Boom-Town Days : Just How Many Big-Time Teams<i> Can</i> the L.A. Area Support?

World War II was ending, and Dan Reeves had had it with Cleveland. An Air Force lieutenant, Reeves also owned the Cleveland Rams. And at a special meeting of National Football League franchise holders, he was seeking permission to move the Rams to Los Angeles.

“I’ve heard of Los Angeles,” said an opponent, Fred Mandel, president of the Detroit Lions. “But it costs too much to go out there. I vote no.”

Reeves had expected that reaction. “Here’s what I think of the L.A. area,” he told Mandel and the other owners. “I’ll pay the travel bills for all your teams. I mean if Los Angeles doesn’t go for pro football--if Cleveland was better--I’ll make up the difference.”

From the back of the room, young Wellington Mara of the New York football Giants shouted: “Sold.”

And a new age had begun--an age of sports on a previously unimagined scale. In the four decades since the NFL discovered California, the Los Angeles area has become America’s most active sports center.

There are now two prominent pro football teams, the Raiders and the Rams; two big-time college football teams, USC and UCLA; two big- league baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Angels; two National Basketball Assn. teams, the Lakers and the Clippers; and two busy race tracks, Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, plus a National Hockey League team, the Kings, and a third pro football team, the faltering Express.

Public opinion polls suggest that on a scale of 100, the nation’s three most popular spectator sports are football (31%), baseball (26%) and basketball (10%). (Hockey, boxing, golf, tennis and a half dozen other sports make up the remainder.) Significantly:

The Lakers, with the highest ticket prices in sports, lead basketball in net income.

The Dodgers lead baseball in total attendance.

The Raiders lead football in gross receipts.

It seems preposterous today that anyone ever had to guarantee anyone else’s travel costs to Los Angeles. And, of course, no payments were ever made.

“From day one, L.A. was a financial improvement on Cleveland,” Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney said. “Reeves just woke us up.”

In short order, many others also woke up. One of these was an early Ram fan, a film executive who had moved to Hollywood from New York. A season-ticket holder, he walked into the Rams’ box office at the Coliseum one day to buy another seat.

“I’m in love,” he said. “I’m getting married this summer.”

“Congratulations,” the ticket seller said cheerfully. “I can move you up five rows and put you and your bride together at every game.”

“Five rows?” the man said. “Are you crazy? Put her up there--and leave me where I’m at.”

How did Los Angeles get that way? What makes this the best sports town in a sports-minded country?

The most persuasive answer has these three parts:

To begin with, greater Los Angeles is one of the most populous and fastest-growing communities in the nation. Second, it is one of the most affluent places on earth; people can afford tickets that run as high as $100. Third, and more distinctively, this is a community of transients and transplants from the 49 other states and around the world.

As a sports area, Los Angeles is what it is in large part because its people are who they are--imports from everywhere.

Many Californians, to be sure, were born here--particularly in the last 20 years--but millions weren’t.

And by definition, migratory persons are those looking for something different, something better.

That suggests they’re also ambitious. Turned off by losers, they are ambitious for themselves, for their families and for any organization they admire. And though they enjoy action and excitement, they don’t readily put down new roots. They seldom develop deep sports loyalties in the same sense that their less venturesome friends back home support the Cubs or Lions, win or lose.

Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen, the NBC broadcaster who played 15 years for the Rams, calls this the strangest town in the pro leagues.

“It’s a shocking experience,” he says, “to come here from a cohesive smaller city and play for the first time in the L.A. Coliseum for an L.A. team. They’ll cheer you for a good play--they get excited here and love their football--but as a crowd, they’re never really for you. They don’t involve themselves in the game, in the outcome.”

Olsen, a 14-year All-Pro who was one of the most sensitive of the Rams--and among the ablest in their first 40 years--thinks of Los Angeles sports fans as unique.

“They appreciate good football in the same sense that they appreciate good wine,” he says. “They like excellence because that’s what they hoped to find when they came out here from Iowa or Pennsylvania. But this is a city of spectators, not fans.”

As Los Angeles spectators, they cheer for both sides, making it more difficult for the home team to win.

“At the L.A. Super Bowl,” Pittsburgh center Mike Webster says, meaning Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl, “there were more Steeler fans than Ram fans.”

Restlessly, crowds go where the action is--Pauley Pavilion yesterday, a Raider playoff game today.

