Video Debated at Angel Trial

It was a special night for the Angels. Steve Finley hit the game-winning home run, and the Angels beat the rival Oakland Athletics in April, before a sellout crowd at Angel Stadium and a national television audience.

“They’re the Los Angeles Angels,” Jon Miller said on ESPN.

“Of Anaheim,” added his broadcast partner, Joe Morgan.

Miller corrected himself, sounding as if he stifled a chuckle.

“They’re the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,” Miller said.

On Wednesday in the trial between the Angels and the city of Anaheim, the team played a video clip that included Miller and Morgan’s dialogue, attempting to show that the Anaheim Angels might be no longer but that Anaheim itself has not vanished in media coverage.

Anaheim attorney Andy Guilford, outraged that the Angels would defend their name change with this video, challenged team spokesman Tim Mead about whether the city received proper prominence in the dialogue.

“It was a joke, wasn’t it?” Guilford asked.

Angel attorney Richard Decker objected. Judge Peter Polos agreed.

“The jury can decide whether it’s a joke or not,” Polos said.

In an unusual turn, Angel President Dennis Kuhl testified that Major League Baseball used the full team name “for all purposes,” but Mead later refuted his boss -- with Decker asking him to do so before Guilford could.

“I’m flabbergasted,” Guilford said.

As Kuhl spoke, Anaheim City Manager Dave Morgan used his BlackBerry to log onto mlb.com and find a reference to Vladimir Guerrero, with his team identified as “LAA.” Polos ruled the jury did not need to see Morgan’s BlackBerry.

Kuhl also testified the full name appeared regularly in newspapers and magazines, citing specifically The Times and Orange County Register. Both papers regularly refer to the team as the Angels.

Mead took the witness stand accompanied by 13 binders, stuffed with what he said were “more than 2,000” national and international news stories during 2005 that referred to the team as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He showed video clips, publications and baseball cards that also used that name and said he disagreed with the notion that Anaheim had “virtually disappeared” in connection with the team.

Baseball historian John Thorn previously likened references to Anaheim to “grains of sand on the beach.” Guilford noted the Angels’ video clips, aside from the ESPN one, used Anaheim to refer to the stadium, not the team.

After Guilford displayed statistics, schedules and standings from mlb.com with references to the Los Angeles Angels and “LAA,” Mead agreed the “standard practice” of the MLB website was to drop Anaheim.

After jurors left for the day, Polos warned attorneys to move on.

“I’ve been observing the jurors and their responses,” he said. “It seems a lot of territory is getting rehashed. The grains of sand have been gone over countless times.”

The city rested its case Wednesday; the trial resumes Friday.