought he might be asked to join the Israeli negotiating team in the snarled Middle East peace talks.
Woolf has been named one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America, yet through all of his high-powered, high-finance wheeling and dealing, he has retained an image of honesty and fairness.
“It’s not an image — it’s an absolute reality,” says his friend, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz. “The single greatest reason for his success is his integrity. How many lawyers can say that?”
Woolf claims his formula is simple.
“Negotiation is merely trying to persuade someone to your point of view,” he explains. “Nine out of 10 people feel the same as I do: They want to come to a nice agreement.”
In his new book, Friendly Persuasion, Woolf says his bargaining methods can be applied to all of life.
“I don’t know anything in this world that isn’t negotiable,” he says. “Everything is negotiable.”
THERE IS NO EASY WAY TO describe what Woolf does. He is, essentially, a seller of talent. He works at the highest levels of American sports and entertainment, hammering out contracts for the broadcasters we listen to, the musicians we dance to, the athletes we thrill to.
“I am,” he says, “a champion to champions.”
Woolf’s schedule is a thick layer cake of press conferences, big-league games, Hollywood parties, charity events and speeches. He scouts for investments and endorsements, searches through the fine print of tax and finance records and puts out brushfires of bad news. His phone keeps ringing into the night.
Woolf handles more than 200 clients, many of them famous. They include Florence Griffith-Joyner, the glamour girl of the 1988 Olympics, and her husband, gold-medal-winning triple jumper Al Joyner; Miami’s Channel 10 news anchor Ann Bishop; Green Bay Packers quarterback Don Majkowski; three members of the Miami Heat — Grant Long, Bimbo Coles and budding superstar Glen Rice; Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Tom Glavine of the Atlanta Braves; violinist Itzhak Perlman; talk-show giant Larry King; ex-astronaut Buzz Aldrin; former Beirut hostage Frank Reed; former CIA director Stansfield Turner; Joan Kennedy; Today show critic Gene Shalit; basketball greats Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Bernard King and Byron Scott.
And from the beginning, Woolf has represented Boston’s most successful export since cream pie — the New Kids on the Block.
“If you’re talking adulation,” Woolf says, “nothing beats the New Kids. How much do you think they grossed last year worldwide, in concerts, recordings, sales, promotions, T-shirts, everything?”
He pauses for effect, then announces: “$861 million.”
Woolf’s take? “I get 5 percent.” Give or take a couple of bucks, that’s $43 million.
His fee for negotiating a contract is 3 to 5 percent of a performer’s salary. For a higher percentage, he handles endorsements, investments and other legal and financial matters. Many clients — Larry King is one — have their paychecks sent directly to Woolf’s office and receive an allowance.
Woolf is so well known and so respected that he doesn’t recruit new clients — they come to him. Channel 10 anchor Ann Bishop recalls her first encounter with Woolf, after a TV-news executive she knew called his office on her behalf.
“Ten minutes later,” Bishop recalls, “Bob called me. He said he would be honored to represent me, and he would do it on a handshake. He’s a fine gentleman.”
Glen Rice of the Miami Heat says simply, “I don’t think you can ask for a better guy.”
BOB WOOLF IS DENYING IT ALL. None of this good fortune has anything to do with him, he is saying. It could happen to anyone.
“I get credit for success I don’t really deserve,” he protests. “I didn’t make Larry King a big star. I didn’t make the New Kids big stars. I’ve just been in the right place at the right time.”
But if it’s only luck, it’s held remarkably steady and grown stronger through the years. Woolf’s personal income has been in seven figures for a long time and is probably higher now, with the success of the New Kids. He collects houses the way most of us collect ball-point pens — nine of them, at last count.
He has four houses in Massachusetts, including his main residence in Brookline, plus others in Portland, Maine; Marina del Rey, Calif.; New York; and Jerusalem. For 27 years Woolf and his wife, Anne, have escaped the winter chill at an expansive waterside home in Hallandale. He likes to cruise up and down the Intracoastal in his 35-foot Sea Ray, Lobo II.
Woolf has talked about his life among the stars on the Tonight show and has been featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. He casually mentions that he can get in touch with anyone in the world — anyone — within 48 hours.
“I think we have a pretty good Rolodex,” he explains.
A network TV series about Woolf’s high-flying career is on the drawing boards, with actors Gene Hackman, Hal Linden and Barry Newman considering the lead role.