What Los Angeles prefers over old, established institutions is flashy or classy winners. This isn’t an easy city to understand. Among those who do are Al Davis of the flashy Raiders, Jerry Buss of the flashy Lakers and Peter O’Malley of the classy Dodgers.

And because there are so many souls in this area--12 1/2 million within a radius of 60 miles (an hour on the freeway)--the Dodgers, Raiders, Lakers and all other teams that meet the test are prospering.

They even prosper when their seasons overlap. Indiscriminately, Los Angeles supports all winners. One October Sunday a quarter-century ago in the crowded Coliseum, a fumble by Ram quarterback Norm Van Brocklin brought an enthusiastic round of cheers and applause.

As Van Brocklin, annoyed, jogged off the field, he discovered that no one was looking at him. Thousands of Ram fans, turning up their newfangled transistor radios, had reacted to a key Dodger home run.

“Thank God for Marconi,” Van Brocklin muttered.

Along with their customers, most Los Angeles teams are transplants from other cities.

After the Rams arrived from Cleveland, the Dodgers came from Brooklyn, the Lakers from Minneapolis, the Raiders from Oakland and the Clippers from San Diego.

In each instance, the owners left grieving local fans and unhappy municipal officials.

“City fathers everywhere are always the same--always blind,” says former NFL coach Sid Gillman.

“They never see what a sports team means to their economy until the team walks out and they get burned. New York’s politicians spent the millions it took to keep the Yankees--but only after they’d already lost the Dodgers and Giants. They could have kept all three. Oakland could have kept the Raiders. Los Angeles could have kept the Rams. In Los Angeles, some councilmen and supervisors still don’t see what the Raiders mean to the city and county. It isn’t written in the stars, you know, that the Dodgers and Raiders have to stay in Los Angeles forever.”

On the East Coast in the 1950s, New Yorkers thought of the Dodgers as a Brooklyn institution simply because the team had played there since the 1890s. And, indeed, after inspecting a full house at Ebbets Field one night 30 summers ago, the Dodgers decided they’d made enough money that season to expand their farm system.

But the next morning, going over the major league box scores, Dodger president Walter O’Malley learned that the Milwaukee Braves had also played to a packed house the same night--and that their paid crowd had been 15,000 larger.

The Braves in the 1950s, recently removed from Boston and not yet interested in Atlanta, were a National League power. O’Malley suddenly realized that in his little ballpark he couldn’t compete with the Braves financially, set down the paper and went to the telephone.

Calling the civic leaders he knew best, he tried first to get a larger stadium site in the Brooklyn area. After a year or two, however, it was clear that New York’s politicians weren’t listening, whereupon O’Malley accepted a Los Angeles offer.

A man of action and overriding ambition, he built a nearly perfect stadium here--one large enough to compete with any National League rival and small enough to encourage potential ticket buyers to buy early.

Dodger history shows that in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles, O’Malley built winning teams. But the compensations of winning here are so great that Stanford economist Roger Noll calls the L.A. Dodgers “baseball’s answer to the Denver mint.” The club grossed $42 million in 1984, Noll says, and its net was at least $6 million--and probably $9 million.

It remains theoretically possible, of course, that the Dodgers, like the Braves, will move again. Gillman’s law always applies: No city can take any sports team for granted. But Los Angeles has advantages that other towns lack--especially in sports. This is the most attractive and rewarding settlement in America for determined entrepreneurs who have the energy, courage and intelligence to compete successfully.

It is in the record that Los Angeles people will back any big league enterprise that can compete for championships. “Had we been competitive, we’d have had a phenomenal first year in Los Angeles,” Clipper president Alan Rothenberg says.

The city’s second NBA team and newest sports franchise, the Clippers moved here before the 1984-85 season--displaying a preference for crowded Los Angeles over peaceful San Diego, where they’d had a virtual monopoly each winter. There have been no regrets. Says Rothenberg: “Our first-year L.A. season-ticket sales (and attendance) were larger than our total paid attendance the year before in San Diego.”

Even so, Clipper ticket prices are higher here--though ridiculously low by comparison with the Lakers’.

“This is great,” a Clipper fan said one night at the Sports Arena. “You see the same NBA teams for half of what it costs at a Laker game.”

Rothenberg, something of an expert on the subject, believes that the Los Angeles area easily could hold another NBA club or two, and one or two more NFL franchises. “If you win your share with an interesting team,” he says, “you can make it in Los Angeles. The place is so big.”

