Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[Gothamite]

Why Anaheim?  Because Anaheim paid them to use “Anaheim”.

 

And I guess now it seems a little silly for one of five teams in the state to try and claim the name. When they first adopted it, they were the only AL team in California.  That meant something in those days.  Now there are two additional teams in the state, the Angels aren’t the only AL club anymore, and even if they were the league distinction itself is meaningless.

[SFGiants58]

1 minute ago, Gothamite said:

Because Anaheim paid them to use “Anaheim”.  

 

The city made the right call, then. If they want to be an LA team, don't play beyond the remnants of the Orange Curtain.

 

Besides, I'd much rather that the team had taken the "Hollywood Stars" name. If you're going to use any local name within Greater Los Angeles, that one is probably the most marketable.

 

[DG_YouKnowWhatThatMeans]

5 minutes ago, LMU said:

I'm assuming this is rhetorical but if not, city officials wanted some PR thrown in with their check to Mickey Mouse, Inc. to tear down the Rams seats and add in extra rocks from the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

 

It wasn't rhetorical; I legit didn't know.

 

Seems like switching from California has provided imperfect options afterward.

[Brian in Boston]

26 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Sure it is.   A smaller city orbiting a larger one.

When the central city is as large as LA or New York, the satellite cities get larger too.

Brentwood and Van Nuys aren't smaller cities orbiting a larger one. They're neighborhoods in a large city.

 

[Gothamite]

Alhambra and Beverly Hills, then. 

[Brian in Boston]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

Alhambra and Beverly Hills, then. 

Which one takes the place of Brentwood and which takes the place of Van Nuys? Or don't you take into account nuances like population, land area, demographics and the such when you elect to hold forth about the City of Los Angeles and its sphere of influence over other communities in Southern California?

I mean...

"Orange County may well have its own vibe, but so does Malibu.  So does Brentwood. So does Santa Monica.  So does does Van Nuys, gods help them."

"And as OC (mercifully) browns..."

"If it wasn’t so close to LA, Anaheim would be Bakersfield."

Do you have any idea how smug, condescending, and dismissive these tossed-off assessments sound? Honestly... "browns"? 

"When I lived there... "

Oh, now I get it. You put in your time in Southern California and now believe yourself to be some sort of cultural anthropologist with a special insight into what makes the entirety of the region tick... as only someone ensconced in New York can. 

It might be time to retire "Gothamite" and adopt the handle "Alvy Singer".     

      
 

[SFGiants58]

58 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

Which one takes the place of Brentwood and which takes the place of Van Nuys? Or don't you take into account nuances like population, land area, demographics and the such when you elect to hold forth about the City of Los Angeles and its sphere of influence over other communities in Southern California?

 

(snip)

Do you have any idea how smug, condescending, and dismissive these tossed-off assessments sound? 

Oh, now I get it. You put in your time in Southern California and now believe yourself to be some sort of cultural anthropologist with a special insight into what makes the entirety of the region tick... as only someone ensconced in New York can. 
 

 

A lot the whole Anaheim/Los Angeles debate focuses on people from outside the region misinterpreting the nature of these demographics and geographic separations. It's why I keep making the Brooklyn comparison, if only to get a rise out of a few of them. It's a good way to relate how ridiculous their generalizations sound. 

 

58 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

It might be time to retire "Gothamite" and adopt the handle "Alvy Singer".     
 

 

Hey, that's too cruel! 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

The mentions of the cultural distinctiveness of Orange County miss the point. The important factor here is simple geography. For a city the magnitude of a Los Angeles, a smaller city only 30 miles away is always going to be part of the larger city's metro area, notwithstanding any cultural differences, and regardless of whether that smaller city is located in another county or in another state. (In the cases of Detroit and Vancouver, smaller cities belonging to the larger city's metro area can even be located in another country.)

 

Yet it is true that the Angels essentially disavow Los Angeles in their branding. They are thus squandering the benefits of identifying with one of the world's greatest cities.

 

What makes the current situation feel so weird is the multiple changes of name. If the team had been called the Los Angeles Angels since its inception, or if it had retained its longstanding identity of California Angels, the t-shirts that read "Angels Baseball" would not be so awkward.

 

The only thing that is for sure about the team's varying names is that "Anaheim" should never have been among those names. The reason touches upon why baseball is indeed different from hockey: hockey is a niche sport in the United States, while baseball is a huge national institution.

 

In a classic running gag from Jack Benny's radio show, Mel Blanc portrays a train station announcer who makes the announcement "train leaving on track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuc...amonga".