But in spite of all these conspicuous signs of success, Woolf has never lost the brisk New England accent in his voice or in his life.
“I still have the same principles and ideals I had from Portland, Maine,” he asserts.
He grew up as a child of the Depression, delivering newspapers for a penny a copy at the age of 8. His father was a doctor who treated the poor of Portland for free until he was wiped out by the Depression and moved the family to Boston.
Woolf started his own business at the age of 16 while attending the Boston Latin School, a prestigious public high school. Driving an old jalopy, he delivered household items — Anacin to zinc ointment — direct from factories to stores. Rather grandly, he called himself the Woolf Supply Company of New England.
His job kept him from practicing with the team, but Woolf nevertheless became a standout basketball player. He attended Boston College on an athletic scholarship and played six times against arch-rival Holy Cross College, led by the great Bob Cousy.
While still a law student at Boston University, Woolf petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Court to allow him to take the bar exam before graduating. As a defense attorney, Woolf took so many cases from Boston low- lifes that a prosecuting attorney once quipped, “Here comes Woolf, defender of the guilty.”
“I’d rather be defender of the guilty,” Woolf shot back, “than prosecutor of the innocent.”
Persuasive from the beginning, Woolf won 90 percent of his jury trials. Today, most people think of him as a sports agent and negotiator, but as an attorney for 40 years Woolf has kept all his legal credentials up to date.
He might well have continued his career as a courtroom lawyer if one of his clients hadn’t asked for extra help. In 1964 Boston Red Sox pitcher Earl Wilson threw a no-hitter and was swamped with requests for endorsements and personal appearances. Woolf, who already advised Wilson about taxes and investments, guided him through the commercial maze. Wilson then asked for help on a new contract.
Before long Woolf was working with such Red Sox stars as Carl Yastrzemski and Reggie Smith, and basketball greats John Havlicek and Sam Jones. Without intending to, he had launched a new career as the nation’s first sports lawyer.
“I didn’t have a dream,” he says. “I just loved what I was doing.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a friend for more than 15 years, often invites Woolf to lecture in his classes.
“I use him as an illustration to my law students,” Dershowitz explains. “He is someone who looked around and created a career out of his own talents.”
For the last seven years Woolf’s family has celebrated the Jewish holidays with Dershowitz and his family. Woolf and his wife, Anne, have been married for more than 29 years, and Woolf says the greatest day of his life was when they met: Nov. 2, 1961. They have three children: Stacey, Gary and Tiffany. The oldest, 27-year-old Stacey, runs a literary agency as part of her father’s business.
“Bob has tremendous devotion to his family and his children,” says Dershowitz. “In his private life, he’s not a big shot.”
Dershowitz recalls that he once bested Woolf in a one-on-one basketball game. For the rematch, Woolf offered to abandon his running left-handed shot if Dershowitz would give up his corner jump shot.
“As soon as he negotiated,” says Dershowitz, “he won.”
FROM HIS MEMENTO-FILLED office on the 45th floor of the Prudential Tower in Boston, Woolf can look right into Fenway Park.
“I could call balls and strikes,” he says.
He has a staff of 60 in Boston, with satellite branches in New York, Beverly Hills and Hallandale. Jill Leone, who runs the Florida office, recalls her job interview with Woolf in 1973.
“He said, ‘Do you know how to spell Yastrzemski? Do you know who Bobby Orr is? Do you know how to spell Havlicek? What is ERA? Who was last year’s Most Valuable Player in the NBA? Can you type?”
After Leone passed her sports trivia quiz, Woolf said, “Well, you’re hired. Can you start right now?”
She has never left. In the 19 years since, Leone — now an executive vice president — has never seen Woolf yell at anyone. He can be a demanding boss and seldom takes a day off, but his nickname in the office is “Mr. Wubbable.”
But not everyone would agree that Woolf is “wubbable,” at least not at the negotiating table. One sports executive calls him “slippery,” and in 1989 Miami Heat managing partner Lewis Schaffel complained about how long it took to sign Woolf’s client, Glen Rice. Schaffel and Woolf finally settled Rice’s $8-million, five-year contract at 3 a.m. the day before training camp opened.
In general, though, Woolf has a reputation as a tough but fair negotiator — more than can be said of many people in his business.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of owners,” says Alan Dershowitz, “and it’s rare that I’ve heard anything bad about him.”