And so rich. One difference between Los Angeles and New York as sports towns is that the average Californian has more money--or budgets more for fun and games.

“I use heat money for my Dodger season tickets,” a transplanted store owner from New Jersey says. “I mean the money I once spent to heat the house.”

The two conspicuous weak links in this area, the Kings and Express, are special cases. Both are trying to sell less popular leagues--as well as new teams--to Californians. And in Los Angeles, neither the National Hockey League nor the United States Football League has yet been accepted as a major league.

Los Angeles doesn’t welcome minor leaguers--or even tolerate them--as a California oil executive demonstrated this spring at the Coliseum, where a friend had persuaded him to watch USFL football.

As the Express kicked off, the oilman was obviously embarrassed. Scowling, he had been watching the crowd, not the players. And taking one last look at the 5,000 fans--and almost 90,000 vacant seats--he stood up and cried, “What the hell am I doing here?” and stalked out.

The most significant number in the Express’ three-year history isn’t, however, 5,000. It’s 19,789. That’s the number of season tickets the club sold to L.A.-area residents in 1983, its first spring in Los Angeles.

The Dodgers had been in town for years before selling that many. The Lakers have never come close. Nevertheless, in the beginning, Los Angeles was prepared to accept the Express with the enthusiasm that New York, Tampa and Jacksonville have shown for the USFL.

Meeting two of the three requirements for a successful sports franchise, the Express, from the start, attracted enough enthusiastic spectators and skilled players--but never enough competent leaders. It was a club that foundered on the rock of leadership. The team has hired only one first-class operator, Don Klosterman, its last president. It went through five owners in less than three years--not one of them a sound football man--and finished its third season without one.

Some California watchers believe that USFL football will still succeed here--either next spring or fall--with the right new owner and an expanded stadium seating 40,000 or so at Pierce College or elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

“Those people would love to have their own team,” says Klosterman. “The Valley’s population is up to 2.1 million now. It’s the seventh-largest market in the United States.”

A Valley stadium--creating a hometown atmosphere for either the Express or a third NFL team--would help ownership meet the massive competition of the L.A. area.

The Express knows about competition. It learned the hard way one day in 1984 when it joined with the New Jersey Generals to present one of the USFL’s better match-ups at the Coliseum--Herschel Walker vs. Express quarterback Steve Young in his professional debut.

Young had just signed a $40-million contract, becoming the country’s wealthiest football player. And blessing that unusual deal, the sun came out early on game day, which was pleasant and windless.

It was, in fact, perfect for everyone that April day, including the 50,000 at Dodger Stadium for the Dodgers and Angels; the 50,000 at Santa Anita for John Henry in the feature race; the 60,000 at Long Beach for the Grand Prix, and the thousands at Pauley Pavilion, where a USC team was winning the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball championship--a USC women’s team, of course.

Finally, that night, the Lakers played the Warriors at the Forum.

“We drew 22,000 for Young and Herschel,” an Express executive recalls. “I thought it was a helluva crowd, considering.”

It was.

The Express might have sold out a smaller stadium. One old hurdle for local football promoters is the 93,000-seat Coliseum. Its magnitude discourages season-ticket buyers. This year, for example, a Los Angeles businesswoman and her husband decided against renewing the season tickets they’ve held since the Raiders moved to town.

“We’re still going to all the games,” she says. “But the (Los Angeles) weather is so changeable in the fall. On cool days we want to sit on the sunny side, and in warm weather we’ll take the shade.”

In a stadium as big as the Coliseum, she adds, “We know we can always get tickets.”

That is the problem and challenge for Al Davis, the Raider owner who loves season-ticket holders as fondly as the next millionaire but can’t collect more than 50,000 of them here. In spite of that, he has made the Coliseum the most profitable stadium in the NFL.

He’s done it with an entertaining team that lives by the only Davis commandment: “Just win, baby.”

Davis, you may be sure, wasn’t the first to detect that losing is hazardous to the health in Los Angeles, where everyone’s rivals include not only a bunch of high-powered teams but also the weather, the desert, the mountains and the beaches.

Thirty years ago a Ram coach named Hamp Pool saw what he was up against. On a flight back to California after a playoff defeat in Detroit, Pool sat, unmoving, head down, speaking to no one until the plane suddenly lost an engine and began descending ahead of time.

“What’s with you?” a shaking, green-faced reporter asked the coach, who had brightened visibly.

Looking eagerly out the window, Pool said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we ran into a mountain?”