Anaheim Angels
From Metroblogging Orange County:
[T]he recent name change of the Angels has cause me to hold back on my once rabid support for the Angels.
Maybe there is a way to support the team and show your displeasure with the four-word monstrosity that doesn't simply roll off your tongue?
Well there is! Thanks to the LA Times (in the Orange County Section) two brothers have produced shirts that say "We are not LA." The shirts come in Angels Camo (i.e. Red) so you can blend in with the fans (and sneak pass the owners box).
Check out DropLA.com for the gear.
So I did:
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim?
It staggers off the tongue like a drunken hymn. For those of us that are long-time fans of the Angels baseball team, the very sound of it is like nails on a chalkboard. For those of us that are long-time residents of Orange County, it's as offensive as it is inaccurate. Outside of that, it's perfect.
The DropLA crew are long-time Angels fans and long-time Orange County residents and like you, we range from annoyed to angry at being stripped of both our team's identity and our community's geography.
We Are NOT LA! It's really that simple. We are not intending to oppose our team or owner Arturo Moreno; we are imploring Mr. Moreno that he DropLA from our team's name and disassociate L.A. from both our county and our team.
As fans we have a right to speak to our team and its owner. As citizens we have a right to express how we feel and DropLA.com merchandise is one way of doing so. All the coffee house discussions or letters in the world are not going to make a difference in what we believe is a horribly conceived and misdirected marketing ploy. However, if we unite and not only voice our opinion but also display how we feel, Mr. Moreno has no choice but to listen to us. We are NOT LA and we do not support the name change!
Let us continue to be the 2002 World Champion Anaheim Angels, return to the California Angels, become the Orange County Angels or, at the least, be called something accurate and befitting of the best team - and community - in the game.
Well, Rita Moreno of Arte is NOT getting good press lately:
Major League Baseball is perpetrating a fraud on its fans. No, this is not about the steroids-inflated home run totals in recent years....
No, this is about the fraud that one team has initiated and that Major League Baseball has joined as a co-conspirator. In this fraud, Major League Baseball has made the city of Anaheim, California, disappear.
Anaheim has not slipped into the Pacific Ocean, because Anaheim is inland and not on the coast. But Anaheim has slipped into a baseball abyss, consumed unwittingly by a larger city to the north, Los Angeles.
Arte Moreno, the outdoor advertising king, has changed his team's name from Anaheim Angels to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and Bud Selig, the baseball, commissioner, has allowed him. It makes one wonder why, when Selig owned a team, he didn't call it the Chicago Brewers of Milwaukee.
Actually, if Moreno had his way, Anaheim wouldn't even appear as an appendage. The only reason he has retained Anaheim in the formal name of the team is that its stadium lease requires the Angels to include Anaheim in their name.
Moreno, who obviously has a high business IQ, renamed his team for business purposes. By stealing the name of another team's town, Moreno believes, he can generate greater revenue from advertisers and sponsors, whom he thinks he can fool into thinking the Angels actually have some link to Los Angeles.
If he succeeds, it would not say much for the IQ of those advertisers and sponsors....
"I've talked to both clubs about it," Selig said recently, meaning the Angels and the Dodgers. "I've told them they're going to have to work it out."...
In his comments, though, he seemed to support Moreno.
"We have teams in other areas who don't play in the cities," he said, though no such team comes to mind. "They're both in the metropolitan area. They're in the greater Los Angeles market. There are 18-19 million people in the market. They'll just have to work it out."
As Selig said, the case is in court. It is not scheduled to be heard until November, by which time the new, fraudulent name will have become embedded in fans' minds and print records of the season.
That's why the city of Anaheim has sought a preliminary injunction that would bar the Angels from using the stolen name. The city lost in the initial court proceeding and now awaits a decision on its appeal.
"We all know what's going to happen to the name of the franchise," said John Nicoletti, a city spokesman. "Anaheim has become an afterthought. That's what we were afraid of."
Anaheim is not even an afterthought. In practice, it has become nonexistent.
Check the American League West standings as reported in newspapers. Among the four teams listed is Los Angeles. Check the probable pitchers: Los Angeles at Texas. Look at the coming games. Same thing.
In effect, The Associated Press, which supplies this information to newspapers, has gone along with the Angels' plan. So for that matter, has The New York Times, which has also decided to call the team the Los Angeles Angels....
That's the way the Angels want it.
In a memo sent to other clubs Jan. 3, the Angels said, "When scheduling, please use LA in place of any ANA, and if you should play against both us and the Dodgers, we would be characterized by LAA."
The AP uses that designation as well.
"We go by preference," explained Terry Taylor, sports editor of The Associated Press. "Barring any court decision saying they can't use this, that is their preference. As long as it's not obscene or deemed unworthy for the wire or in some other way objectionable, we'll go by preference."
The name Anaheim, she added, was "going to get sacrificed and probably has."
"It's quite a mouthful," she said.
Which is exactly what Moreno counted on. He knew "of Anaheim" would not see the light of day. The judge in Anaheim should see the same reality and block the Angels from acting so fraudulently.
Comments
When the Angels left Los Angeles for Anaheim in 1966 they were known as the California Angeles. In 1996 they changed their name to the "Anaheim Angeles." In doing so, they disassociated themselves from Los Angeles.
The new name sounds like the team belongs to or represents Los Angeles. They don't represent Los Angeles. They left us for Anaheim. They are not LA any more.
It seems to me that the real reason for the name change is to capitalize off the Los Angeles name. Because Los Angeles is a larger city and has a larger population than Anaheim the Angeles management presumes that if they use our name Angelenos will adopt and partronize the team resulting in larger revenue for the team. They are probably also counting of the continued support of Anaheim fans since they have kept the word "Anaheim" in the name of the team. These name changes have shown this team to be fickle and disloyal--to Los Angeles and Anaheim.
This name change could cause the team to lose its fan base is both counties. No one likes to be used and no one like disloyality.