Lisa Guerrero: Scouting the baseball scouts’ dinner
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As far as glamour events go in the sports community, the sixth annual Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation dinner and auction ranks pretty high.
Scott and I were in attendance on Saturday night at the Century Plaza to support Dennis Gilbert, the event’s host, but mainly to help recognize the work and contributions of many unsung heroes of baseball -- its scouts.
Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame honors players, managers, executives, umpires, writers and broadcasters. However, there isn’t a place for scouts to be recognized there so it’s nice to see an evening where those who toil in baseball’s trenches are front and center. Hank King, Dave Garcia, Gene Bennett, Mel Didier, Epy Guerrero, Moose Johnson and Lenny Yochim all received awards.
Also being honored were George Brett, Goose Gossage, the Alou family and Whitey Herzog. The hosts were actors Brendan Fraser and Don Johnson.
All in all, a pretty impressive group of folks were in attendance. So who wouldn’t want to get dolled up, have a nice steak dinner and listen to these legends share baseball stories?
Apparently, Frank McCourt.
At exactly 9:28 p.m. the Dodgers owner stood up and made his exit -- right in the
middle of Dave Winfield’s speech. Guess he didn’t want to sit through the rest of the honorees. The ones he missed were Herzog, Brett, Gossage and Tommy Lasorda (although, to be fair, McCourt can listen to Lasorda’s speeches any time he wants).
McCourt missed some great moments, including Gossage ribbing Brett about ‘the pine tar incident’ and calling him ‘a cheater,’ and an off-color joke by Herzog that I’d love to pass along here but Sports Editor Randy Harvey would just edit it out.
Guess you had to be there, but McCourt wasn’t either. Maybe he had to rush home to catch ‘Saturday Night Live?’
(By the way ... how much does SNL stink without Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? And Seth Meyers by himself on ‘Weekend Update’ is brutal! Can somebody ask Lorne Michaels to hire an African American woman or Latina -- please?! End of rant.)
The combined years of Major League Baseball service of the legends that McCourt skipped out on are 152 and they have won a total of six World Series championships. McCourt’s years in the MLB: five. Number of championships: zero.
-- Lisa Guerrero
Lisa Guerrero has covered Super Bowls, the NBA Finals and the World Series, along with the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys. As an actress, she has appeared on ‘Frasier’ and ‘The George Lopez Show’ and as Billy Baldwin’s long-suffering wife in the film ‘A Plumm Summer,’ which she executive-produced.