Overview:
Bill Geivett’s career batting average of .402 has remained UCSB’s school record for nearly four decades
Baseball All-American Bill Geivett is playing in a different kind of league these days.
The former UC Santa Barbara star didn’t make it to the big leagues until he pivoted through the front-office door as a Major League Baseball executive.
But now he’s taking a swing at the social media world.
Geivett has founded a company, IMA TEAM Inc., which is about to release a new events-centric application for the mobile world.
“I’m at the point where I want to start sprinting,” he told Noozhawk.
Geivett used his head as much as his legs when he ran the bases for the Gauchos during the mid-1980s.
“He was flawless going from first to third,” former Gaucho coach Al Ferrer once recalled.
“He set the school record for triples and stole 20 bases because he was smart, not because he was fast.”
Geivett wore many hats atop that calculating brain during the 28 years he climbed the ladder of professional baseball — from player to coach to scout to Major League general manager.
The late Tommy Lasorda, one of the game’s great ambassadors, became a guiding light when the Los Angeles Dodgers hired Geivett as an assistant general manager in 1998.
“He told me that if you love your job you never work a day in your life,” Geivett said when he left the Dodgers to become the Colorado Rockies’ director of player personnel.
“I still feel like I’m on scholarship because I have people pay me to learn more about the game I love.”
He eventually reached baseball’s peak with the Rockies as the team’s director of Major League operations.
Geivett diverted to a different basepath, however, when his 14-year run with the Rockies ended a decade ago.
He wrote a book — Do You Want to Work in Baseball? — to help others get into the game that he’d just opted to leave.
“I like action too much to feel like I was counting down to retirement in a role that wasn’t really exciting to me,” Geivett explained on the eve of his 61st birthday.
“I asked myself, ‘What would I really want to do with the remaining years of my working life?’”
He turned to the invention of the next generation.
Going Mobile
IMA TEAM has devised a ground-breaking application that Geivett said “connects with teams, coaches and friends” while also sharing sports content.
The app is free for users and costs $59.99 a year for the platform’s group.
“It’s the first of its kind in social media with an integrated calendar with whatever team or group you follow,” he said. “There’s nothing like that on Facebook or Instagram or other platforms.
“It’s on Google Play and in the Apple Store, and you can do it on iPads and anything mobile.”
He’s signed up organizations ranging from MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks to the University of Indiana at Columbus to city league softball teams.
Geviett has already “soft-launched” the app while still signing up founding members.
Although he’s dubbed IMA TEAM as “Your ultimate sports hub,” it does play outside the lines of athletics.
“Some of the people with the most interest are those in the music world,” Geivett said. “If you follow a local venue that has live music, the app will tell you that, for example, ‘Geivo and the Gauchos’ are playing on Friday.
“You click on Friday and it’ll list your softball game, and then you can search further to figure out, ‘Where are we going after that? … OK, this group is playing here, and that guy is over at the Comedy Club.’”
His ultimate goal is to help nonprofits, both through the app and with what it earns.
“It came down to that I really want to be benevolent at this stage of my life,” Geivett said. “And if I’m going to be benevolent, I’ve got to make a lot of money — right?.
“Or I need to have a company that’s worth a lot of money so we can impact as many young kids as possible.
“Youth sports is an interest, and it doesn’t even have to be sports. I could be education or music or something else.”
Gaucho Hall of Famer
Geivett became a Gaucho trailblazer after transferring from Sacramento City College during the fall of 1983.
All Ferrer needed were two seasons as his coach to predict great things for the heady third baseman.
The Rockies won their first National League pennant in 2007 just two years after elevating Geivett to assistant general manager.
“He had a very confident personality and was an astute analyst of situations on a baseball field,” Ferrer said at the time.
“He always knew what he was doing, and his work ethic was off the charts.”
Geivett did delay his entry into professional baseball, turning down contract offers three straight years so he could remain in college.
It made him one of the few players ever selected in four straight MLB drafts (seventh round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1982, fifth round by the Chicago White Sox in 1983, 11th round by the Chicago Cubs in 1984, and 13th round by the Los Angeles Angels in 1985).
“Education was pretty important to our family,” he explained. “My dad was an enlisted Navy man … Mom was from the Philippines and never went to college.
“From their standpoint, all of their kids were going to college — and we all did.”
Geivett wound up earning both a bachelor’s degree from UCSB and a master’s from Azusa Pacific.
The Cubs, he pointed out, waited too long to make their money offer after his junior season of 1984.
