Angels tell Anaheim they're opting out of their lease on Angel Stadium

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 6/26/2019 at 7:38 AM, jmac11281 said:

On 6/25/2019 at 6:12 PM, Ice_Cap said:

Gotta admit, I admire the civic pride Vet’s showing, still salty about the A’s leaving Philly. That’s dedication. 

I'm with Vet. I'm trying to avenge the loss that my then 30 year old grandfather had to endure. Long live the Philadelphia Athletics!

 

I was very pleased when I visited Philadelphia to see the Connie Mack statute near the Phillies' ballpark, and, on it, a plaque commemorating the inductees into the Philadelphia Athletics Wall of Fame.

 

  

 

(Though we can quibble and note that the plaque uses an Oakland A's logo.)

 

I also loved finding the store Shibe Sports, where I made sure to pick up an A's cap.

 

[IceCap]

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

The whole “it’s just sports” thing doesn’t fly with me because if that’s all it was then some of us would go “who cares, let the Browns be the Browns” and some of us would go “the records should reflect that the OG Browns moved to Baltimore” and we’d all agree to disagree and go back to arguing over sock stripes or something. 

 

And yet we’re here tossing paragraph+ posts at each other trying to prove one of two points. We obviously care. Maybe more than any of us should, but we care none the less. 

 

I’m well aware of the way history can and has been weaponized for nefarious purposes. And in that context? Yeah, Cleveland pretending their 1999 expansion team is really the original Browns team isn’t that big a deal. Thing is...if it didn’t matter at all? Cleveland would have said “Baltimore can be the Browns, we’ll call our new team the Bulldogs or whatever.” So yeah. It’s a line in the sand enough people felt passionately about to draw so here we are. 

 

Thing is...I am skeptical of historical revisionism as a concept from an academic standpoint because all academic historical study must be grounded in fact. What happened. You can only re-examine and reinterpret the historical record so much before you cross the line from revisionism to “making  up” (not the proper academic term ). 

 

And to be clear historians, rightfully, pass judgement all the damn time. We openly acknowledge that the American Founding Fathers were hypocrites for declaring “all men are created equal” while allowing slavery to continue. We all recognize that Henry VIII had no real ideological qualms with the Catholic Church and only kickstarted the English Reformation as a power play/excuse to divorce his wife. We all acknowledge that the Western Allies of WWII, champions of the free world and democracy, had a collective moral failing when they refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe. 

 

All of that is pretty broad historical consensus in the academic community. It’s not as simple as the study of what happened, we do pass judgement. 

And yeah. It’s not out of line to acknowledge Art Modell was an hole for moving the Browns as he did, but that doesn’t change that it happened. And again, if the new team wants to call themselves the Browns? All the power to them. Just don’t insist the new team is the old team, because it’s not. 

 

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

But historical records should not be confused for objective fact.  As Betty Reid Soskin puts it, “What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.”  

Thankfully we live in an era where newsworthy events (which franchise relocation qualifies as) are pretty well documented. Human memory, on the other hand, is fallible, sometimes to ridiculous and often hilarious extremes. Even regarding events from the past five years or so. 

The fact is the Charlotte Hornets moved and became the New Orleans Hornets and then the New Orleans Pelicans. Then the expansion Charlotte Bobcats changed their name to the Hornets when the original Hornets adopted the Pelicans name. 

Now again, if the fans in Charlotte wanna root for the Hornets, let them. Just don’t lie via the record book and pretend the current team the memorable late 80s expansion team. Record books are controlled by leagues, and leagues have their reasons for distorting them. Thankfully we have independent records of historical events that we can use to verify those books. And if it doesn’t add up?  I see no reason not to call them out on it. Again, if it were just sports none of us would still be having this conversation.    

[IceCap]

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

And let me be clear - I love history.

 

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history.

As do I. I probably love it to a degree more than most because I chose to dedicate the rest of my life to the subject. I don’t say that to brag or pump myself off because damn that was a lot of writing/arguing I could have spent doing nearly anything else  

 

And maybe that’s the kicker for me. History to me is important. And it’s not something that changes for the sake of convenience. It’s our collective story, for good or bad. And hopefully we learn from the bad bits or appreciate the good bits, but ultimately? It’s the story of humanity, warts and all. We pass judgement, even academically. We interpret and reinterpret events- to a point. We don’t- or shouldn’t- try to alter the historical record to fit a preferred narrative though. That’s not history. 