 

 

Those are the types places with which Anaheim can be classed; while Los Angeles ranks with other world-class cosmopolitan centres such as New York, London, and Paris.

 

To put it most starkly: Major League Baseball is too big for Anaheim. And so is the NFL. But the NHL is not. 

Edited June 14, 2019 by Ferdinand Cesarano
Spelling correction. Thanks to Brian in Boston.

[Still MIGHTY]

Honestly, I’m not having this ing discussion again. Just unnecessary pot-stirring from Markazi, who’s relatively new in his tenure as a columnist at the Times and hadn’t got his swing at this 14-year-old, torn down, beaten up piñata.

 

Gothamite, you were wrong about all this the last time it came up, and you’re still wrong about it now.

 

California Angels was fine. Anaheim Angels was fine. If they had never changed and stayed the Los Angeles Angels when they moved 50 years ago, that also would have been fine. But the toothpaste was out of the tube. Trying to go back was a mistake the instant they thought of it, and all we’ve been doing is arguing ever since.

[Brian in Boston]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

In a classic running gag from Jack Benny's radio show, Mel Blanc portrays a train station announcer who makes the announcement "train leaving on track 5 for Anaheim, Azuza, and Cuc...amonga".

 

The true comedy in that bit - at least for those familiar with Southern California geography - is that the three communities were never linked by the same passenger rail line.

 

Also, over the course of The Jack Benny Program's history - both on radio and television - Benny, Blanc, and the show's creative team hit upon the idea of gradually extending the pause that the train conductor would insert between the beginning and ending of the name Cucamonga. If memory serves, the record was set on the television version of the show, with a full  five or six minutes of dialogue taking place amongst various cast-members between Blanc's initially intoning, "Train now leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuc..." and eventually bellowing, "... amonga!!!"    

By the way, it's Azusa... with an S. 

 

[SFGiants58]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The mentions of the cultural distinctiveness of Orange County miss the point. The important factor here is simple geography. For a city the magnitude of a Los Angeles, a smaller city only 30 miles away is always going to be part of the larger city's metro area, notwithstanding any cultural differences, and regardless of whether that smaller city is located in another county or in another state. (In the cases of Detroit and Vancouver, smaller cities belonging to the larger city's metro area can even be located in another country.)

 

Brooklyn, Oakland, and the New Jersey Devils beg to differ.

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Yet it is true that the Angels essentially disavow Los Angeles in their branding. They are thus squandering the benefits of identifying with one of the world's greatest cities.

 

Again, this also applies to the Brooklyn Dodgers and Oakland Athletics. You at least have extensive amounts of freeway separating Anaheim and Los Angeles, which isn’t as much the case between Brooklyn-Manhattan and SF-Oakland.

 

It’s OK to reject the big-name city in favor of local ones.

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

What makes the current situation feel so weird is the multiple changes of name. If the team had been called the Los Angeles Angels since its inception, or if it had retained its longstanding identity of California Angels, the t-shirts that read "Angels Baseball" would not be so awkward.

 

Retaining LA probably would have been ideal, while going for California should have been impossible after Charlie O. moved the A’s to Oakland. State names are terrible, but using a state name while playing alongside another team in your state is stupid.

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The only thing that is for sure about the team's varying names is that "Anaheim" should never have been among those names. The reason touches upon why baseball is indeed different from hockey: hockey is a niche sport in the United States, while baseball is a huge national institution.

 

That shouldn’t matter. That shouldn’t matter at all.

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Those are the types places with which Anaheim can be classed; while Los Angeles ranks with other world-class cosmopolitan centres such as New York, London, and Paris.

 

Maybe that was the case when Jack Benny was on the radio, but things change. Not every city has to be world-class. It’s OK to be niche in baseball, especially when said niche sets you opposition to the hegemon (the Los Angeles Dodgers). Again, do “New York Dodgers” and “San Francisco Athletics” sound good to anybody?

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

To put it most starkly: Major League Baseball is too big for Anaheim. And so is the NFL. But the NHL is not. 

 

That’s still terrible reasoning. The NHL isn’t a minor league. It’s more niche than baseball, but it’s not that much more niche.

 

Anaheim is a valid name for a baseball team. @Still MIGHTY and @Brian in Boston are right about it and how people misunderstand it. 

[Gothamite]

2 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Brooklyn, Oakland, and the New Jersey Devils beg to differ.

