La Angels
There were also rumors that the Philadelphia Athletics' move to Kansas City in 1955 was a temporary stop on the way to Los Angeles.
In the end it was the National League that first came to the city, in the form of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley purchased the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels in early 1957 from Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley.
Under the rules of the time, he also acquired the rights to a major league team in Los Angeles, which he used to move the Dodgers there a year later. However, in an effort to prevent the proposed Continental League from becoming a reality, in 1960 the two existing leagues agreed to expand, adding two new teams to each league.
Though the understanding was that expansion teams would be placed in cities without major league baseball, that agreement quickly broke down. When the National League placed a team in New York (the Mets) as its tenth franchise, the American League announced plans to place an expansion team in Los Angeles, to begin play in 1961.
The inception of a franchise
The team has an owner
Gene Autry, former movie cowboy, singer, actor and owner of Golden West Broadcasters (including Los Angeles' KMPC radio and KTLA television), attended the Major League Owners’ meeting in St.
Louis in 1960 in hopes of winning broadcasting rights for the new team’s games. Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg was initially on the fast track to be the team's first owner, with Bill Veeck as a partner.
In truth, O'Malley wasn't about to compete with Veeck, who was known as a master promoter. After another bid by Chicago insurance executive and future A's owner Charlie Finley failed, Autry was persuaded to make a bid himself.
Autry (who had been a minority stockholder in the Angels' PCL rival, the Hollywood Stars) agreed, and purchased the franchise.
The team gets its name
Autry named the new franchise the Los Angeles Angels. The Angel moniker has always been natural for Los Angeles teams, since The Angels is a literal English translation of the Spanish Los Angeles.
It was also a nod to the long-successful PCL team that played in Los Angeles from 1903 through 1957. O'Malley still owned the rights to the Angels name even after moving the team to Spokane to make way for the Dodgers, so Autry paid O'Malley $300,000 for the rights to the name.
The 1960s: early AL years
Angels in Los Angeles
In 1961, the first year of the team’s existence, the Angels finished 70-91 for a .435 winning percentage, still the highest winning percentage ever for a first-year major league expansion team.
Moreover, they not only finished 9 games ahead of their fellow expansionists, the new Washington Senators (now the Texas Rangers), but also 9 games ahead of the Kansas City Athletics. The 1961 Angels, admittedly a motley crew, featured portly first baseman Steve Bilko, a long-time fan favorite, having played many years with the PCL Angels.
Another favorite was the diminutive (5' 5-3/8") center fielder, El Monte native Albie Pearson. The Angels played that inaugural season at Wrigley Field in South Los Angeles, the longtime home of the PCL Angels and also of the syndicated television series Home Run Derby.
However, Commissioner Ford Frick turned this idea down almost out of hand after concluding that the Coliseum's extremely short left field fence (only 250 feet from the plate) made it unsuitable even as a temporary facility.
In 1962, under the terms of their agreement with O'Malley, the Angels moved to Dodger Stadium, which they would refer to as Chavez Ravine. It was thought the Angels would never develop a large fan base playing as tenants of the Dodgers.
Also, O'Malley imposed fairly onerous lease conditions on the Angels; for example, he charged them for 50% of all stadium supplies, even though the Angels at the time drew at best half of the Dodgers' attendance.
Hittin' the Road: the move from Los Angeles to Anaheim
Stymied in his attempt to get a new stadium in Los Angeles, Autry looked elsewhere. However, the city insisted the team be renamed the Long Beach Angels, a condition Autry refused to accept.
On September 2, 1965, team ownership announced the Los Angeles Angels would thenceforth be known as the California Angels, in anticipation of the team's move to Anaheim the following year. (Despite the move of the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland in 1968, the Angels retained their California moniker through 1996.) In their last year at Chavez Ravine, the Angels drew only 566,727 paying customers.
In 1967, their second year in Anaheim, the Angels contended for the American League pennant as part of a five-team pennant race (along with Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota and eventual winner Boston) before fading in late August, but eventually became the "spoilers" by defeating Detroit at Tiger Stadium in the last game of the regular season to give Boston its first AL pennant in 21 years. Ryan was acquired in a trade that sent Jim Fregosi to the Mets.
