By Seth Jones
law community
Sports world
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Photograph courtesy of Augusto “Cookie” Rojas, Jr.
winter 2023
Never underestimate the power of a print flyer hung on a door. In the case of Augusto “Cookie” Rojas, Jr., JD ’98, one such flyer changed his life.
Rojas was working as a paralegal for the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office during the day and attending Suffolk Law in the evenings. He was exhausted at the time, he says, focused on graduating while also working difficult cases, from theft to murder.
“I was walking down the hall and I saw a flyer in a doorway,” Rojas recalls. It said “Suffolk University Law School Sports and Entertainment Legal Society,” and as a longtime sports fan, Rojas was immediately intrigued. “I had no idea I could use my law degree to work in sports.”
When he attended the meeting, one of the speakers suggested that attendees read a book called the 50 Coolest Jobs in Sports. The next day Rojas went to the public library and checked it out.
“I always thought I was going to be a prosecutor or do criminal defense. But reading that book changed everything,” he says.
Today, Rojas could write a book on cool sports jobs based on his own life experiences. Since graduating from Suffolk Law, Rojas has worked as the general sales manager of his hometown Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox (now in Worcester, Mass); general manager of the Triple-A New Orleans Baby Cakes; senior vice president of the Double-A Wichita Wind Surge; and director of corporate sales for Golden Grape Entertainment, a company that managed an NBA minor league squad and a professional soccer team.
In March 2021, Rojas started a new job as a regional supervisor for Major League Baseball. He oversees three player development leagues across the South Atlantic, Midwest, and Texas, where his duties include compliance with league guidelines and fan and player safety.
The job keeps him on his toes—and on airplanes. “I’ve visited all 34 teams that I supervise—from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Amarillo, Texas,” he says.
Months before Major League Baseball made its decision to adopt a new rule giving pitchers just 14 seconds to throw a pitch—an idea Rojas helped oversee in the minor leagues—he had to observe whether time-clock operators and umpires were interpreting the new rule properly.
Suffolk memories
Rojas is still thankful to Suffolk’s sports and entertainment legal society for helping launch his career—and for a Suffolk Law education that gave him the skills to succeed.
Professor Steven Ferrey’s contracts class was notoriously hard, he says, but Rojas has used lessons he learned there to help him write contracts for corporate sponsorships with the U.S. Army, Delta Dental, and Turkish Airlines, among others. When negotiating such partnerships, he turned to his Suffolk negotiation and mediation courses, which taught him to think like a mediator rather than a salesperson. “Sometimes it’s difficult to remember that you’re not just selling your side. The better mindset is that you’re building a partnership that makes sense for everyone involved.”
Networking, a hundred times
To get his start in sports, Rojas, a former Marine and veteran of the Gulf War, conducted over a hundred informational interviews and built an impressive network, which included the late Lou Schwechheimer, who owned the Pawtucket Red Sox and gave Rojas his first jobs after he graduated from Suffolk with minor league teams in New Orleans and Kansas.
The meaning of a law degree
Rojas still proudly remembers the day he walked off the stage at the FleetCenter (now TD Garden) with his Suffolk Law degree in hand. “I knew what I wanted to do, and it was in my mind’s eye. It’s a cliche, but graduating made me realize that I can accomplish whatever I put my heart, soul, and mind toward.”