Sardinha not close
to signing with Royals

He will begin attending classes
at Pepperdine if an agreement
is not reached

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Acting under the guidance of one of the toughest negotiating agents in baseball, Dane Sardinha now appears unsignable to the Kansas City Royals.

Royals general manager Herk Robinson said yesterday he doubts that the former Kamehameha Schools catcher his club took in the second round of June's amateur draft will agree to terms before he boards a plane for Pepperdine University in 10 days.

If Sardinha begins attending class at Pepperdine, he won't be eligible for another draft until his junior year. He has accepted a four-year baseball scholarship there.

"When you've got two parties who want to make a deal, it can happen, but when you have one party that doesn't want to make a deal, I don't believe you can," said Robinson.

He said he's willing to give Sardinha the value of the Pepperdine baseball scholarship and money on top of that.

"He can have his cake and eat it too," he said.

"I would like to sign but if the offer is not what it should be, I'll go to school," said Sardinha last night.

Asked if he thinks he'd have any regrets about not signing, Sardinha said no.

"Not really. For me, I feel it is probably their loss and some other team's gain in the future," he said.

Robinson said he will probably make a last effort to sign Sardinha.

"And I'm sure our offer, before it's over, will be more than anybody has received in that area (second round)," said Robinson. "But our philosophy has to be that we're going to give the player something within the range of where he was selected."

Robinson has said the Royals sorely need a strong catching prospect in their system, but the negotiating gap between the parties appears to be very wide.

While neither the Sardinha family nor Robinson will specify figures, the difference seems to be between $700,000 and $800,000.

Sardinha said last night that the offer will have to be well over $1 million, but the Royals have implied they don't plan to go much beyond the $300,000 range in which they signed last year's second-round pick.

Sardinha's legal advisor, Scott Boras, the high-powered agent who represents multi-millionaire big leaguers like Greg Maddux and Kevin Brown, and who negotiated major draft bonuses for first-round picks Andy Benes ($247,000 in 1988), Ben McDonald ($350,000 in 1989), Todd Van Poppel ($500,000 in 1990) and Brien Taylor ($1.55 million in 1991), has stated that Sardinha is worthy of a first-round bonus.

"Like it or not, they're dealing with a first-round talent in Dane," Boras was quoted as saying in a June 9 Star-Bulletin story.

That's a position Sardinha himself has expressed throughout the telephone negotiations with the Royals, although his mother, Darneen, has done much of the actual communicating with Robinson.

"I thought I should've gone in the first round," said Sardinha. "They should pay by my potential and not by where I was picked."

Boras, widely regarded as an agent clubs hate to face in negotiations, also said in the June 9 story that Sardinha was the "best catcher" in the 1997 draft.

Having received an early indication that the Florida Marlins would take him in the first round, Sardinha was bypassed. Some say it was because Boras lurked in the background.

The Cleveland Indians phoned him in the sandwich round between the first and second rounds, but Sardinha turned them down. He was finally taken 59th overall in the second by Kansas City.

Other Boras clients have acted on threats to go to school. Tim Belcher, the Minnesota Twins' top pick in 1983, did that, and then three years later signed with the Oakland A's for triple his original offer.

Belcher now pitches for the Royals, along with five other Boras clients.

But Robinson said his club did not originally sign any of them.

Boras' top draft client, second-overall pick J.D. Drew (Philadelphia Phillies) did not sign with the major league club and is now playing for the St. Paul Saints of the Northern League. Reportedly, Drew was about $8 million apart in negotiations. He, too, supposedly paid the price for being a Boras client. Projected as the No. 1 pick in the draft, the Detroit Tigers decided he was unsignable and let him fall to the Phillies.

"The impression I have is that the chances of him (Sardinha) going out and playing professional baseball are not particularly high," said Robinson.

"I think that he feels he's better off going to school. For what we're offering, that's my impression. I don't agree with that, of course, and I don't want to discuss the situation publicly, but normally the bonuses that a player receives are predicated on where they are drafted."

Robinson said he's disappointed with Sardinha's attitude.

"Generally speaking, you'd rather have a player who says, 'Hey, let me go out and play. I'll show you what I can do.' "

Said Sardinha, "It's not a matter of me not wanting to play. It's a matter of them not wanting to pay."

Robinson hinted that it might be in Sardinha's best interest to take matters into his own hands.