Slugger Joins Desert League

Former Dodgers outfielder DARRYL STRAWBERRY, who joined the San Francisco Giants earlier this month, and his wife, Charisse, have purchased a home in Rancho Mirage for $1.2 million, sources say.

“He bought here because when he finished up at the Betty Ford Center he felt very positive about them and other people in the desert community,” said selling agent Bill Waring of Tarbell Realtors in Palm Desert. Waring is the son of the late bandleader Fred Waring.

Strawberry, 32, had been living in the desert since April, when he entered a drug rehab program at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage. A few days earlier, he announced his substance abuse problem and was put on the disabled list by the Dodgers.

By May, his attorney, Robert Shapiro (who also represents O.J. Simpson), said that Strawberry, the National League’s 1983 Rookie of the Year, needed to go somewhere away from Los Angeles, his hometown, “where some people from his past may not support the new direction he is trying to take.”

Strawberry and the Dodgers reached a financial settlement of about $4.86 million on the final one-plus years of his five-year, $20.25-million contract, and he signed to play the remainder of the season for the Giants at what is believed to be the major league minimum of $109,000, prorated to about $63,000.

Darryl and Charisse Strawberry were married last December despite his arrest in September for allegedly striking her when she was his live-in girlfriend. She didn’t press charges and the district attorney’s office determined that no charges were warranted.

The Strawberrys’ new home had been on the market for a couple of years, originally at $2.2 million. The newly built house, in a gated community, has four bedrooms in about 5,700 square feet, with an indoor-outdoor reflection pond in the home’s entry. There is also a sunken tennis court framed by African sumac trees. Last April, Strawberry’s former wife, Lisa, listed her Encino home at just under $1 million. She and the baseball star bought the home in 1989, just before she filed for divorce. Eva Welsh and Bill Bennett of the Eva Welsh Co., Rancho Mirage, shared the listing on the house that Darryl Strawberry and his current wife just purchased.

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DINAH SHORE’S longtime Beverly Hills residence has come on the market at $4.2 million. The entertainer, who died in the home last February at the age of 76, had owned the property for nearly 30 years.

Built in 1949, the 10,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom home has a tennis court on the nearly one-acre grounds, behind the Beverly Hills Hotel. There is also a two-bedroom guest house, gym and office on the estate.

The home is listed by Carole Gaba of Jon Douglas Co.’s Brentwood office.

Shore also had a Malibu retreat that came on the market in May. It is now co-listed, at $4.5 million, by Carol Rapf and Jack Pritchett of the newly consolidated Malibu firm of Pritchett/Rapf & Associates.

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VILLA CASABLANCA, a 16-acre Malibu estate originally listed at $20 million in the 1980s, has come back on the market, this time at $6.85 million.

Owned and built by Burt Burton, founder of Casablanca Fan Co., and his ex-wife, Marilyn, the 12,000-square-foot, five-bedroom villa is connected to an eight-car garage by a 125-foot-long tunnel.

There are also a pair of two-bedroom guest houses, a tennis court, entertainment pavilion, stables and motor court that can accommodate 75 cars on the property.

Sylvester Stallone came close to buying the estate in 1986. He had put the home in escrow at $9 million but canceled the deal, due to marital problems, one day before it was to close, a source said. Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen, who were married in 1985, divorced in 1987.

Kurt Rappaport and Victoria Risko of Nourmand & Associates, Beverly Hills, have the listing.