Idiots Write About Sports

Word has reached these shores, courtesy of 6-4-2, that the city of Anaheim has recieved a favorable ruling from a state appellate court in its quixotic quest to get Arte Moreno’s baseball franchsie to actually refer to itself by the city in which it plays.

Such a decision, just as national media outlets have started referring to the Los Angeles Angels, could spark another wave of ridicule about the team’s identity, force the team to abandon its chosen name and wreck its business strategy, at least for the 2004 season.

“It would be marketing’s best version of a twilight zone,” said Paul Swangard of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

Indeed, confusion reigns here in Southern California. Your humble correspondent had occasion to be in Anaheim last week in an enjoyable, if financially ruinous day trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. And as I strolled down the streets of Anaheim, not once was I stopped by tourists nor passersby demanding to know if this was the city where the Angels baseball club plied their wares.

Meanwhile, less than five miles from your author’s apartment in Los Angeles County, a billboard sporting the ballclub logo proclaims this to be “The City of Angels.” It’s a wonder we are able to go about our daily lives amid the chaos.

From a bookkeeping perspective, Baseball Prospectus 2005 still calls the team the Anaheim Angels, as does the Sporting News spring training guide. USA Today Sports Weekly has picked up the Los Angeles moniker. Last week in Arizona, the Tempe Diablo Stadium p.a. announcer introduced the team as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, as you might expect someone on the Arte Moreno payroll to do. The Phoenix Municipal Stadium announcer did the same thing, and the scoreboard used the LAA abbreviation we’ll all have to get used to on out-of-town scoreboards this coming season.

Or will we?

The appellate court set a hearing for March 28 — eight days before the Angels open their season — and demanded the team explain why it should not be prevented from playing as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until a trial to decide whether that name violates the stadium lease. The trial is set to start Nov. 7.

Of course, since this whole silly story began, I’ve wondered why we’re waiting for either Arte Moreno or a panel of judges to tell us what we should call a baseball team. In a sport where the Brooklyn baseball franchise was referred to as the Robins for 15-some years just because that’s who was managing the team, it would seem like we have some discretion as to the identifier we choose.

Whenever one of these “Los Angeles or Anaheim?” stories pop up in the local paper, I’m reminded of a story that Fred Lieb recounts in Baseball As I Have Known It:

Colonel Jake Ruppert loved baseball, especially winning baseball, but actually he was conned into buying a half interest in the Yankees by the belief that he could change the nickname of the New York team to the Knickerbockers, the name of his best-known brand of beer. After the sale, he issued a statement that henceforth the New York American League club would be called the Knickerbockers. The managing editors of the thirteen New York newspapers in 1915 held a meeting and voted: “Nix. No Knickerbockers.”

The lesson I take from this: call the team whatever you want. Last week, scoring two spring training games involving the Angels, I wrote Anaheim in my scorebook. If you feel the same, I suggest you do likewise.

I'm just going back to calling them the California Angels, like they were in late 80s when I was young and impressionable. The whole "Anaheim" name change always seemed to me like a sideways attempt to promote Disneyland anyway.

So Los Angeles, Anaheim, Fresno, whatever. It's all just California to me.

I always thought it was somewhat presumptuous of the Angels to claim they were playing for the good people of Crescent City, 780 miles away.

When you're lonely, you'll do a lot to make friends.

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