 

Nobody is seriously suggesting that Brooklyn isn’t a part of New York City,  But Brooklyn by itself is larger than all save three cities in the country, and the name “Brooklyn” sells  all across the city and across the country.  You can’t seriously suggest that “Anaheim” does the same.  After all, no Eurotrash poseur ever named their kid “Anaheim”.  

 

(If you wanna play East Coast/West Coast rivalry, come on.  Let’s get nuts.) 

 

 

 

 

Similarly, nobody seriously thinks that northern New Jersey isn’t a part of the New York metroplex.  There’s very little of New Jersey that isn’t a satellite city, of either NYC or Philadelphia.   But even so, New Jersey has eight million people from which to draw.  Eight million people to fill with local pride. Anaheim has what, four hundred thousand?

 

The Bay Area is a unique situation, with three cities in close orbit.  But Anaheim is no Oakland in its relationship to its neighbor.   Either of them.

 

Nobody’s arguing that using the name of a smaller entity can’t work for a baseball team.  Only that it doesn’t always work for a baseball team, and it was dragging down the Angels.  There needs to be a significant amount of cultural cache behind the name, that just isn’t there in this particular case.

 

Which is not a bad thing.  Not every city can be Los Angeles.  Not every city should be Los Angeles.  (Really, not every city should be Los Angeles.)  The state needs Fresnos and Bakersfields and Davises and San Berdoos too.  They’re all wonderful, they all bring something.  If the Angels move to El Segundo or Torrence or Pasadena or Monrovia or Thousand Oaks, they should still be the Los Angeles Angels.

 

FWIW, and just to get back to the original topic, I hope the Angels don’t move out of Anaheim.  I like them in Anaheim, it fits their relationship to the Dodgers. Can’t think of a better place for them anywhere in the whole Southland.

[_DietDrPepper_]

I haven’t been paying much attention but could they technically relocate to another city outside of LA Anaheim region? What are the odds of that. Especially with Portland striving to get a team

[B-Rich]

Just for reference sake, let's look at Anaheim-based teams in everything but the dinkiest of leagues (and some cool old logos, of course).

• First up, September 1965 --  With one month left to go in the season, the Los Angeles Angels are renamed the California Angels, as they will be moving to Anaheim the following season. 
• 1967 --  ABA expansion team Anaheim Amigos last one season in that city, then are sold and moved to Los Angeles, becoming the Stars. 
• 1974 -- WFL expansion team placed in Anaheim; named the Southern California Sun; lasts two seasons:
• 
• 1978 -- NASL's St. Louis Stars move to Anaheim Stadium, follow the Angels' lead and become the California Surf; last three seasons:
• 1978 -- World Team Tennis franchise placed in Anaheim, named the Anaheim Oranges (in a later '80s incarnation at the same location, called the California Oranges)
• 
• 1980 -- The Rams follow through on a planned moved to suburban Anaheim, but remain the "Los Angeles Rams" (despite a blurb I read in Sports Illustrated article in the late '70s suggesting that they may be called the "California Rams")
• 1993 -- NHL expands to Anaheim, team name is  "Mighty Ducks of Anaheim", later changed to "Anaheim Ducks"
• 1994 -- Anaheim Piranhas in the Arena Football league; last till 1997.
• 1997 --  Angels changed name from California Angels to Anaheim Angels.
• 2005 -- Team owner changes baseball name to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• 2014 -- Anaheim becomes home to LA KISS of the Arena football League; lasts to 2016.

 

So for teams playing in Anaheim:

• we have 4 instances of "Anaheim", 3 of "California", 2 of "Los Angeles" or "LA", 1 of "Los Angles of Anaheim" and 1 of "Southern California". 
• Tenure-wise in toto, we have 40 years of "Anaheim"; 39 years of "California", 18 years of "Los Angeles" or "LA", 14 of "Los Angeles of Anaheim" and 2 of "Southern California".

 

It's obviously the most messed-up location in terms of name-place in major league sports. 

[Still MIGHTY]

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Similarly, nobody seriously thinks that northern New Jersey isn’t a part of the New York metroplex.  There’s very little of New Jersey that isn’t a satellite city, of either NYC or Philadelphia.   But even so, New Jersey has eight million people from which to draw.  Eight million people to fill with local pride. Anaheim has what, four hundred thousand?

 

(Congratulations on dragging me back into this with your condescending ass.)

 

Yes, let’s compare the population of a state and a city. Makes sense. The Angels aren’t just filling the local pride of Anaheim. Angel fans don’t stop at the city limits. Anaheim is the main representative of Orange County, which is over three million people.

 

And to say Anaheim has no cultural cache? It’s ing DISNEYLAND, my dude. C’mon.

