The Battle of Los Angeles
The Angels (23-17) roll up the 5 Freeway to the Ravine this weekend for a Freeway Series that has become loaded with all new stakes this year, with their attempting to rebrand themselves as the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.”
As Los Angeles traditionalists (long-suffering Dodger fans), we know carpetbaggers when we see them, and we acknowledge the boys in blue as L.A.’s one and only baseball squad. This is not to say we don’t pull for the Angels when they’re not playing the Dodgers (22-18). We hold out faint hope for a Freeway World Series one day. And the Angels earned a special place our hearts for the devistating hurt they put on the hated Giants in the 2002 championship. When I am down, I just think of Barry Bonds failing in what was probably his one and only chance at a ring, and it raises my spirits.
So will Vin Scully soil his mouth with the phrase “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”? We think not, but it will be fun to listen for his verbal sidesteps. As it is now, he is at an all-time high this year when it comes to bizarre digressions and focusing on obscure minutiae (don’t even get him started on broken bats). Plaschke had a good column on this LAA vs LAD identity battle yesterday and Newhan has a piece today about the history of the Angels playing at Dodger Stadium from ’62-’65.
[...] As we’ve written here in the past, we lean towards Dodger blue when it comes to baseball. While this season has been a wash, lately we’re floating high on back-to-back Dodger wins over Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz, both of which were won with improbable late inning rallies. That one guy came up with that one guy on base in the 9th and picked him up. OK, that’s exaggerating, but we barely know anyone’s name on sight alone with these damned nameless jerseys. It still doesn’t look good for making the playoffs, but we’ll take the small daily gains for what they’re worth. [...]
It’s pretty clear today that jealousy wears blue.
It’s a fact that even most Dodgers fans grudgingly admit that we see more people sporting red Angels caps and gear around So. CA these days — and it stands to reason that we would, considering that no one under the age of 25 has a personal recollection of the Dodgers accomplishing anything in a postseason, unless he or she was fortunate enough to glimpse the one and only game that team managed to win in the first round in 2004. That’s IT in the last nearly 20 years!
Meanwhile, young people DO remember the Angels knocking the heralded Yankees out of two first rounds and winning at least one world series.
So, while fans of the team that moved here from Brooklyn and adopted the interlocking L & A logo of the Los Angeles Angels of the PCL (after Walter O’Malley bought that team and promptly broke a promise to keep it active in the PCL) may try to reassure themselves as often as necessary that there is “only one L.A. team,” all one needs is a good look around and a modicum of self-honesty to see that it just ain’t so.
And that should serve as some encouragement for fans of the team formerly known as the Brooklyn Dodgers. Because as I write this, in the here and now of a 2007 Baseball season, if there is ONE L.A. team, at least in the minds of the populus, that team would be the Los Angeles Angels.