His prowess, combined with that of fellow moundsman Frank Tanana, produced the refrain, "Tanana, Ryan and Two Days of Cryin'", a derivative of the refrain, "Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain," coined when Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain anchored the pitching staff of the then Boston Braves in the 1940s.
Ironically, the 1970s came to a close with the decision by then-general manager Buzzie Bavasi to allow Ryan to become a free agent. At the time, Bavasi remarked that Ryan, whose 1979 record was 16-14 (Ryan was 26-27 under Bavasi), could be replaced "with two pitchers who go 8-7."
1979: Angels finally reach the playoffs
The Angels won their first American League West Division championship in 1979 under manager Jim Fregosi, a former Angel shortstop who was sent to the New York Mets in 1972 as part of the trade that brought Nolan Ryan to the Angels.
Reggie Jackson, who previously starred for the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees, joined the Angels that year and teamed with many holdovers from the 1979 team for the 1982 effort. The team was helmed by manager Gene Mauch, who would also manage the team during their 1986 postseason appearance.
After clinching their second AL West championship, the Angels won the first two games of the best-of-five ALCS against the AL East champion Milwaukee Brewers — then promptly dropped the next three in a row to lose the series. Baylor was gone, but among the new additions were American League Rookie of the Year runner-up Wally Joyner and pitcher Chuck Finley.
Champions of the AL West for the third time, the Angels faced the Boston Red Sox in the ALCS. After reliever Gary Lucas hit Rich Gedman with his first and only pitch, closer Donnie Moore came in to shut the door.
Though twice the Angels were one strike away from the Series, Moore gave up a two-out, two-ball, two-strike, two-run home run to Dave Henderson that put Boston ahead 6-5.
Although the Angels managed to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, Henderson again came through for the Red Sox with a sacrifice fly in the 11th, eventually giving Boston a 7-6 victory. They would go on to lose the 1986 World Series in seven games to the New York Mets, a series known for the infamous Bill Buckner error in Game 6.
In the aftermath of the ALCS, Angels fans regarded Henderson's home run off Moore as the point at which their team had been closest to the World Series, and thus Moore became the scapegoat for the Angels' loss of the pennant.
Autry’s wife Jackie, 20 years his junior, at times seemed to be the decision-maker, and at other times the Disney Company, then a minority owner, seemed to be in charge.
On May 21, 1992, an Angels' team bus traveling from New York to Baltimore crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike. The Mariners, managed by Lou Piniella and led by pitching ace Randy Johnson, laid a 9–1 drubbing on the Angels in the playoff game, clinching the AL West championship and forcing the Angels and their fans to endure yet another season of heartbreak and bitter disappointment.
The Curse of the Cowboy?
Given the clubs's inability to win a pennant thus far, the postseason disasters of 1982 and 1986, the 1995 collapse, and tragedies such as Bostock's murder and Moore's suicide, it was suggested that there must be a "curse" on the Angels.
We were standing around the outfield one day and everyone was concerned about the stadium being cursed because it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. In 1999, Tavares hired Bill Stoneman as team general manager, under whose watch the Angels eventually won their first World Series Championship.
Although Disney did not technically acquire a controlling interest in the team until after Autry's death in 1998, for all practical purposes Disney ran the team (the Autry loyalists on the board acted as 'silent partners') through its Anaheim Sports subsidiary (which also owned the NHL's Mighty Ducks of Anaheim at the time).
Disney, of course, had been a catalyst for the development of and population growth in Orange County, having opened its Disneyland theme park in Anaheim in 1955.
Angel management, stuck in an aging, oversized "white elephant" of a stadium, hinted the team might be moved from Southern California as well.
In 1997, negotiations between the Angels and the city of Anaheim for renovation of Anaheim Stadium ended with an agreement to rehabilitate and downsize the facility into a baseball-only stadium once more. One condition of the stadium agreement was that the Angels could sell naming rights to the renovated stadium, so long as the new name was one "containing Anaheim therein." Anaheim Stadium was almost immediately renamed Edison International Field of Anaheim, though it was almost always referred to as simply Edison Field.