Geivett told them, “I’ve already got my place at UCSB, living on Del Playa right on the cliff in Isla Vista … So it’s either stay there or go play in Lodi? I know what Lodi looks like … I’m from Sacramento.’”
He broke a Gaucho record that next spring by banging out 100 hits. That mark has only been tied since then — in 2001 by future MLB star and now Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker.
Geivett’s batting average of .412 in 1985 ranks second in UCSB history only to the .434 mark that Cy Williams hit in 1948.
“The best offensive game I ever saw was when we played at UNLV (a 13-11 loss),” Ferrer said. “Matt Williams went homer, homer, homer against us, but Bill kept countering him … getting a single, then a double, a triple and finally a home run to complete the cycle.
“It was basically a boxing match between those two.”
Geivett’s career batting average of .402 remains a Gaucho record.
He set other marks that have since been broken such as most triples in a season (eight) and career (13), as well as runs scored in a career (74).
Taking a Hit
He wore many hats during his four minor-league seasons with the Angels. He played all four infield positions, the outfield and even made six pitching appearances. He posted a respectable earned-run average of 4.05 during his 6⅔ innings on the mound.
Geivett’s playing career, however, was fraught with injuries. He was batting .273 at Double-A Midland in 1988 when a torn knee ligament sidelined him for good.
“I was supposed to do rehab for 18 months and I did probably 10, so the strength in my left leg never really came all the way back,” Geivett said.
“I’ve got a screw holding my shoulder together and I still have a broken hamate (hand bone).”
He served as an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount and then at Long Beach State before the New York Yankees lured him back to professional baseball in 1991 as a scout and organizational instructor.
Geivett also worked for the Montreal Expos, Tampa Bay Rays and the Dodgers before winding up with the Rockies.
Lasorda had a life-altering influence on him. The Dodgers’ Hall of Fame manager had moved into the club’s front office by the time Geivett was added to the staff in 1998.
“I lived in Yorba Linda and Tommy lived in Fullerton, so I’d pick him up and drive him to the stadium,” Geivett said. “Whenever I went to see a minor league team, he’d go with me.
“His job was to be Tommy Lasorda, and he was really good at it. And we were together all the time.
“I think I gained 25 pounds just taking all those lunches with him.”
Geivett learned a lot about baseball at spring training in Vero Beach, Florida, during their walks through Dodgertown.
“We’d walk every night, and Tommy would tell me stories about people like Branch Rickey, and how he viewed things,” he said.
“He always said, ‘I’m going to give you the best education — even better than if you went to Harvard and Yale.’”
True-Blue Gaucho
Geivett, who was inducted into UCSB’s Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1991, has remained forever faithful to his alma mater.
He admitted during his tenure with the Rockies that, “I always ask our scouts, ‘Are there any Gauchos that I need to see?’”
“It’s the first thing I do before trying to figure out what type of draft it is,” he added.
“And then I’m always rooting for them and following them.”
Former Gaucho Ryan Spilborghs, star outfielder for the Rockies’ pennant-winning team of 2007, was his favorite draft pick of all.
“Not just that he made the big leagues, but all the success he had,” Geivett said. “With his infectious personality, everyone in player development was rooting for Spilly.”
Lasorda joked about Geivett’s fondness for his alma mater when he spoke at a fund-raiser to upgrade Caesar Uyesaka Stadium in 2010.
He turned toward him and said, “Geivett, you love Santa Barbara so much, you’d like anybody even if they just drove down the 101 through Santa Barbara.”
Geivett traveled to UCSB from his home in Vail, Arizona, to watch the nationally ranked Gauchos play in their own NCAA Baseball Regional two months ago.
“To actually go back and watch a regional there, and see the lights and the whole scene of selling out the stadium — that was really cool,” he said.
“They made all the old Gauchos proud, that’s for sure.”
Uyesaka Stadium wasn’t built until nine years after Geivett’s senior season.
“I was recruited on stadium plans,” he said with a laugh. “But I didn’t care. I didn’t have to sit in those wooden bleachers.
“Getting offers from Nebraska and Tennessee and Arkansas and ASU and Cal didn’t really matter because I knew Santa Barbara was a special place.”
He’s recruited several old Gauchos to his new social-media team.
“We’ve got Spilly involved, and Michael Young,” he said, referring to the former Texas Rangers’ star. “Carlton Pace and John Davis are in the group, too, as are Derek Vanacore, Joe Redfield, Sal Nicolosi, Greg Solari and Steve Mogavero.
“We’re trying to hit a six-run homer here.”