 

And that’s why crap like “the Cleveland deal” or the Hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats record swap bugs me. Maybe it shouldn’t because “it’s just sports,” but then again if it were just sports I wouldn’t have cared so much that a mostly disappointing 1995 expansion team I followed from nearly day one just won a major championship. Sports are weird. We collectively care about them more than we probably should, but care we do. 

 

[SFGiants58]

Yeah, I’m being an utter hypocrite caring so much to tell people about why they shouldn’t care. I apologize.

 

I’m just irritated with how people act like the Browns went full Jack the Ripper on the history books. It just seems ridiculous to me as a historian. Ultimately, the extensive documentation from additional parties makes it slightly less offensive to me. I don’t view it as all that harmful.

 

However, I still think that it’s a crappy way to inflate the importance of an expansion team in an intellectually dishonest way. 

 

I still would prefer if the records followed the team to Baltimore (renamed as the Ravens and downplaying their pre-Baltimore past) and the Cleveland expansion team (not named Browns - the NFL had the right idea with the Oilers) gets to start anew. I would prefer if the NBA didn’t pair team histories with historic logo trademarks (that was confusing AF). I would like for my Quakes to stop pretending that they’re the 1996 team or the NASL squad (I kind of abandoned them over this).

 

I don’t like the histories being messed with to make some locals happy (even though the locals probably don’t care that much about the minutia). I believe in relegating that stuff to “city history,” a separate category from the franchise books. “City history” enables the Hornets MK II to honor Bogues and Mourning without falsifying records, while also allowing the Cleveland team to honor Jim Brown. It sometimes overtakes franchise history in branding, such as the Nats, Winnipeg Jets, Twins, Grizzlies, RedBlacks, Avs, etc. You can dress up as the old squad and honor the great players/games all you want, just don’t go pretending that you went on an extended hiatus to inflate your resume.

 

I gotta praise the NHL here for going back on this type of deal. The arrival of the expansion Ottawa Senators included the presentation of a franchise certificate calling this normal expansion team a “continuation.” However, when the team later wanted to acquire the records, the NHL rightfully told them to eat dookie (for lack of a better term). Not that it stopped the Sens, of course. In the words of Lo Pan:

 

 

Putting the modern logo of an unrelated team on a banner is a dick move. 

 

Ultimately, I’m not as upset by this, because it’s just sports. However, it still upsets me a little and comes off as entirely pathetic.

 

This was once about the Angels, wasn’t it? Either way, this discussion is far more fascinating than anything to do with where they’ll try to play.

 

[Sport]

 

2 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

And maybe that’s the kicker for me. History to me is important. And it’s not something that changes for the sake of convenience. It’s our collective story, for good or bad. And hopefully we learn from the bad bits or appreciate the good bits, but ultimately? It’s the story of humanity, warts and all. We pass judgement, even academically. We interpret and reinterpret events- to a point. We don’t- or shouldn’t- try to alter the historical record to fit a preferred narrative though. That’s not history. 

 

 

In the case of the A's or other franchises who've relocated, yeah trace that lineage all the way back, baby. The Sacramento Kings are the Rochester Royals. Cool with me. On the other side, if you're the hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats, go f*** yourselves you revisionist pricks. Preemptive f*** you for when they inevitably reappropriate the Thunder's Sonics records to the new expansion Seattle Sonics. But the Browns, though, the Browns are different. I think the fact that they all agreed to shelving the franchise/start a new one in Baltimore in 1996 is everything. If the Sonics had done that when the team moved to OKC I'd say the same thing about them too. It's a shame they didn't. 

 

My point since I've been old enough to ponder on this is I don't see how the Browns' historical record was altered or changed, though. There's the way people want it to have been handled - the usual way, and then there's the way it was handled, but because it unfolded in real-time and not as some after the fact 1999 erasing, that's not altering the historical record, that's just the historical record. 

 

Let's look at the two ways they could've handled this - How is this report of the history: "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns. In 1999 an expansion franchise returned NFL football to Cleveland and they are called the Cleveland Nutsacks." any more valid or right or correct a history than something like, "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns until threatened litigation forced the league to reconsider their approach to the relocation. All interested parties agreed that the Browns franchise would stay in Cleveland, dormant until a new group could put the team back on the field in a new stadium. Modell agreed to take over a new franchise in Baltimore comprised mostly of former Browns players and staffers. He called this franchise the Baltimore Ravens"?