To many fans and team owners, lawyers and agents are the scourge of the game. They get much of the blame for turning sports into a high-stakes Wheel of Fortune. Woolf represents 45 athletes who make more than $1 million a year each, but he says it’s not his fault that sports have become a playground of post-adolescent millionaires. Every pro athlete, he points out, earns only as much as someone is willing to give.
“I don’t know any representative,” says Woolf, “who’s held a gun to an owner’s head and told him he had to pay.”
Still, he admits that athletes are spoiled by too much money and hero worship.
“The system is wacky,” Woolf says. “One thing I have to deal with is that people become very famous and very wealthy very quickly. I watch it happen right in front of my eyes. Nothing changes people quicker than money.”
Unexpectedly, he adds, “It’s up to me to fight avarice and greed.”
His clients are the best in the world in their field, but their abilities seldom extend to financial management.
“I won’t help someone who is not interested in helping himself,” says Woolf. “Sometimes when somebody comes in, I know that no matter how much money he’s making, he will end up penniless.”
Over the years, Woolf’s family has gotten to know many famous stars and athletes, along with their peccadilloes.
“Some are nice,” says Anne Woolf. “Some are terrible. Some I wouldn’t allow in the house.”
“It’s almost like having a couple of hundred children,” Woolf adds.
He’s had clients who abandoned rented cars on the side of the road. Others have called him at home to complain about the air conditioning or hot water in their hotel rooms. One client called in a drug-induced haze to claim he had been kidnapped and needed $10,000 in ransom money within 30 minutes. Not long ago, the wife of one of Woolf’s clients — Chicago Bulls’ player Craig Hodges — tried to set her husband on fire. Two other clients — baseball pitcher Don Wilson and basketball player Ricky Berry — have committed suicide.
“I deal in the world of the irrational,” says Woolf. Of the 300 calls to his office each day, “150 of them are trouble. I can’t tell you how many sensational stories never come out.”
When things get openly out of hand, Woolf makes his clients face up to their public responsibility and their private weakness. A few years ago, when bad- boy football star Dexter Manley was banned by the National Football League for using drugs, Woolf had several tense sessions with him alone, before putting him in front of the media’s bright lights.
He made Manley admit to himself that he was an addict and needed help. For two years Manley was tested three times a week for drugs, and Woolf accompanied him to AA meetings. He helped Manley learn to read and write as an adult and become a spokesman for literacy. When Manley turned to drugs again last December, the first person he called was Woolf. As he retired from football, Manley stood before the world and manfully admitted his failings. Woolf was at his side. In gratitude, Manley gave Woolf his jersey from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Next to the big No. 92, he wrote, “To Mr. Woolf, Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Dexter Manley.”
IN THIS BUSINESS OF FAST BUCKS AND FASTER exploitation, a lot of agents would have left Manley on the sidelines with a life in wreckage. Woolf didn’t get extra pay to help Manley through his troubles, but it’s the way he does his job.
He does more behind the scenes than most people realize. When Larry King was in the hospital for heart surgery, Woolf visited him every day — he even brought King’s former girlfriend, Angie Dickinson, by to say hello. For the past 12 years Woolf has run a basketball tournament in Jerusalem, bringing together Muslims, Christians and Jews. Now he wants to bring an exhibition of Russian art treasures to America.
“I live by the Golden Rule,” he says, “and I believe people see that in me. I’m sincere in what I do.”
He tries to bring the same qualities to the negotiating table. He never says, “Take it or leave it.”
“Keep your ego out of the way,” he counsels. “You don’t have to be disagreeable to disagree.”
He knows that luck favors those who do their work.
“You can’t always outsmart someone,” he says. “But you can always out- prepare him.”
Woolf still enjoys the thrill of his game, the mental give and take of negotiation. But maybe there’s something else, something that can’t be taught, that makes him so good at what he does.
Take it from the author of the best-selling Chutzpah, Alan Dershowitz: “Bob’s is a very quiet, nonconfrontational chutzpah. But it’s chutzpah to see opportunities where others don’t see them. You need endless chutzpah to start out with an office over a store and create a new field of law.”
For nearly 30 years, Bob Woolf has used solid work, statesmanship, an actuary’s eye for the bottom line — and, yes, chutzpah — to make deals for the strong and talented of this world. He has built a profession out of straight talk and quiet persuasion, and he knows that his next deal may be only a handshake away.
“Remember,” he always tells you. “Everything is negotiable.”
—- MATT SCHUDEL is a Sunshine staff writer.
