New Angels Billboard

It’s like Ali vs. Foreman

citing the Dodgers official history page on their web site:

“Feb. 21, 1957: Walter O’Malley trades the Dodgers’ minor league team in Fort Worth, Tex., for the Cubs’ Los Angeles Angels in the Pacific Coast League, paving the way for the Dodgers to move to California.”

Now, I would agree that taking the word of one Walter O’Malley on anything is a shady practice, at best. I would need to be able to spend more time doing library research to verify that this is the actual way that any title was transferred. However, the challenge is not whether the Dodgers owned the LAA, but whether or not the LAA can be traced to the Dukes, and did they remain associated with the Dodgers during that period.

The quickest way to cite references for that is to plow through Baseball-Reference.com. I have done this for you.

In 1956 the LAA were affiliated with the Chicago Cubs.
In 1957 the LAA were affiliated with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This supports the Dodgers official history cited above.
In 1958 the LAA drops off the history books. At the same time, the Spokane Indians appear.

If one compares the rosters between the 1957 LAA and the 1958 Spokane Indians, one will find that the following players played for both teams:
 Bill George
 Bob Jenkins
 Chuck Page
 Connie Grob
 Dick Hanlon
 Gale Wade
 Glenn McMinn
 Jim Baxes
 John Jancse
 Larry Sherry
 Ralph Mauriello
 Tom Saffell
From this, it can safely be implied that this is the same team, having relocated, and undergoing a normal roster turnover for a minor league team from one year to the next. And, as of this post, bbr.com continues to publish that the 1958 Spokane Indians were affiliated with the Dodgers.

In fact, one can track the Spokane Indians year after year and observe the roster turnovers all the way through the year 1971. And bbr.com continues to document that they remained affiliated with the LAD.

Now again we are going to have a change. Note the makeup of the 1971 PCL. There is a Spokane. There is no Albuquerque. Flash to 1972. Hmmm.

Comparing the rosters of the 1971 Spokane Indians and the 1972 Albuequerque Dukes, we again discover a slew of players who played for both squads. Some of these names will be eerily familiar to SoCal baseball fans:
 Bill Ralston
 Bruce Ellingsen
 Charlie Hough
 Davey Lopes
 Doug Rau
 George Lott
 Gustavo Sposito
 Jerry Stephenson
 Joe Ferguson
 Jose Pena
 Marvin Galliher
 Ron Cey
 Sandy Vance
 Tom Paciorek
 Von Joshua

From this, we can infer that, once again, this is the same team, having relocated, and undergoing a normal roster turnover for a minor league team from one year to the next. And bbr.com, still(!), continues to publish that both the 1971 Indians AND the 1972 Dukes were affiliated with the Dodgers.

Now, yes, it is true. I do not have access to minor league baseball ownership documents. And it is also probably true that such documentation from the mid 50’s through the early 70’s might not even exist. That sort of research will require library time. I have already located a great reference on PCL minor league history up in the Redondo Beach Public Library which may be of some assistance. But such further research should only be required if one insists that Baseball-Reference.com is not to be considered sufficiently authoritative for our purposes here.

In conclusion, my original objection is that if we are going to embrace the 2010 marketing campaign for honoring the tradition of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, it would do us well to understand what that tradition actual is,which includes knowing what it is not. And we really do have a great tradition. We see glimpses of it before every home game.

for being “neutral…”

with an unarmed man.