Chris Paul on Clippers Good for the Angels? Halolinks!

the Clips dont……..Halos have been constantly relevant for the past 10 years…the Clips are only relevant once every 10 years!!….cant wait til the damn season starts so all these bandwagon Clips fans can shut up…..LAKERS STILL RUN THE CITY CLIPPER FANS!!!

The carpetbagging Los Doyers moved to LA in 1958. The Angels were enfranchised in 1961. The A’s didn’t make it to Oakland until 1968.

The Angels were the first AL team in California, on the west coast, and in the Pacific time zone for that matter. They draw their name from a venerable PCL franchise tradition that dates back to the dawn of west coast baseball. The Doyers are transplants, and not organically connected to the region in the ways that the Angels are. The Doyers’ sole connection to the tradition of the LA Angels of the PCL consists almost entirely of ripping off their last cap logo before the team moved to Spokane Washington after being bought and moved there by Walter O’Malley.

Speaking of O’Malley, he almost killed the team that would become the Angels in its crib when he objected to Bill Veeck having a stake in the ownership of the AL franchise. Thank God for Gene Autry picking up the entire expansion effort when the original proposed ownership arrangement was vetoed by O’Malley. Then Mr. Autry had to buy the Angels name off of the carpetbagger. O’Malley also got a sweetheart deal for the stadium at Chavez Ravine, and it is on some level entirely unfair that the Angels could never get a like deal before the region built out as stadium issues have always plagued the Angels.

If there is any second fiddle status to the Angels, it is almost entirely stadium related. We weren’t allowed to play in the Coliseum by the AL Commissioner. Long Beach wanted the Angels to bear their city’s name in exchange for their cooperation in securing a site. Anaheim, until the refurbishment agreement, was contented to allow the team to call itself the California Angels. Blah blah blah. This identity crisis all goes back to 1961 and having a team without a stadium.

The Angels still hold the best mark ever for a an expansion franchise’s first season. Since 1973, the Angels have been using the DH, and they don’t play NL style ball unless at NL parks. I can’t stand watching pitchers whiffing at sliders, so I have never been an NL fan.

And If you’re into AL ball in the Southland, the Doyers have never cast a shadow over the Angels, as they weren’t ever an option.

What I would love to see over the next ten years is this:

1) For Mr. Moreno to buy or buy and rebuild the Big A to make it team owned. Get Anaheim out of the equation entirely except for the geographic fact that this is where the stadium is physically located. Get rid of the Disney rocks while this is done.

2) End the pretense that the team is in Los Angeles. It’s simply not. If you don’t want to be in the shadow of Los Doyers, don’t put yourself into it. There is no marketing advantage in the LAA moniker. The regional fans know that the Angels are in the OC, and the national ones don’t care.

The caps have a haloed “A” on them. They are iconic that way. The jerseys, home and away, make no mention of LA. Just end it. Acknowledge reality. Make your own identity and stick with it. The Angels have almost always been the team of the OC and, ahem. Riverside County. Just deal with it. It’s not as if the Angels are shunned in the LA media market with $3 billion over the next 20 years. Quit acting like the also ran trying to worm a way into an LA identity and embrace that Angels Baseball is bigger than a place name—it is a home for anyone who wants to become part of the same “congregation.” You can be from Eureka and be an Angels fan if you want. They aren’t from Los Angeles, they belong to anyone in the world who wants to belong in return. They even belong to a guy like me living in the Willamette Valley in Oregon who only sees the Angels live once or twice a season when they are at Safeco Field.

3) Reclaim the CALIFORNIA ANGELS moniker. Lay claim to all of it. Revitalize the state outline logo with the star in SoCal with an update. Have the flashback uni sport the interlocking CA with the embroidered halo rather than the LA one. The road uni should feature a navy blue Angels cap with a red bill as a permanent connect to an actual past.

4) The Doyers are in disarray. Capitalize upon it. Their star power is Matt Kemp and a bunch of stiffs. We have El Hombre. We have a division we can dominate by outspending and outplaying the Senators. If the Angels can add one or more rings in the next decade they, and not the Doyers, capture the imaginations of a new generation of young baseball fans. That is how you get out of the “shadow.”