<span class="gmail_quote">On 6/25/06, </span><span class="gmail_quote"><span class="gmail_sendername"><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:kimba1962@comcast.net">kimba1962@comcast.net</a></span>
</span> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>Steven Rowe wrote:<br><br>> guess yall can see Im not a baseball fan (although it was Gene Autry who
<br>> owned the Angels, right?)<br><br>Yes. He
was the owner of the team when it began as the (original) Los Angeles
Angels in 1961. Unfortunately, he didn't live to see the
Angels win their first World Series in 2002.<br></blockquote></div><br>
OK. This is a bit complex, but in the interests of accurate
information, the team Autry owned was not, technically, the "original"
Los Angeles Angels. Here's the deal.<br>
<br>
The "original" Los Angeles Angels were a minor league baseball team
that was ACTUALLY based in Los Angeles. They played from
1903-1957, as part of the "Pacific Coast League." (Actually, this may
not even be true, as Wikipedia suggests that the name has origins in
1892, but I can find evidence of that team).<br>
<br>
The team that Gene Autry founded did indeed start in Los Angeles in
1961, and did use the name "Los Angeles Angels" for a few years, but
moved to Anaheim in 1966 to the stadium they use today, and changed
their name to the "California Angels." (One assumes that they
didn't think the name of Anaheim was well-known enough in these early
days of Disneyland.)<br>
<br>
The team became the "Anaheim Angels" in 1996, which actually caused a
lot of outcry among fans at the time who STILL didn't think that the
name "Anaheim" represented anything important (although Disneyland
would have LONG been connected to the name by this time).<br>
<br>
Finally, in 2005, the team changed its name to the current "Los Angeles
Angels of Anaheim," arguing both that the name reflects the team's
original roots and that the name of Los Angeles held greater marketing
power. This move infuriated Anaheim city officials (who had
signed a contract with the team owners a few years previously
stipulating that the name Anaheim would remain a part of the team's
name, and were not mollified by its inclusion as the inferior end of a
"two-city" team name) as well as many local fans, who by this time had
the team's success in the 2002 World Series to add to Anaheim local
pride. The city sued the owners of the team to try to get the
name changed back, but the court found that the owners had technically
upheld the terms of their contract by including Anaheim at the end of
the name, despite the fact that the team no longer has any technical
connection to Los Angeles (being neither in the city nor in the county
of that name), which already has a team of their own (The Dodgers).<br>
<br>
Anyway, my apologies for taking this off-topic....<br>
<br>
Mark Baker-Wright<br>-- <br>Assistant to the Faculty and Dean's Office, SOT: Fuller Theological Seminary<br>Transforming Seminarian (my blog):<br><a href="http://transformingseminarian.blogspot.com">http://transformingseminarian.blogspot.com
</a><br><br>Ask me about singer/songwriter David LaMotte!