 

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

If the Angels move to El Segundo or Torrence or Pasadena or Monrovia or Thousand Oaks, they should still be the Los Angeles Angels.

 

Yes, if the Angels moved to El Segundo or Torrence or Pasadena or Monrovia or Thousand Oaks, they would be the Los Angeles Angels. Because they would be IN LOS ANGELES.

 

Again, great, you used to at one time live in Southern California. That does not make you the expert. My family is from New York. I’ve visited NYC more than any city outside of SoCal. I love New York. I don’t come at you trying to tell you how and what New York is. So maybe you just leave the LA/OC dynamics to the people that grew up and/or currently live here. I think we have a better handle on this.

[Still MIGHTY]

Again, the toothpaste was out of the tube. You’re not going to get Angel fans in Orange County to say “yes, Go Los Angeles” when they didn’t for 40 years. Yes, they could’ve stayed LA upon move and nobody would be the wiser. They changed to California because they saw, even in 1965, that they weren’t in LA, then they added the specificity with Anaheim. 

 

When you have something that represents your community and you can say “yes, that is us, that is ours, not the big dirty brother, this is *our* team” and then that thing wants to leave you behind and represent people it hasn’t in ages while still living in your city, you can’t see how that plays?

 

If we do want to do a New York comparison, the Brooklyn Nets. They were at one point the New York Nets, take in the whole area. Then they became New Jersey, how many people in NY stayed with them? Then they jump to Brooklyn, how many people in NJ stayed with them? How many non-Brooklynites in NY embrace the Nets? People of Brooklyn are pumped though, right? “Hell yeah! BROOKLYN! This is ours!” How would Brooklyn Nets fans feel if at some point they went back to being the New York Nets? Didn’t move, stayed in Brooklyn, and after years of being called Brooklyn, they went back to claiming all of New York, just for advertising dollars?

[pmoehrin]

I don't get it. I could understand if using the LA name actually made a difference to the bottom line. But as far as I can tell, in every case where its been tried, it doesn't.

 

Around 13 million people live in the LA metro area. Out of that 13 million, only about 4 million actually live in Los Angeles. That means more than 2/3rds of the residents in the LA metro area DON'T live in Los Angeles.

 

It also means a team could do just as well playing immediately outside of Los Angeles as they could in downtown LA. But by using the LA name, you risk pushing the very same fans you're trying to attract away. And for what? For some vein notion that Los Angeles is the only city in the area that matters? It strikes me as going out of the way to attract a fan that likely isn't coming regardless of what the team goes by.

 

They had it right with California Angels. It perfectly reflected their identity as a suburban team trying to attract LA sports fans who don't live in LA. Every name change since has been a downgrade from the one preceding it.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 6/14/2019 at 1:09 PM, Still MIGHTY said:

If we do want to do a New York comparison, the Brooklyn Nets. They were at one point the New York Nets, take in the whole area. Then they became New Jersey, how many people in NY stayed with them? Then they jump to Brooklyn, how many people in NJ stayed with them? How many non-Brooklynites in NY embrace the Nets? People of Brooklyn are pumped though, right? “Hell yeah! BROOKLYN! This is ours!” How would Brooklyn Nets fans feel if at some point they went back to being the New York Nets? Didn’t move, stayed in Brooklyn, and after years of being called Brooklyn, they went back to claiming all of New York, just for advertising dollars?

 

That would delight me to no end. As a kid I became fascinated with Dr. J, and so the New York Nets became my team. I stayed with the team after the move to New Jersey. But they lost me with the move to Brooklyn. I couldn't imagine that they'd take the name of Brooklyn when Brooklyn is not a separate city anymore (as it was when the Dodgers were named). But they did.  I tried to stay with them; I bought several hats and other gear after the move (nothing that said "Brooklyn"; just stuff with the shield logo that preserved a shred of the team's former identity). But ultimately I could not keep my enthusiasm up; I have lost my interest not only in the Nets but in the entire NBA. 

When the new name was first announced, and I was despairing over the decision not to restore the team's original name, I imagined the poster that I would like to have seen if the decision had gone the other way.

 

I know that the team is starting to get good.  I admire both Russell and Dinwiddie.  But, overall, I am just not feeling it.  For a team in my city to not take the name of my city is alienating to me; and this has killed my fandom.  However, if the New York Nets came back, I'd immediately be very much into it. 

