7 Reasons Why I Should Be the Next Owner of the Angels
Only one of them involves my dad farting in a Pinto
Angels owner Arte Moreno announced Tuesday that after two yin-yang decades -- the first triumphant and beloved, the second mediocre and despised -- he will be seeking to sell the baseball team that has managed to squander the primes of two historically elite players.
“As an organization, we have worked to provide our fans an affordable and family-friendly ballpark experience while fielding competitive lineups, which included some of the game’s all-time greatest players,” Moreno said in a statement that has only been true in three of his 20 seasons in the owners’ box (2012, 2014, and 2015 were the only years Mike Trout got within even five games of making the playoffs). As the team’s own website pointed out, “Despite having superstars such as Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, the Angels haven’t had a winning record since 2015, the longest such streak in the Majors.” Ouch.
To meet this historic opportunity for a franchise reboot, there is one obvious, though perhaps counter-intuitive, choice to succeed the Angels’ unpopular owner: Me.
That’s right: non-billionaire opinion journalist schmo who does political/media podcasts, current resident of Brooklyn ... and yet just read this tweet from the VERY RESPECTED CALIFORNIA AUTHOR (and also Angels fan) Joe Mathews:
Granted, my fundraising pull among even small-l libertarians is less impressive than, say, Magic Johnson’s rolodex (although I did already email that one guy), but there’s no hard and fast rule about having to pony up $50 million for a 2.3 percent stake to become the public face of a storied (nightmared?) franchise. Maybe $50,000 for 0.0023 percent instead, in exchange for some moderate operational control? The people are demanding the Welchification of Anaheim; surely there are some low-key billionaires out there waiting for someone with thicker skin to take the public lumps.
So to get this consortium-party started, I herewith offer seven reasons why my candidacy rises above all those other cradle-to-grave Angels fanatics, and deserves consideration from any Daddy Warbucks greedily eyeing the prize of bigfooting The Big A.
1) Slept in a Pinto with my dad in the Anaheim Stadium parking lot waiting for eventually useless 1982 World Series tickets.
Believe me, the story gets more grim from there (involves vomiting, unspeakable outhouse situations), but also, very eventually, more joyous. All of which to say is, like all longstanding Angels fans, I have tasted much pain. (And yes, I sponsor the Baseball Reference page for the ‘82 Angels.)
As mentioned in that piece, during that same rite of passage at age 14, I took my first deep draught from the waters of Bill James, a life-redirecting experience that gave me a three-decade jump on my chosen organization when it came to understanding the analytical winds that would blow baseball strategy in radically new directions during the 21st century. Such prolonged exposure also helped prevent me from adopting the off-putting zeal of the recently converted, allowing for a qualified defense of the Mike Scioscia-era Angels back when they deserved it.
2) Played J.V. ball with 1992-96 Angel Damion Easley.
Granted we were both riding pine that year at Lakewood High -- me because of mid-season knee surgery, him because he was pre-growth spurt and also our dullard coach was likely wowed by the on-field swagger and surfer good looks of another 2Bman who happened to be the nephew of Jim Lefebvre. Damion, a year younger than me, would explode in his senior year, hitting a billion home runs, eventually getting drafted by the Angels, who mishandled the beginning of what would be a productive 17-year career, trading him at age 26 for a guy who had just 24 big-league innings left in his right arm.
This is trivia, yes, except to say that I played the sport in competitive contexts with and against some future Major Leaguers, so the on-field stuff is not purely theoretical. Also, the Angels under Arte Moreno have been noticeably ungreat about fostering alumni relations, which is a crucial and low-cost way to deepen connections with a team’s most loyal customers. Jered Weaver, a local boy and franchise all-timer, has scarcely been seen around The Big A since retiring. This will not stand!
3) I played in a high school rock band with 2014-17 Angels hitting coach Dave Hansen. No really, I did.
That and two dollars obviously gets you two dollars. But! One of the unsung villains in the decline of this once-admired organization was the long brain drain of the peak Scioscia-era coaching stuff. The 2022 team is so abysmally instructed that runners have been picked off of first base by the trailing catcher while the first-base coach stood there oblivious not doing HIS ONE JOB. Scioscia’s bench on the 2002 championship team included Joe Maddon (1,382 wins, future 3-time manager of the year, 8 postseasons, 2 pennants, 1 ring), Bud Black (1,052 wins, onetime manager of the year, 2 postseasons), and Ron Roenicke (342 wins, 2 postseasons). There was an identifiable Angel Way of playing the game from Rookie Ball on up. Now, it’s just ugly.