The familiar "A-N-G-E-L-S" spelled out on the jersey front was replaced with a logo designed by Disney Studios, being a stylized form of the team name with an enlarged angel wing to the left of the "A", on new pinstriped vest jerseys. Significantly, the Angels' road jerseys now read "Anaheim", the first time the team's geographic location had been noted on its uniforms since 1965.
Pundits predicted the Angels to be third-place finishers in the four-team AL West division, and the team met those expectations with a 6-14 start to the regular season.
The Angels, managed by former Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia, then went on to win 99 games and earn the American League "wildcard" berth. The Halos defeated the New York Yankees 3 games to 1 in the American League Division Series and the Minnesota Twins 4 games to 1 in the ALCS to win the American League pennant for the first time in their history.
In the 2002 World Series they met the San Francisco Giants, paced by slugger Barry Bonds, in what ended up being the highest-scoring World Series of all time.
San Francisco took Game 1 (4–3), but the Angels followed that up by winning Games 2 (11–10) and 3 (10–4). The Angels went on to win that game, and started to build a following as "the comeback kids", most famously exemplified in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series (coincidentally against the Giants).
A new owner
On May 15, 2003, Disney sold the Angels to Angels Baseball, L.P., a group headed by advertising magnate Arturo "Arte" Moreno.
The stadium is owned by the City of Anaheim, which has shown no compunction toward changing the name. As stated in the club's 2005 media guide:
The inclusion of Los Angeles reflects the original expansion name and returns the Angels as Major League Baseball's American League representative in the Greater Los Angeles territory.
The new name sparked outrage among Anaheim and Los Angeles city leaders, who argued that a team that does not play its home games within the city or county of Los Angeles shouldn't claim to be from Los Angeles.
Two notable exceptions to this practice are on official press releases and on the team's website, where the entire name "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" is used.
The team correctly anticipated that the national media and baseball fans outside of the Southern California media market would simply drop "of Anaheim" and refer to the team as the "Los Angeles Angels." When Major League Baseball uses location to identify a team, it refers to the Angels as "Los Angeles," (or abbreviated as "LAA") as do MLB's member teams and many sportscasters.
Although an appeal filed by the city's attorneys is still pending, organized fan resistance to the new name has subsided.
Entertainment: Angels Strike Force
The LA Angels employ a team of ten young women who participate in live promotion during games, and appearances around the greater Los Angeles area for charity events.
2004-present: Angels dominate the West
From 2004 to the present the Angels have been in the unfamiliar role of perennial playoff contender; however, they have not returned to the World Series since the 2002 campaign.
In 2004, newly acquired free-agent Vladimir Guerrero won the American League Most Valuable Player Award as he led the Angels to their first American League West championship since 1986.
Also in 2004, the Angels mounted a comeback to overcome the division leading Oakland Athletics in the last week of the regular season, clinching the title in the next-to-last game. However, they were swept in the American League Division Series 3 games to 0 by the Boston Red Sox, who went on to win their first World Series since 1918.
In the 2005 season, the Halos became the first team in the American League to clinch their division, doing so with 5 games left in the regular season.
The Angels have now lost 7 straight postseason games, dating back to game 2 of the 2005 ALCS; and also 9 straight playoff games against the Red Sox, dating back to Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS.
After the 2007 playoff campaign ended, general manager Bill Stoneman retired and was replaced by Tony Reagins. They again faced the Red Sox in the playoffs.
Season records
Baseball Hall of Famers
Angels in the Hall of Fame
Other Hall of Famers Who Spent Part of Their Careers with the Angels.
Position Players
Pitchers
Retired numbers
As a teenager, Reese had been a batboy for the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels, from 1919 to 1923.
Jackie Robinson never played for the Angels but his number 42 was retired by Major League Baseball in 1998
Current roster
Minor league affiliations
AAA: Salt Lake Bees, Pacific Coast League
AA: Arkansas Travelers, Texas League
Advanced A: Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, California League
A: Cedar Rapids Kernels, Midwest League
Rookie: Tempe Angels, Arizona League
Rookie: Orem Owlz, Pioneer League
Radio and television
As of 2008, the Angels' flagship radio station is KLAA 830AM, which is owned by the Angels themselves.
The split arrangement dates back to the 2007 season, when Jose Mota and Gubicza were the second team.