 

 

[Waffles]

 

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

In the case of the A's or other franchises who've relocated, yeah trace that lineage all the way back, baby. The Sacramento Kings are the Rochester Royals. Cool with me. On the other side, if you're the hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats, go f*** yourselves you revisionist pricks. Preemptive f*** you for when they inevitably reappropriate the Thunder's Sonics records to the new expansion Seattle Sonics. But the Browns, though, the Browns are different. I think the fact that they all agreed to shelving the franchise/start a new one in Baltimore in 1996 is everything. If the Sonics had done that when the team moved to OKC I'd say the same thing about them too. It's a shame they didn't. 

 

It seems like Seattle might have some kind of deal with OKC to retain their identity and history.

 

And perhaps we can all agree that the their approach to "sharing" their history, as described in that article, is completely effed. Like, what would that even look like if the Sonics come back?

 

[Gothamite]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

I’m just irritated with how people act like the Browns went full Jack the Ripper on the history books.

 

Me, too.  Because they didn’t.  This wasn’t something that was retroactively decided on after the fact; the franchise continuity was established and well-documented at the time.  It’s silly, not to mention inapplicable, to lump that in with the Hornets.

[Atomic]

Ok - so I think we've had enough of the Phila A's discussion here. Let's get this back on to the woeful Angels and their upcoming stadium disaster-rama. 

[Ben in LA]

12 minutes ago, Atomic said:

Ok - so I think we've had enough of the Phila A's discussion here. Let's get this back on to the woeful Angels and their upcoming stadium disaster-rama. 

I feel you...but I will say Dodgers and Lakers fans DO care about players from the past.

 

As for the Angels? That spot in Long Beach looks nice, but it would be a traffic nightmare. AND it’s on landfill, which means if/when an earthquake occurs...just ask San Francisco residents about the Marina District back in 1989.

[mjrbaseball]

Th Angels aren't actually moving into the Dodgers territory because they're already there, but do the Dodgers have anything to say about the Angels' choice of site. This example is unrealistic, but say the Angels decided to put a new ballpark in Griffith Park. That's less than two miles from Dodger Stadium. Could the Dodgers block such a move?

 

[Still MIGHTY]

1 hour ago, mjrbaseball said:

Th Angels aren't actually moving into the Dodgers territory because they're already there, but do the Dodgers have anything to say about the Angels' choice of site. This example is unrealistic, but say the Angels decided to put a new ballpark in Griffith Park. That's less than two miles from Dodger Stadium. Could the Dodgers block such a move?

 

I don't believe they could. When the whole name change thing came to be, I remember the idea being put out of the Angels moving to downtown LA, and it being explained as much as the Dodgers would hate it, they wouldn't have any say.

 

I would imagine that maybe someone like MLB would try to intervene with a "good of the game" clause or whatever. I also don't think it's something the Angels would actually explore.

[Gothamite]

No, the Dodgers don’t.  The Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles markets are evenly shared by the two home clubs. Neither can veto a move within that market.  And baseball wouldn’t dare disturb those balances by trying to intervene.

 

Contrast that with the Bay Area, where the market has been carved up and the A’s can’t move to San Jose without the consent of (and therefore a very generous payment to) the Giants.

[colortv]

Rams and Chargers are both holding training camps within a 20 minute drive of Angel Stadium, with it being promoted as in the home market.

 

But they aren't Los Angeles teams right?

[Still MIGHTY]

1 hour ago, colortv said:

Rams and Chargers are both holding training camps within a 20 minute drive of Angel Stadium, with it being promoted as in the home market.

 

But they aren't Los Angeles teams right?

 

The Cowboys hold training camp in Oxnard, California, 20 miles from the Rams practice facility.

 

What's your point?

[kimball]

7 minutes ago, Still MIGHTY said:

 

The Cowboys hold training camp in Oxnard, California, 20 miles from the Rams practice facility.

 

What's your point?

 

That's a bad example because they're America's Team. 

[colortv]

1 hour ago, Still MIGHTY said:

 

The Cowboys hold training camp in Oxnard, California, 20 miles from the Rams practice facility.

 

What's your point?

 

Cowboys don't treat Oxnard as home market.

 

For media and sports purposes the Los Angeles market is LA+OC+Riverside+San Bernardino+Ventura counties.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_metropolitan_area

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles#Combined_Statistical_Area

 

It's common sense and anything else is nitpicking. 

