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Many prominent baseball agents hold a law degree.

Tony Attanasio decided against getting one, and got along fine without it.

A former minor-league shortstop and insurance salesman, Attanasio built up one of the larger clienteles in Major League Baseball by the 1980s and represented stars such as Goose Gossage and Ichiro Suzuki across his four-plus decades in the business.

“He had street smarts, he had common sense — and that combination of common sense, street smarts, and intelligence is dangerous,” said Dave Stewart, a former client who pitched for three World Series champions.

“There’s nobody else you’d want in the bunker with you,” said Bruce Bochy, who landed a catching job with the Padres soon after hiring Attanasio. “It didn’t matter if you weren’t that good of a player, you felt like it when he went in to negotiate and you went with him. He really believed in his players, fought for them and loved them.”

To have Attanasio as your agent was also to have a friend for life, said Bochy and Stewart, who guided the 1998 Padres to the World Series as manager and pitching coach, respectively.

Stewart said Attanasio became like a big brother to him and served as his only agent in a 40-plus year MLB career that began in 1978 with the Dodgers and saw him work as a front office executive and player agent.

Where Stewart could intimidate hitters with his fastball and scowl underneath a cap pulled low, Attanasio brought his own heat.

“He’d say, ‘Do you want me to talk to you with good manners or do you want me to talk to you with good judgment?’ ” Stewart said. “Obviously, you want good judgment. And from Day 1, he was always like that. He always told me the truth.

“He didn’t baby me, he didn’t coddle me. He was honest, and he didn’t tell me what I thought he should hear — he told me what I needed to hear in all situations. He knew my family, and my family knew him, and consequently he became a part of my family.”

Said Bochy: “This wasn’t just a professional relationship, and that’s how Tony was with all his players.