He’s still the same Edi who made local Legion ball what it is today

By Ron Kantowski

Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2008 | 2 a.m.

They said it couldn’t be done.

Hold an American Legion State Tournament in Las Vegas without Edi Gomez?

Surely, you jest.

But it’s true.

Actually, it has been several years since the diminutive native of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, was directly involved with Legion baseball in Las Vegas. But that doesn’t make it any less strange to go to a game and not find him there, settling a dispute, dragging the infield, taking tickets ... doing anything and everything to promote local kids through the game he has always loved.

Gomez said he got out several years ago because Raven, his wife of 50 years, threatened to hit him over the head with a Louisville Slugger. Plus, “I feel old sometimes.”

Well, that’s understandable, because although he’s still sharper than Johan Santana on four days’ rest, Gomez turned 86 in April. “He doesn’t drive at night anymore,” says only son Mike, the longtime baseball coach at Eldorado and Durango who recently retired from coaching, beating his old man by oh, a quarter-century or so.

But otherwise, Edi with an “i,” which is what the Sun sports staff always called him, hasn’t changed at all.

At home, there are pictures of his heroes — Roberto Clemente, Fernando Valenzuela, Tito Puente — on the walls, interspersed with Raven’s paintings. Tito Puente? Yessir. Before Gomez rescued the local Legion program, he was a singer with Enric Madriguera’s orchestra and other top Latin bands of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. He sang at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip, the Cinegrill on Hollywood Boulevard and later at El Rancho on the Las Vegas Strip, where he met Raven, who was serving cocktails. And Frank and Dean and Sammy and Peter Lawford, who were drinking them.

He even had a small role in the original “Ocean’s Eleven.” He was the emcee counting down to the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, setting the whole caper in motion.

“The original ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ is the best one of all,” Gomez says in his thick accent, his familiar silver-gray ponytail dancing gently on his shoulders.

The state Legion program was as wobbly as Dean Martin at 4 a.m. when Gomez became its chairman in 1979. “That’s when I became an SOB,” he says.

He agreed to run it on one condition — that he have total autonomy. Gomez ruled with an iron fist and a set of rules that were put into writing, the first time that had happened. The one he is most proud of? Rule 6 under Playing Regulations: “The use of any form of tobacco by a player, coach, manager or umpire while on the playing field (and the dugout, bullpen and on-deck circle) is prohibited.”

A version of his tobacco rule now appears in the national American Legion Baseball handbook.

It seems just yesterday that Tyler Houston, who would go on to become the second player selected in the Major League draft, showed up at the field with a can of smokeless tobacco in his uniform pocket and challenged the old man’s crazy rule.

Gomez told the bonus baby that if he didn’t get rid of the snuff, his team might as well look for another cleanup hitter. Or go home.

Houston remained in the lineup.

That little ring on the back pocket of his uniform was where he used to keep his Skoal.