 

 

 

[Brian in Boston]

On 6/27/2019 at 3:17 PM, mjrbaseball said:

Th Angels aren't actually moving into the Dodgers territory because they're already there, but do the Dodgers have anything to say about the Angels' choice of site. This example is unrealistic, but say the Angels decided to put a new ballpark in Griffith Park. That's less than two miles from Dodger Stadium. Could the Dodgers block such a move?

 

No, the Dodgers - by themselves - can't block the Angels from relocating to anywhere within the territory that the two franchises share. When I last checked, Major League Baseball Rule 52; Attachment 52 defined the shared territory of the Angels and Dodgers as being comprised of "Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties in California". 

Now, I do know that at the time of the Angels' establishment as a Major League Baseball franchise, MLB rules dictated that a team setting-up shop in a territory belonging to a club in the other league had to play in a ballpark that was located at least five air miles from that of the existing club's facility, unless the two teams agreed otherwise. Obviously, the Angels and Dodgers hammered out such an agreement, as their respective home ballparks in 1961 - LA's Wrigley Field and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - were, at best, located 2 miles away from one another. For the 1962 season, LA's Wrigley Field would have been about 6 miles, as the crow flies, from the newly-opened Dodgers Stadium. Would MLB prefer that any  hypothetical future Los Angeles-based home for the Angels be at least five air miles from Dodger Stadium? While that remains to be seen, any downtown LA location would fall well short of a five-mile minimum distance from Dodgers Stadium.

One interesting side-note to this discussion is that the Angels and Dodgers can, per MLB and MiLB territorial rules, block any affiliated minor league franchise from operating anywhere within their shared Los Angeles/Orange/Ventura County territory. To date, the only MiLB teams that have played within said territory since the Dodgers and Angels arrived in Southern California - obviously, with the permission of the two Major League clubs - have been the Ventura County Gulls (1986) and the Lancaster JetHawks (1996-present) of the California League.

However, four years ago, the Dodgers began exploring the possibility of shifting their Class A-Advanced farm team operation from Rancho Cucamonga to the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The plan was for Peter Guber (a member of the Dodgers ownership group and part-owner of their Triple A affiliate in Oklahoma City) to partner with his friend Peter Lowy (then the CEO of shopping center development/management company Westfield Corporation) on bringing a California League team to the southwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley.

Westfield Corporation was just about to open the Village at Westfield Topanga, a major extension and reimagining of the existing Westfield Topanga shopping center. The resulting facility was the deathblow for the Westfield Promenade, an aging and obsolete mall that had been struggling for the better part of a decade. Lowy had been brainstorming what to do with the land on which the Promenade was located. What if Westfield were to pay to demolish the Promenade and construct a 7,000-seat minor league ballpark on its site, Guber were to secure a California League franchise, and the Dodgers were to run the day-to-day operations? Westfield owned the land on which the stadium was to be built and was willing to foot-the-bill to construct the stadium. Between spaces at the Village at Westfield Topanga and land that would exist around the stadium, ample parking already existed. The project wasn't looking for a dime of public funding. 

Lowy put Westfield architects to work designing a stadium, Guber cleared the idea with Dodgers brass and began lining up financial partners, Dodgers president Stan Kasten broached the subject with MiLB president Pat O'Conner, and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti was brought into the loop. All the parties loved the idea, so it was floated by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. Manfred also thought it was a winning idea. It just needed one final approval... that of Arte Moreno, owner of the Angels.

The Dodgers pitched their plan to the Angels. They pointed out that the proposed Woodland Hills ballpark site was a 57-mile drive from Angels Stadium, 19 miles more distant than the trip from Anaheim to the stadium of the Dodgers' current California League affiliate in Rancho Cucamonga. They offered a variety of incentives, including the opportunity to host more of the games in the annual Angels-Dodgers pre-season Freeway Series. The Angels weren't biting. 

They did have a question for the Dodgers: if the Angels someday wished to move a minor league affiliate into the shared Los Angeles/Orange/Ventura County territory of the big league teams, would the Dodgers grant them permission to do so? The Dodgers wanted to know, might such a move be into the City of Los Angeles? The Angels conceded that could be a possibility. The Dodgers said they couldn't envision ever granting the Angels permission to operate a minor league team within the City of Los Angeles.

The Angels refused to sign-off on the plan to allow a Dodgers farm team to set-up shop in Woodland Hills.

