Many hope former agent Dennis Gilbert might someday buy the Dodgers

When baseball industry analysts name prospective new owners for the Dodgers, they always include former high-powered player agent Dennis Gilbert, who has a home in Calabasas, an office in Beverly Hills and eight front-row seats at Dodger Stadium.

Gilbert will not say he is interested in buying the debt-ridden franchise - nor will he say he isn't.

"It's not for sale," he said, one variation of the lines he has used to fend off questions as current owners Frank and Jamie McCourt's problems deepened in the past year and a half.

But Gilbert's interest is widely assumed, as is the wherewithal of the impeccably tailored man with the brightest grin at the ballpark.

Many Dodgers fans know his name from his days as the agent who negotiated record-shattering contracts for players as big - and controversial - as Barry Bonds.

Many know of his other connections in the sport as a speedy former minor-league outfielder nicknamed "Go Go," as promoter of causes from needy ex-scouts to inner-city ballfields, as an adviser to Chicago White Sox management, and as head of an investors group that came close to buying the Texas Rangers in 2009.

And some have a sense of the local roots of the Gardena High School and Los Angeles City College product who used to coach a college all-star team called the San Fernando Orioles.

No wonder his potential in the Dodgers Ownership Derby is an open secret.

As Gilbert was having a light

breakfast with a reporter at a Woodland Hills deli recently, the waitress poured coffee and casually told the frequent customer: "When you buy the Dodgers, let me know."

Gilbert, 64, who has lived in Calabasas for more than 20 years with his wife, Cindi, and three daughters, has never been away from the game for long.

"When you talk with me, you talk baseball," he said.

He grew up without money in Gardena, playing ball in a park where players had to dodge a water fountain in right-center field. In those days before Major League Baseball came to Los Angeles, Gilbert loved to listen to radio re-creations of big-league games on Saturdays.

After the Dodgers arrived in 1958, Gilbert and his friends would buy 90-cent tickets for the top deck, and save money by parking on the street.

Now he pays six figures each year for season tickets in the front row right behind home plate, where he is visible in TV camera shots at virtually every Dodgers home game.

Gilbert began his rise in insurance and estate planning at age 24 after his career in the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets farm systems stalled. The company had him phone newlyweds and read a script. He was a flop at the cold calls, and sought a better way.

Gilbert went to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records every day, approaching couples walking out holding the manila envelopes containing marriage licenses. He became such a fixture, a judge asked him to serve as a witness for civil ceremonies. He wound up the best man at a few hundred weddings.

Broadening that approach, he made early-morning trips to hospital and courthouse cafeterias to pitch insurance to doctors and lawyers.

Dale Gribow, an attorney who has been close friends with Gilbert for 40 years, said he remembers lending Gilbert $10,000 "on a handshake" so he could upgrade his one-suit wardrobe and replace his van with a car.

Gribow said Gilbert repaid him, just as years later Gilbert reimbursed him and clients after an investment tip went bad.

"He's the hardest-working man I know, and the most honorable man I know," Gribow said.

Gilbert added baseball players to his increasingly glittering client list, a move that led him to his second career as an agent. He began with a partnership with former Red Sox star Tony Conigliaro that was cut short by Conigliaro's heart attack and stroke (which led to his death eight years later).

Gilbert became a passenger and a pilot of the sport's economic skyrocket.

Three times in 1990-92, Gilbert's Beverly Hills Sports Council negotiated record-high salaries for Jose Canseco, Bobby Bonilla and Bonds.

A 1993 Sports Illustrated article drew a contrast between Gilbert's style and rival superagent Scott Boras' more controversial approach.

"He understood the management side as well. He'd negotiate in a way that was a win-win," Roland Hemond, a veteran baseball club executive, said last week, remembering how Gilbert would break the ice with pranks and magic tricks.

Hemond said something about Gilbert you might not expect to hear about an agent: "He's quite a guy. He's well-respected in the game."

After 19 years as an agent, Gilbert sold his share of his agency to his partners in 1999, saying he wanted to return to the insurance business - and do other things in baseball.

Gilbert, a partner in the Wilshire Boulevard insurance and estate-planning firm Gilbert-Krupin, has better seats at Dodgers games than Frank McCourt.

If - as is generally expected - McCourt is compelled to sell the team valued by Forbes at $800 million, could the seats of power shift to behind the plate?

The speculated-on list of bidders includes Ron Burkle, the Pomona-born part-owner of hockey's Pittsburgh Penguins (whose investment group is said to include former Dodgers star Steve Garvey), and Mark Cuban, owner of basketball's Dallas Mavericks.

"Dennis is uniquely qualified," said David Carter, a Los Angeles-based sports business consultant who is executive director of the University of Southern California's Sports Business Institute, for which Gilbert serves on the advisory council.

"He not only possesses an extraordinary understanding of the business of baseball from both the labor and management perspectives, but also is deeply committed to our region, as evidenced by his well-documented philanthropic involvement throughout Southern California."

Michael Trujillo, an L.A. political consultant who serves as spokesman for OwnTheDodgers.com - which proposes public ownership of the franchise - said he believes Gilbert would be a popular choice with baseball officials and fans.

"He meets all of the qualifications people have been calling out for," Trujillo said. "L.A.-based. A Dodgers fan. A love for the game."

Jon Weisman, who feels the pulse of Dodgers fans as writer of the Dodger Thoughts blog, thinks Gilbert is "the guy that would appeal to people."

Analysts think Gilbert, as a Dodgers owner, would be very hands-on with baseball decisions.

That wish to use his varied experience to run a baseball team's front office may have cost Gilbert the Rangers. It fed whispers (which he denied) that he planned to fire Nolan Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher- turned-team-president.

But it could help him get the Dodgers.

"He has all the attributes to be a very good owner," Hemond said. "You can see him in that role."

If they're for sale.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18212980?source=rss

Catherine Bell Abbie Cornish Kerry Suseck Isla Fisher Jessica Paré