Love Letters From Pronk is an ongoing series where Pronk shares his love for somebody connected to the Cubs. Sometimes funny, sometimes weird, sometimes touching, Pronk likes to make 100% sure people know that they are loved, and best expresses that through gushing letters. Today's recipient: MLB player agent Rachel Luba
Rachel Luba became Trevor Bauer's agent last year and is a very rare female MLB agent. She has a really great website and a fantastic Chalupa Sports moniker at lubasports.com
Rachel has a pretty cool story. She was an elite Gymnast, doing it for 20 years all the way up to UCLA. When injuries forced her out, she took on boxing. She apparently was a natural at it, and won a bronze in the national championship. She is still a competitive boxer to date. It's cool stuff, but at the same time she was busy becoming a lawyer, getting her undergrad degree at UCLA and then law school at Pepperdine.
She was hired by the MLBPA in 2018 and took on 22 arbitration cases, going 12-10 for a 54.5% winning percentage (average win for players is closer to 42%). Fighting a lack of gender diversity, she decided to start her own agency, and formed Luba Sports in 2019. Her first client: my favorite, Trevor Bauer. As she navigates her first free agency winter, she deserves your support and attention, as she could open a door for other women into the game of baseball.
Dear Rachel,
All of us here at Cubs DNA love women who can kick butt. And with your boxing background, I'm sure you can kick all of our butts. We are rooting for you to get Trevor a massive deal, put Luba sports on the map, and hopefully carve a path for other women to gain involvement into the business of major league baseball.
Thank you for taking a similar fan-friendly and open approach to your work. As a die hard fan of the game, I love seeing the inner workings. Usually, we are forced to base opinions off of hypotheticals, because us fans are never going to be invited into a closed door meeting between a player, his agent, and the representatives of a team. Your online presence gives us a peek through the window to see some of these things that we just haven't seen before. Thank you for that!
Good job getting Trevor Bauer in with Lids as a brand ambassador. I can't believe that a top baseball hat company has never had an MLB player ambassador before. it seems like such an obvious move to be made. Kudos to you for jumping all over that fumble. Some of the smartest people in the industry didn't make it by having the most revolutionary ideas. They made it by finding and filling the gaps that were sitting right there, ripe for the picking.
Again, I am rooting for a big winter for Luba sports. Picking up Bauer right before his big season was huge, and I hope it becomes the big break that leads to the name Luba being talked about as often as say, Boras. It might take a few years, but I like the potential. Good luck!
XOXO,
Pronk
P.S. Please Bring Bauer to Chicago. He'd be a great fit on the roster, and could work with Ian Happ on the Compound. Between your online presence, Trevor's outreach, Yu Darvish's active twittering and Happ's podcast, it would be the "Avengers Assemble" moment of top online baseball people, pooling their skillsets to open the door for fans.