[Quillz]

On 6/24/2019 at 1:31 PM, Waffles said:

I should clarify that I also think records should also reside with the team's lineage, and not the franchise's

I agree with this in that history always belongs to the franchise/club/team and NOT the city. This is why I have a big problem with agreements where Oklahoma City can claim they won the 1979 championship, but cannot claim the Sonics identity. It's messy and we all know it's wrong. Simply put, the Thunder won the 1979 NBA Finals, with a note they were based in Seattle under a different name at the time. Simple and honest.

 

I'm a Dodgers fan and they've won six World Series. I don't "not count" their first one because it happened in Brooklyn. Whether they won it in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, or Detroit, I only care that the franchise won the championship.

 

To me, the biggest offender is the NFL. The NFL has seemingly erased all existence of the pre-Super Bowl era, to the point they only really measure their franchises now by the number of Super Bowls they've won. This makes people think of the Browns as hapless and horrible, because so few people realize they were very good pre-Super Bowl. Both San Diego and Buffalo won championships during their AFL years, but the NFL again seems to pretend a merger never happened.

[Quillz]

On 6/27/2019 at 6:02 PM, Gothamite said:

No, the Dodgers don’t.  The Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles markets are evenly shared by the two home clubs. Neither can veto a move within that market.  And baseball wouldn’t dare disturb those balances by trying to intervene.

 

Contrast that with the Bay Area, where the market has been carved up and the A’s can’t move to San Jose without the consent of (and therefore a very generous payment to) the Giants.

Why is the Bay Area market different from the other markets? What about something like Dallas-Fort Worth? Could MLB add a National League team to that area?

[Quillz]

On 6/28/2019 at 4:09 PM, Brian in Boston said:

However, four years ago, the Dodgers began exploring the possibility of shifting their Class A-Advanced farm team operation from Rancho Cucamonga to the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The plan was for Peter Guber (a member of the Dodgers ownership group and part-owner of their Triple A affiliate in Oklahoma City) to partner with his friend Peter Lowy (then the CEO of shopping center development/management company Westfield Corporation) on bringing a California League team to the southwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley.

Westfield Corporation was just about to open the Village at Westfield Topanga, a major extension and reimagining of the existing Westfield Topanga shopping center. The resulting facility was the deathblow for the Westfield Promenade, an aging and obsolete mall that had been struggling for the better part of a decade. Lowy had been brainstorming what to do with the land on which the Promenade was located. What if Westfield were to pay to demolish the Promenade and construct a 7,000-seat minor league ballpark on its site, Guber were to secure a California League franchise, and the Dodgers were to run the day-to-day operations? Westfield owned the land on which the stadium was to be built and was willing to foot-the-bill to construct the stadium. Between spaces at the Village at Westfield Topanga and land that would exist around the stadium, ample parking already existed. The project wasn't looking for a dime of public funding. 

Lowy put Westfield architects to work designing a stadium, Guber cleared the idea with Dodgers brass and began lining up financial partners, Dodgers president Stan Kasten broached the subject with MiLB president Pat O'Conner, and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti was brought into the loop. All the parties loved the idea, so it was floated by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. Manfred also thought it was a winning idea. It just needed one final approval... that of Arte Moreno, owner of the Angels.

The Dodgers pitched their plan to the Angels. They pointed out that the proposed Woodland Hills ballpark site was a 57-mile drive from Angels Stadium, 19 miles more distant than the trip from Anaheim to the stadium of the Dodgers' current California League affiliate in Rancho Cucamonga. They offered a variety of incentives, including the opportunity to host more of the games in the annual Angels-Dodgers pre-season Freeway Series. The Angels weren't biting. 

They did have a question for the Dodgers: if the Angels someday wished to move a minor league affiliate into the shared Los Angeles/Orange/Ventura County territory of the big league teams, would the Dodgers grant them permission to do so? The Dodgers wanted to know, might such a move be into the City of Los Angeles? The Angels conceded that could be a possibility. The Dodgers said they couldn't envision ever granting the Angels permission to operate a minor league team within the City of Los Angeles.

The Angels refused to sign-off on the plan to allow a Dodgers farm team to set-up shop in Woodland Hills.

Wow, as someone who lives in Woodland Hills, I didn't know any of this. (Granted I really don't follow minor league news at all). For what its worth, that Promenade location is being redeveloped into apartment complexes (probably for the best, really). And that mall has been dead for way more than a decade. I remember it being half abandoned by the late 90s, with the only thing really keeping it going was the movie theater.