Baseball
Looking to relocate? Head on down to Max Mann Realty, where they always hit you a home run.
OK, so that’s not the actual slogan of Max Mann Realty. In fact, Max Mann Realty doesn’t even exist. Yet.
But it may not be far off. As of last summer, the right-handed-hitting freshman from Los Angeles is a licensed real estate agent in the state of California.
“It’s one of the first things in my life that was interesting,” said Mann about taking a four-week, biweekly “cram” real estate course last summer. “It was real-world applied knowledge.”
Mann, who has split 35 starts between right field and designated hitter this season, said he needed a summer activity to squeeze between baseball games and training sessions following his senior year in high school.
Summer school at Southern California or UCLA took too long, he said, and getting a full-time job would take away from his preparation for baseball at Northwestern.
So with his father, Robert, already licensed to sell real estate — along with being a private investment banker and non-practicing lawyer — Mann decided to venture into the vast mountains of real estate intricacies and terminology.
“I remember him coming home, and he was fascinated,” said his mother, Hollis Harman. “It was new material. It was a whole new vocabulary. It was a lot of new information, but he said, ‘This is incredible. It’s like taking knowledge that you can actually use.’
“Although he was an excellent student and loved to learn in high school, this really grabbed him.”
It grabbed him so much that Mann is only a state-required fingerprinting away from legally being allowed to jump into the booming California real estate market — something he may do during the summer or after graduating from NU.
Max and Robert Mann said some day they plan to open their own real estate office in Los Angeles, where the elder Mann said they will operate as jacks-of-all-trades — buying and selling their own real estate, helping others buy or sell property and helping arrange mortgages.
In the meantime, though, the freshman has made improvements to his game while helping the Wildcats to a 10-10 Big Ten record and a tie for fifth place. He is hitting .267 with 25 RBIs, and last Saturday — his 19th birthday — he hit a two-run blast in an 8-4 win over Iowa as his parents looked on.
Mann also is second on the team with two outfield assists — and has given some off-the-field assists to his teammates as well.
Planning to room next year with friends and fellow freshmen Jake Owens and Aaron Newman, Mann moved into a closer’s role when signing the lease on their apartment.
“He tried to act like a professional and everything,” Owens joked. “Actually, it helped us out when we signed the lease. He worked out a few little quirks like getting our floors redone and everything like that. So (it’s) nice to have a licensed real estate agent living in our apartment.”
Even while heading down the realty path, Mann said he isn’t sure it will be his career. He said he plans to take real estate courses at NU next fall and become licensed in Illinois, but he also has eyes for business or law school.
“Right now (real estate) seems like something I can do while I’m in college, maybe the first few years out of college, and then see where it goes from there,” Mann said. “But at the moment, it’s really the only education I have that I can use to make money, legitimate money.”
As for baseball, he said: “I’m going to work as hard as I can. And if it works out, great, but if it doesn’t, that’s why I’m here — to get the education to go along with it.”
But coach Paul Stevens, while pleased with Mann’s performance on the baseball field, said the freshman better not get too far away from the real estate field.
“That’s part of our deal,” Stevens joked. “He has to give me a percentage of his life income as a real estate person.”
Reach Patrick Dorsey at [email protected].