Knowing how to jam Beatles and Ventures covers with a long-lost homeboy who happens to have been at the scene of the bad-coaching crime is probably not the most important attribute in a prospective owner ... but dammit, Jim, it doesn’t hurt! The Angels need to be run by people who recognize that the organizational culture, from the top down, is broken, and immune to quick fixes.
4) Grew up on the same street as longtime Angels public relations director and terrific sportswriter George Lederer.
Do yourself a favor and go read about George’s remarkable (and tragically truncated) life right here. Our families were close --his son Gary was pals with my brother Larry; his wife Pat was friends with my mom; my dad certainly coached Gary at least in a Little League All-Star context, and so forth. I interviewed George's son Rich Lederer -- best known for being the Internet hobbyist whose relentless persuasive advocacy eventually helped get Bert Blyleven elected to the Hall of Fame -- back in 2005.
Does this seeming serendipity matter? A little bit, yes. I have been soaking in the deep history of this franchise literally since birth (my dad was an original season-ticket holder when both his and their work decamped to Orange County in 1966). In various weird corners of the Internet On this site you will find hopelessly detailed Welchian rundowns of annual Angels baseball card collections, deep dives into the career development of players like Ed Kirkpatrick, the Hall of Fame case for Bobby Grich, arguments that Darin Erstad’s historic 2000 season was not in fact a fluke, comparisons of the 2006 Angels to the 1972 Dodgers, top-10 seasonal breakdowns by position ... on and on it goes. Pretty sure I once domain-squatted (maybe even filled some content for?) Angelshistory.com.
There are many strategic lessons to be mined from the team’s history, true, but there’s also just troves of untapped content there, including 62 years’ worth of broadcasts, just waiting to be made available to historians and repackaged to a hungry fanbase. Speaking of which....
5) Got some broadcast experience over here!
Sure, I’m no Singing Cowboy -- who was not only that, but a visionary and influential media entrepreneur. But I’ve done enough live television and radio, and helped create enough audio/video properties, to have some concrete ideas for how to significantly enhance the single biggest interface fans have with the product.
Zero disrespect to the Angels’ current on/off-air talent, but this is a telecast and radiocast and webcast that could, with a little more thought and creativity, be greatly improved and diversified. The organization of Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale should never settle for lesser broadcasting
6) Am no stranger to (published) strategic analysis of this franchise.
Remember the aforementioned Bill James? I shared space with the man between the covers of the The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006, in which I laid out how “Mike Scioscia’s system makes more sense than you think.” The L.A. Times gave me daily analytical real estate during the 2008 playoffs. And at the other end of the glory days, for the Baseball Prospectus 2014 annual, I broke down the crime scene of the team’s organizational collapse.
I was the one making the (shockingly lonely) case before the 2011 season that the team signing free agent 3Bman Adrián Beltré would not regret penciling in 60 extra-base hits and 150 games per year. I pegged a young Erick Aybar’s best comp as Chico Carrasquel. I predicted that after an early stumble out of the gate in 2006, a youth movement would deliver the franchise’s best-ever stretch, which: true.
It would help to have the type of owner not prone to rewarding a single good season by a 31-year-old centerfielder with a five-year contract!
7) Actually, having some libertarian ownership would be a welcome change to Anaheim crony capitalism.
The entire city government of Anaheim is in total disarray -- mayor resigned, FBI probes ongoing, and so forth -- because of the various shady deals hatched between politicos and the baseball team. Enough already!
Libertarians may be annoying, but they are more than consistent on this one key point: They do not want government or taxpayer dollars anywhere near professional sports. Get me a consortium of small-l moneybags and I will vow to keep the team in Anaheim, cease and desist the perennial arm-twisting of the corrupt local government, and act more like an owner than a renter.
Then we can get on to the real fun, like more tacos, international scouting worth a damn, changing the team name back to the California Angels, and banning the atrocity that is “Build Me Up Buttercup” from the stadium P.A., forever.
Look, all we need is a couple billion dollars. I’m good for five large (read: thousand). I do not ever again want to hear some rich Orange County libertarian bitch about Arte Moreno squandering Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. As Oasis taught us, all you people right here right now, d’ya know what I mean?
Originally published at Paloma Media.