Reggie Wants a Piece of Angels : Baseball: Hall of Famer Jackson has met with Orange County billionaires trying to buy team from Disney.

Although still associated with a group trying to buy the Oakland Athletics, Reggie Jackson would be interested in joining a group led by Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli in their pursuit of the Angels, he said Thursday.

The Hall of Fame slugger said he has met with both to discuss the possibility of his involvement, conceivably as both an investor and front-office executive, if they are successful in buying the team, along with the Mighty Ducks, from the Walt Disney Co.

“I know Nicholas and Samueli and we have had a short visit,” Jackson said. “I’d certainly be interested, but there is nothing concrete.”

A spokesman for Broadcom, the Orange County technology firm founded by Nicholas and Samueli, said they would have no comment. Sources familiar with the situation, however, believe they would welcome Jackson’s involvement, giving the group minority representation, a nationally prominent baseball figure and a link to Angel history.

Jackson played on two of the organization’s three division winners during five years with the team in the 1980s. In addition, a source close to Nicholas and Samueli said that finding professionals to run the teams is a high priority for the group.

Although each has an estimated worth of $2.6 billion, tying them for 90th on Forbes magazine’s annual list of richest Americans that was released Thursday, the Nicholas-Samueli group is aware that Broadcom shareholders may fear that owning sports teams could distract them from their competitive business, the source said. Broadcom shares plunged 6.6% Thursday after Microsoft President Steve Ballmer said that technology companies are tremendously overpriced.

Jackson would have become baseball’s leading minority investor if the $120-million purchase of the A’s by a group headed by former club executive Andy Dolich had not been tabled recently by major league owners, pending the report of a committee studying baseball’s economic problems. Dolich said his group would not stay together unless current A’s owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann agree to extend the Sept. 20 sale deadline--a request they have yet to respond to--and baseball promises to approve the group after the committee makes its report. Both contingencies are unlikely.

In fact, Jackson said he would be available to join the Nicholas-Samueli group because he considered the A’s purchase a dead issue. He said baseball had made a business decision to reject their group because it didn’t want to see a club sold at the undervalued price of $120 million, to local investors, when it would be worth $150 million the next day, on the open market.

“Baseball is part of me,” he said. “I haven’t satisfied that. The circle won’t be complete until I restore the relationship. [New York owner] George Steinbrenner has left the door open for me to return to the Yankees, but that wouldn’t be in an ownership position. The Angels represent a great brand in a great market. They’ve had a difficult year and will still draw more than 2 million. It’s all there. They just need some strategic direction.”

Jackson, long interested in the corporate world, has spent the last four years as director of business development for Viking Components, which builds computer memories and modems, and feels that in the “right place and spot” he can help a team in a lot of ways because he brings “a wealth of baseball and business experience and is a recognizable marketing, public relations and community asset.”

Dolich declined to discuss the possibility of Jackson’s joining the Angel investors but said that his A’s group had counted on Jackson as far more than a famous face.

“There isn’t anyone I can think of who knows the business and the baseball sides as well as Reggie,” he said. “He can fill any role, from designated hitter to team owner, and anything in between. I have the utmost respect for him.”

At 53, Jackson may be a little old to serve as designated hitter.

*

Times staff writers Bill Shaikin and E. Scott Reckard contributed to this story.

*

GARNER INTERVIEWS: Phil Garner meets with executives of Angels. Page 6