The new (and original) name for the Angels. Started with Los Angeles, then California, then Anaheim (when Disney also had a gay logo for the team), then back to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. On TV, the three letters featured for sports scores are shown as LAA, with the dodgers as LAD. Tickets printed from the Angels box office are shown as just ANGELS, ie ANGELS vs BOSTON
RED SOX.
It is part of Arte Moreno's (the Angels owner) plan of marketing to the entire Southern California market. He has marketed the team as ANGELS
BASEBALL and The A Team by putting up billboards in LA and playing TV and Radio ads. In response, the dodgers have a "This is LA
Baseball" marketing campaign, though they deny it has nothing to do with the Angels. The Dodgers have also now had player appearances in Orange County, clearly showing Arte's campaign is working.
Media made it seem like many fans were very upset about the name change, but an overwhelming majority do not care because the team continues to put up perennial winning numbers and tickets to weekend games are pretty much impossible to walk up and buy. The city of anaheim and their
worthless mayor
curt pringle waste taxpayers money by spending $4 million on a lawsuit against the name and
will probably end up spending more than $10 million to cover the Angels lawsuit expenses as well.
curt pringle also brings bad luck to angel games as he publicly does not support them, but then shows up to the playoff games to get his name out but is such terrible bad luck because every game he has attended in the postseason has resulted in an Angels loss.
Since Arte's ownership of the team, the Angels have been able to assemble a perennially competitive team, pretty much the
Yankees of the west coast. Featured stars include Vladimir Guerrero, Bartolo Colon,
Francisco Rodriguez, Darin Erstad, Garrett Anderson, and
Tim Salmon. Salmon (also dubbed the Kingfish) made it back after rehabilitating from surgery and has been a great comeback
story for Angel fans to see.
For the first time in club
history, the team capped season ticket sales at over 31,000 in 2006. This leaves just about only
12,000
single game seats for sale for each game. The team also features a new TV deal with FSN West as a 10 year, half billion dollar deal. In comparison, the dodgers could not even get half that for a similar deal in which KCAL/9
dropped the Angels in 2005 to pick up the dodgers.
All of this shows that Arte has done a great job with the team and nothing else should matter except that the Angels are here to stay in Orange County and they put up winning numbers.