 

I realise that the name "Brooklyn" seems cool to people around the country, to whom the name implies only brownstone Downtown Brooklyn and the artistic scene centred on Williamsburg. But people in the rest of New York City who are familiar with the whole borough know that Brooklyn really ain't s--t. In my opinion, this naming hurts the Nets in their quest for fans in the New York City area.  Other fans may not be as emotional I as am about the name question, simply because they weren't Net fans in the first place.  For most New Yorkers, the Nets are just a nonentity.  Knick fans probably outnumber Net fans even in Brooklyn!  The Knicks could suck for decades while the Brooklyn Nets were winning titles, and there still would be many times more Knick fans than Net fans in the city than Net fans.  Hell, there are more Celtic fans in New York City (including in Brooklyn) than there are Net fans!  The phenomenon of the Nets' arena filling up with Celtic fans in matchups of the two teams, which many assumed would be left in Jersey, has definitely followed the team to its current home.  

Also, even if the Nets' move from New Jersey had not pissed off those fans, no New Jersey fans are going to care about a Brooklyn team, whereas, they do in fact care about several New York teams (which makes sense, as North Jersey is part of the New York metro area). The Nets have a potential to win some fans on Long Island, based on their decision to put their G-League team in the New York Nets' former arena and to call that team the Long Island Nets. Even still, to think that this fan base would rival the size of the mass of Knick fans out there would be highly unrealistic. 

The result of the Nets' flawed naming strategy is that they are a team with large-market costs and small-market potential. 

 

Anyway, while it might be tempting to see the comment "For a team in my city to not take the name of my city is alienating to me; and this has killed my fandom" as applying to both the Nets and the Angels, the two situation are in fact not analogous because the Nets' name is exclusionary while the Angels' name is inclusionary.  The Nets reject the name of their home city in favour of a smaller sub-local name that excludes the majority of their home city, while the Angels reject the name of their home city in favour of a larger metro-area name that includes their home city and much more. In other words: the name "New York" covers the entire city as well as the adjacent locations in North Jersey, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley; likewise, the name "Los Angeles" covers the entire city as well as the adjacent locations in Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties.

[neo_prankster]

3 hours ago, B-Rich said:

Just for reference sake, let's look at Anaheim-based teams in everything but the dinkiest of leagues (and some cool old logos, of course).

• First up, September 1965 --  With one month left to go in the season, the Los Angeles Angels are renamed the California Angels, as they will be moving to Anaheim the following season. 
• 1967 --  ABA expansion team Anaheim Amigos last one season in that city, then are sold and moved to Los Angeles, becoming the Stars. 
• 1974 -- WFL expansion team placed in Anaheim; named the Southern California Sun; lasts two seasons:
• 
• 1978 -- NASL's St. Louis Stars move to Anaheim Stadium, follow the Angels' lead and become the California Surf; last three seasons:
• 1978 -- World Team Tennis franchise placed in Anaheim, named the Anaheim Oranges (in a later '80s incarnation at the same location, called the California Oranges)
• 
• 1980 -- The Rams follow through on a planned moved to suburban Anaheim, but remain the "Los Angeles Rams" (despite a blurb I read in Sports Illustrated article in the late '70s suggesting that they may be called the "California Rams")
• 1993 -- NHL expands to Anaheim, team name is  "Mighty Ducks of Anaheim", later changed to "Anaheim Ducks"
• 1994 -- Anaheim Piranhas in the Arena Football league; last till 1997.
• 1997 --  Angels changed name from California Angels to Anaheim Angels.
• 2005 -- Team owner changes baseball name to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• 2014 -- Anaheim becomes home to LA KISS of the Arena football League; lasts to 2016.

 

So for teams playing in Anaheim:

• we have 4 instances of "Anaheim", 3 of "California", 2 of "Los Angeles" or "LA", 1 of "Los Angles of Anaheim" and 1 of "Southern California". 
• Tenure-wise in toto, we have 40 years of "Anaheim"; 39 years of "California", 18 years of "Los Angeles" or "LA", 14 of "Los Angeles of Anaheim" and 2 of "Southern California".

 

It's obviously the most messed-up location in terms of name-place in major league sports. 

 

But lest we forget the only other reason all of us are able to point out Anaheim on a map is because of Disneyland.

[Gothamite]

1 hour ago, pmoehrin said:

I don't get it. I could understand if using the LA name actually made a difference to the bottom line. But as far as I can tell, in every case where its been tried, it doesn't.

 

Arte Mareno said that it did.

 

He said that corporate partners and sponsors weren’t willing to pay as much to an “Anaheim” team as they are to a “Los Angeles” team.   We have no way of proving or disproving that, but neither do we have any reason not to take him at his word.