Oscar’s dash for home

Monday, Dec. 13, 2004 | 9:10 a.m.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- As promised, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman arrived at Major League Baseball's winter meetings Saturday with a showgirl on each arm, an Elvis impersonator trailing his every step and a sound bite for anyone who asked.

"That's Vegas," said one passerby.

"Oh, no hoaxes," Goodman said. "When I say something, I mean it. I wouldn't have left these girls at home if it were the last thing on earth."

Goodman slipped out of a dark stretch limousine in front of the Hilton Hotel at 2 p.m., adjusted a flickering mini "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign on his pin-striped lapel and yelled "Isn't this nice?" to a woman who paused to look at the flamboyant quartet.

"Yes!" she yelled back.

"Anytime this guy calls, I'm there for him. That's my boy," said Elvis wannabe Jesse Garon, glancing at Goodman. "Anything I can do for Vegas."

Two minutes later in a Hilton coffee shop, Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker gushed to Goodman, "I would love to manage in Las Vegas." Then Goodman & Co. took the limo across the street to the Marriott.

After strolling among the game's most prominent media members -- and a few select owners, executives and former players -- for two hours, Goodman raised a toast to his publicity efforts in a cocktail lounge.

Showgirls Jennifer Speelman and Porsha Revesz, Garon, City Councilman Larry Brown, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority president Rossi Ralenkotter and Las Vegas 51s general manager Don Logan each lifted a glass.

Speelman wore yellow feathers, Revesz red.

"To our success," said Goodman, who drained his Bombay Sapphire martini but didn't touch three skewered olives, "in eventually getting a baseball team to come to Las Vegas."

Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the relocation committee that put the Montreal Expos in Washington, D.C., instead of Vegas, then exchanged private pleasantries with Goodman.

A circus, someone said of the stunt. More like a Circus Circus. When someone asked Garon to step aside for a picture of the showgirls, he gave a quick, King-like "Yes, Ma'am" while curling the upper left side of his lip.

"Someone will have to show interest in Las Vegas," Goodman said during one of his many impromptu interviews, "and then we'll make them an offer they can't refuse."

"I've heard from too many people that Las Vegas is the next place for baseball," he said during another stop, "and I'll be talking with all comers."

Former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, now an executive with the parent club of the Triple-A 51s, called Goodman a good friend who will always do business in his own unique fashion.

"His way," Lasorda said. "Maybe he can get the publicity he needs and the attention he needs, and maybe he can get a major league team there."

Lasorda said he wouldn't be surprised if a major league team is in Las Vegas within five years.

Saturday's glitzy parade capped what Brown called "a perfect storm" of events that started two weeks ago, when MLB brass visited Las Vegas to explore its potential as a venue for winter meetings in 2007 or 2008.

That wave continued last week, when Sports Illustrated ran a glowing endorsement of Las Vegas' status as a major league city. According to Goodman, he gave quotes to the magazine that appeared in its story seven or eight months ago.

Florida Marlins vice chairman Joel Mael and vice president of communications P.J. Loyello then visited Goodman in his office Wednesday.

Plans for a new South Florida stadium for the Marlins have hit delays, and that franchise is one of several that might threaten to relocate. Florida has until the end of the month to exercise its option, a lease it calls the worst in the game, to play in Pro Player Stadium in 2006.

Both Goodman and the Florida officials, however, insisted that relocation was not a specific topic during their 90-minute chat.

The Marlins first contacted Logan on Dec. 3, then Logan contacted Brown, who spoke with Goodman and Ralenkotter before arranging Wednesday's meeting with Mael and Loyello.

Brown, whose brief career as a Las Vegas Stars pitcher ended 20 years ago, called Saturday's barnstorming mission through the winter meetings "a home run, it kept the momentum going from a couple days ago."

Goodman put the showgirls -- "My bodyguards," he said -- and Garon on a 6 p.m. America West flight back to Las Vegas, then he and Brown attended an annual commissioner's reception.

Goodman said Sunday that he and Brown then had further private conversations with Reinsdorf, MLB president Bob DuPuy and another baseball executive, and Logan and other 51s officials, after that dinner.

Details were not disclosed, and all agreed to meet or speak with each other again.

Along with Florida, the Oakland Athletics and Minnesota Twins have been often mentioned as potential relocation candidates in the near future. All three finished in the bottom third of MLB attendance last season.

"People are saying we're No. 1, saying we're the next one in line to get a team," Brown said. "But we have to demonstrate that we're ready for it."

Ralenkotter confirmed that a private effort to lure the Expos, who appear to have settled in Washington as the Nationals, to Las Vegas helped convince MLB brass that Southern Nevada might be a viable relocation option for other teams.

The Las Vegas area population of 1.6 million, its billing as one of the nation's fastest-growing cities and a rich tourism base that is expected to draw more than 36 million people in 2004 commanded attention.

Mike Shapiro, a consultant for the San Francisco Bay Area-based Centerfield Management Group, served as the point man in those discussions with the MLB relocation committee.

"We did provide a tremendous amount of information as (Shapiro) put their business plan and proposal together," Ralenkotter said of the LVCVA. "What (MLB) saw was the growth in Las Vegas over the last 10 years ... the visitors and the economy, and the fact that we're so business-friendly in the State of Nevada.

"(Shapiro) was in front of Major League Baseball and the relocation committee and all of the executives with that group, and they all realized that Las Vegas is this tremendous business market that has potential for them in the future."

Brown said he and Goodman envision a modern downtown stadium that would lead to the revitalization of the area, comparing it to how Coors Field improved a once-rundown area of Denver.

Industry sources said Monterrey, Mexico, is looked upon favorably by MLB as a temporary site for a relocation candidate while a major league stadium is being built in Las Vegas.

Goodman didn't even rule the Nationals out of the Vegas equation, although their stadium financing is thought to be nearing approval and baseball is reportedly close to appeasing Orioles owner Peter Angelos for moving a team so close to Baltimore.

"The Expos, they're still alive," Goodman said. "I don't know what's going to happen in Washington. Then the Marlins came up and spoke to us ... they certainly made a very nice impression upon myself."

As Goodman, and his entourage, did to many Saturday. A media room and a couple of offices, all rented by MLB, were the only off-limit areas to the group.

A Marriott hallway became so congested with gathering media around Goodman, who called himself "maybe one of the coolest mayors of all time," that all were forced into a large circular lobby by a hotel employee.

Goodman kept talking to anyone with a pen or a microphone.

"Las Vegas and baseball are a natural marriage," Goodman said. Gambling "is a foolish concern," he said, because MLB recognizes how well Vegas regulates and polices its sports books.

Marlins manager Jack McKeon, Hall of Famer Tony Perez, and former major leaguer and Nevada native Matt Williams each stopped Goodman to say hello.

"This is Oscar," Logan said. "This is what he does. If he is a better attorney than he is a PR guy, he must have been one hell of an attorney. This has gone from an 'if' to a 'when,' and the when is whenever. You have to give it to him.

"He's been pushing for it, and it looks like it's coming to fruition."

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