01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Once upon a time, he contacted Chris Clark, asking if Clark needed a statistician on Providence College basketball broadcasts.

No matter that Clark was the broadcaster of the era, PC games were bigger than life itself then, and Jeremy Kapstein was 15. He got the job, and went on to achieve a sliver of local fame, doing stats for PC games for 10 years.

In the 1970s he came out of nowhere to become the biggest baseball agent in the game, Jerry Maguire before Jerry Maguire. Every year he would come back to Providence, rent an office on the fourth floor of the Hospital Trust Tower for a couple of weeks and shop some of the biggest free agents in the game, negotiations that changed the game, creating the free-agent market as we've come to know it. He was so influential at the time that United Press International once said the two most influential figures in sport in 1976 were a 14-year-old Romanian gymnast named Nadia Comaneci and a 33-year-old lawyer named Jerry Kapstein.

In 1989 he had moved over to management, becoming the CEO of the San Diego Padres.

A decade later he was awarded the R.I. Coalition for the Homeless Humanitarian Award, for behind-the-scenes work for the homeless in San Diego.

For the last four years he's been a senior baseball advisor to the Red Sox,

maybe best known locally for sitting behind the plate at all home games, a visible presence.

The lesson?

Never underestimate Jeremy Kapstein.

So maybe it shouldn't be all that surprising that Kapstein has surfaced as a viable candidate to be the new general manager of the Red Sox, seemingly rising out of the chaos of the Red Sox' front office like some phoenix out of the ashes.

If this were a television soap opera, no one would believe it, this ongoing saga of what's happened to the Red Sox in the last month, As The World Turns in doubleknit uniforms. Theo inexplicably left, Larry Lucchino essentially went into hiding, the perception being that the front office was in shambles and no one wanted to come to Boston, a perception that only grows when here it is only a month after Theo quit and there's still no new general manager.

Then, just when it appears that everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, the Sox make a huge trade, getting one of the most talented young pitchers in the game, a veteran third baseman and a relief pitcher from the cash-strapped Marlins for four minor-leaguers.

Can you make this up?

But a funny thing happened in the last 10 days or so. Kapstein, who always has been a behind-the-scenes guy with the Red Sox, a sort of unofficial troubleshooter hired by Lucchino in the 2002 season to be an adviser, has become a lot more visible. It began when the Sox brought in David Wilder, the assistant GM of the White Sox. Sitting next to him at the press conference was Kapstein, the symbolic face of the franchise. For that day, anyway.

Last weekend it only intensified.

He was mentioned in one Boston paper as a possible interim general manager, the other as one of the people instrumental in the trade that brings Josh Beckett here. He also was in the New York Post, where he was called "decisive" and someone who "brings people and deals together."

"The emergence of the Red Sox senior baseball advisor Jeremy Kapstein is worth noting," wrote Kevin Kernan, who worked in San Diego when Kapstein was there, and once said Kapstein cleaned up the dysfunctional Padres and had "a vision that was way ahead of everyone else, and if there are 24 hours in the day, he must have worked 23 of them."

So could he settle in here as an interim GM, someone to stabilize things until the Red Sox find someone they want to lead them into the future?

Why not?

Kapstein's roots run deep through baseball, going back more than 30 years. He is well respected in the game, deeply connected to many people in it, and his unofficial candidacy for the job is attracting supporters within the organization. The word is Terry Francona wants him, as does the Pawtucket Red Sox organization. If nothing else, he would provide a familiar face, a bridge over troubled waters.

Yesterday, Kapstein admitted that he and Lucchino have talked about him becoming the general manager for a year, even to the point of agreeing on a salary, although the job has yet to be offered.

And maybe it never will be.

Maybe the Red Sox ultimately will decide to go in a different direction.

But two weeks ago Kapstein was not being mentioned, and now he is.

And one other thing.

Don't underestimate Jeremy Kapstein.