A believer in giving credit where and when credit is due, I have to defend an agent I’ve never been particularly fond of. And, to be candid, Scott Boras has never been fond of me.

When word emerged Tuesday that a Boras client, Prince Fielder, had agreed to a 9-year, $214 million contract with the Detroit Tigers, the development came as a surprise because the Tigers had not previously been mentioned as one of the teams interested in Fielder.

Reports of the signing immediately branded the Tigers a mystery team, as in this CBSSports.com report:

“Chalk up one more for the so-called mystery team. First it was Cliff Lee going to the Phillies, then Albert Pujols heading to the Angels. Now Prince Fielder has shocked the baseball world by signing with the Detroit Tigers, a team that hadn’t even been remotely connected to him in rumors the entire offseason.”

That report accurately portrays the absence of reporting on the Tigers and Fielder, but it takes liberty with the use of “mystery team,” a term that Boras created and copyrighted, if not legally, by his use of it.

In the case of the CBSSports.com usage of the term, the Phillies and the Angels is incorrect. Lee and Pujols might have signed unexpectedly with their teams, but during their free agency, their agents did not say there was a mystery team in pursuit of their clients.

In Boras’ frequent usage of the term, he advertises the existence of a mystery team for strategic purposes.

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How did Commissioner Bud Selig allow the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs to create the baseball farce of the year, and the year hadn’t even started? Let me count the ways.

* The commissioner allowed the Cubs’ pursuit of Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager, to overshadow Major League Baseball’s showcase event, a.k.a. the World Series.
* Selig allowed Epstein to abandon his unexpired contract and take the Cubs’ No. 1 baseball job with no agreement between the clubs on compensation for the Red Sox.
* He allowed the clubs to extend the deadline for completing an agreement on compensation for Epstein, then abandoned the deadline altogether.
* By telling reporters he expected to wind up with the compensation dispute on his desk, he virtually invited the teams not to reach agreement and leave the matter for him to decide.
* By allowing Epstein to go to the Cubs with the compensation issue unsettled, he put Epstein in position to negotiate his own compensation, a bizarre circumstance tantamount to having a player to be named later in a trade becoming the player who was traded for a player to be named. (It really happened once – Harry Chiti 1962.)

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When Octavio Dotel throws his first pitch of the 2012 season, he will establish a major league record. It won’t matter what the pitch is, whether it’s a ball or a strike or if it’s hit into the stands fair or foul.

Dotel, however, may want to get the ball back and put it in his pocket as a keepsake. That is, if the Hall of Fame doesn’t claim it first for display in Cooperstown. Dotel may go for that idea because how else will he be in the Hall of Fame?

When Dotel throws his first pitch, he will have officially played for the Detroit Tigers, and they will be the 13th major league team in his career. Until that pitch, the 38-year-old relief pitcher remains tied with Matt Stairs, Ron Villone and Deacon McGuire, Elias Sports Bureau says, for having played for the most teams in a major league career.

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