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For two years, Dino Ebel's name was on the short list of candidates to fill the vacant Las Vegas 51s manager's office, a cramped corner of the third-base clubhouse at Cashman Field.
For the first time, Ebel moved into that office this week, but not quite in the way he imagined it.
After spending 18 years in the Dodger system, the Barstow native and Southern Nevada resident was hired this winter as the Los Angeles Angels' Triple-A manager.
He's now 9-5 with Salt Lake in his first year at Triple-A, quickly leaving a good impression with those in his new organization -- one that has increasingly taken the face of his old one.
"This guy is a professional, he's hard-working," Angels minor league director Tony Reagins said. "He's the first one at the ballpark and the last one to leave. He's got a passion for the game, he's a solid evaluator, it's been a tremendous hire for us."
Ebel spent three years as the skipper of the Dodgers' Double-A team at Jacksonville, posting a 209-206 record and winning the 2002 second-half championship.
He finally earned a promotion within the Dodgers late in 2004, after Terry Kennedy was let go as the 51s' skipper. Dodgers minor league director Terry Collins called Ebel to offer him the job as hitting coach in Las Vegas, and Ebel, seeing an opportunity to move up and spend two years closer to home, quickly accepted.
Days after he accepted, the phone at his North Las Vegas home rang again.
"Terry Collins called me and said the Angels have called for permission to talk to you about the manager's permission for Salt Lake," Ebel said. "I drove to Anaheim from Las Vegas, and met with (Reagins) for over an hour. I went through the interview process and a couple weeks later they called and offered me the position and I took it."
It was Collins who advised Ebel that a shift might be a good idea.
"Obviously it's a great move for Dino, and I told him that this winter," Collins said. "I was in the exact same spot he was in in 1988. People knew me as a Dodger, but leaving the organization was the best thing that ever happened to me."
Collins went on to join the Pirates' coaching staff before starting a six-year stint as a major league manager.
"He had good advice for me," Ebel said. "He was a Dodger coming up through the minor league organization, and he did the same thing I'm doing. He didn't play in the big leagues but he played in the minor leagues, he coached, managed and got his first break when he left the Dodgers."
The move out of the Dodgers system came a year after he and his family moved from his hometown of Barstow to North Las Vegas -- just before the price of housing skyrocketed, he pointed out -- in late 2003.
He grew up in Barstow, a "sports town that's right in the middle of everywhere," as he puts it. His mom was an Italian immigrant whose dad worked for the railroad, his father stationed at the Marine Corps base in nearby Yermo.
In his first professional season, Ebel was the Gulf Coast League player of the year, hitting .337 that season. It was also that year that he met his wife, Shannon, who just happened to be from Barstow.
They knew each other -- "Just hello, hi, that type of stuff," he said. But they were soon married, traveling the world when Dino made playing and managing trips to places like Panama and Australia.
"We've got to travel around the country pretty good with my baseball life," he said.
Now, Ebel has gotten the opportunity to be closer to home than he's been in years, with 13-year-old daughter Destiny out at Cashman Field all week after her day's done at Seville Middle School.
"It's tough on the family life. You're always gone. My wife, we've been together for 18 years. She met me while we were playing baseball, she knows this is what I want to do," he said.
In his playing days, Ebel was known as an aggressive hitter who played with focus. In 1992, the Dodgers pursued him about taking his baseball career to a different level.
"They said, 'Have you ever thought about your career in coaching? You seem like you're in tune, you're always asking questions, you're picking different baseball peoples' minds,' " he said. "I just felt, if you have a uniform on you have a chance to get to the big leagues. Now I'm still in uniform as a coach, and that dream is still there to get to the big leagues."
As a manager, Ebel is just as aggressive, his Italian side showing from time to time. On a controversial call Wednesday, Ebel exploded at an umpire, his body moving in cartoon-character speed to demonstrate why he thought his view of the play was accurate.
"I've always felt you treat people the way you like to be treated," he said. "If you're honest with people, you come to the yard trying to get better every day, the players know that. The players know myself and my staff are here to get them to the next level. We're going to work hard every day. Whatever it takes to get them to the big leagues, that's what we're going to do."
John Shoemaker, a longtime Dodger farmhand who is now serving as Ebel's successor in Jacksonville, worked with Ebel frequently in the past 16 years.
"He's a terrific baseball person," Shoemaker said. "He really studies the game of baseball. He's always talking about different baseball situations. He's just a fun guy to be around at the ballpark. He's someone who really enjoys working with young baseball players."
Ebel certainly found his share of former Dodgers to work with in the Angels organization, including Ron Roenicke, Mickey Hatcher, Alfredo Griffin and Mike Scioscia.
"From spring training, it was outstanding being in major league camp and finishing up in minor league camp and then heading to the freeway series," Ebel said. "Going to Dodger Stadium, just a great experience. Going there and facing the Dodgers, a team I'd been with for 17 years. I'm happy that I'm over here and it's been outstanding since day one."
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