False Steps by Rams, Angels Strain Faith of Truest Fans : Sport: O.C. Teams’ lackluster performances sour many. But hockey’s Mighty Ducks fare better than expected.

Just when Orange County sports fans thought they had suffered every imaginable indignity this year, along came that smart-aleck Cincinnati Bengals supporter, proudly displaying for TV cameras a placard with a message that was beamed into living rooms across the nation Dec. 19:

“Does L.A. have any other teams we can play?”

Ouch! Talk about hitting a region when it’s down. The Bengals, to that point one of the worst teams in recent NFL history, beat the Rams, 15-3, for their second victory of the season. Cincinnati was 0-10 when it first won in 1993--a 16-10 upset of the Raiders on Nov. 28.

And now a team from Southern California--once the land of annual Rams playoff appearances, not to mention Dodgers pennant races, Lakers “Showtime” basketball and NBA championships and the Raiders’ “Commitment to Excellence”--had become the butt of jokes in Cincinnati, a patsy’s patsy.

That’s how bad things have gotten for local professional sports teams.

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, a National Hockey League expansion team, have raised spirits with gritty play and a surprisingly successful start (14-22-2 record). But across the freeway from sparkling new Anaheim Arena--in the dungeon known as Anaheim Stadium--two incumbents, the Angels and Rams, have continued to depress.

The Angels could boast of having the 1993 American League rookie of the year in outfielder Tim Salmon, but not much else. They were two games out of first place at the All-Star break but suffered a total collapse in the second half and finished 71-91, 23 games behind the Chicago White Sox.

What’s more, several front office blunders damaged what little credibility the Angels had going into the season, and the team further alienated fans by raising some ticket prices for premium seats after a second consecutive losing season.

The Rams have simply been an embarrassment. They’re 4-11 entering Sunday’s season finale against the Chicago Bears and have been outscored 361-201. And until they find a quality quarterback, their prospects for the future don’t look very good.

Nor do their prospects for remaining in Anaheim. Club executives are exploring the option of moving the team, most likely to Baltimore, St. Louis or Memphis, cities that lost out to Charlotte, Va., and Jacksonville, Fla., in the NFL’s recent expansion.

Of course, the way the Rams have been playing--this is their fourth consecutive losing season--some would welcome their departure.

“At last, an encouraging word comes out of Anaheim concerning the Rams--Baltimore,” wrote Michael Axelrod of Redondo Beach in a recent letter to The Times. “It brings to mind that old cheer: ‘Go Rams! And take the Angels with you.’ ”

This seems to be the growing sentiment in and around Orange County, which has had a particularly rough sports year, not counting the Bullfrogs (Roller Hockey International champions), the Salsa (second place in the American Professional Soccer League) and the Dukes (second place in World TeamTennis).

County fans have grown accustomed to Angels and Rams teams losing, but their disdain reached new heights in 1993.

Just look at all those empty seats in the Big A. The Rams are on pace for their lowest home attendance average (46,295 going into Sunday’s game) since moving to Anaheim in 1980. Angels attendance continued to sag (about 2 million, down from about 2.7 million in 1987), and season ticket sales, which stood at 18,747 in 1990, dipped to 13,258.

The Anaheim Stadium chant of “Root, root, root for the home team” has been replaced by “Sell, sell, sell the home team.”

Angels owners Gene and Jackie Autry seem more concerned with saving money than winning. They have slashed the team’s payroll in recent years by letting popular and productive players such as Wally Joyner, Jim Abbott and Bryan Harvey go. Pitcher Mark Langston is apparently on the trading block, and management has done virtually nothing to improve the team the last two years.

And the front office hardly distinguished itself in 1993 when it traded for a third baseman (Toronto’s Kelly Gruber) who wound up needing shoulder surgery after playing only 18 games, and a pitcher (Montreal’s Jeff Tuss) who had quit baseball to play football at Cal State Fresno.

The Tuss situation had a happy ending. Montreal, pleading a communication breakdown, substituted pitcher Keith Morrison for Tuss the next day. But the Gruber situation was a fiasco. Although the Blue Jays agreed to pick up $1.7 million of Gruber’s $4-million salary, the Angels were still stuck with a $2.3-million tab for 18 games. Gruber was released in September.

And don’t forget, the Angels paid free-agent bust Gary Gaetti $3 million in 1993 and will pay him another $3 million in 1994. Gaetti, who slipped from a .246 batting average in 1991 to .226 in 1992 to .188 in 1993, was released in June.

The career of Rams quarterback Jim Everett might have a similar ending. Once the focal point of the Rams offense, Everett seemed to get worse every week in 1993. He fell out of favor with the fans early in the season, fell out of favor with the coaching staff at midseason and will probably fall off the Rams roster after the season.

Some Rams fans only wish he would take owner Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw, team executive vice president, with him. Long before the Angels’ austerity push of the early 1990s, the Rams were squeezing nickels and dimes, and although more money was spent last off-season on free agents such as Shane Conlan and Fred Stokes, the public perception persists: The Rams lack a true commitment to winning.

Shaw fanned the flames of discord in November when he criticized area fans for not supporting the team--a team that has won only 18 of 63 games in the ‘90s while continuing to charge steep ticket prices ($23 to $35) for an inferior product.

“California is going through the worst recession I can remember, and the sports teams here don’t care,” said Dave Coombs, a 47-year-old bicycle shop owner from Anaheim. “The Angels must not read the financial section of any newspaper. I can’t see how they can raise prices after the last two seasons. And the Rams seem like they’ve found a new religion, and their denominations are fives, 10s and 20s.

“They think they have a monopoly, that because they’re the only pro teams in the area, people will pay their prices. But it’s finally gotten to the point where people are making value judgments. They have this much money to spend on recreation, do they want to spend it on the Rams or Angels to see non-competitive teams owned by people who don’t care?”

Coombs had been a Rams season-ticket holder since 1980, and he has owned Angels season tickets for 15 years. He canceled his Rams tickets two years ago and hasn’t decided if he’ll renew with the Angels.

But Coombs has purchased Mighty Ducks season tickets. He has made the jump many other Orange Countians have--off listless, sinking ships to something new and fresh that has yet to break the county’s heart. The Ducks have been averaging a near-capacity 16,637 fans per home game and are virtually even in the standings with the 27-year-old Los Angeles Kings.

“There’s a lot of excitement with the Ducks,” Coombs said. “The difference is (team owner) Disney never came out and said they’ll be a contender. They said they’d put a team on the ice that would try hard all the time, and they do. They put on a show, and when you go there, you feel you get your money’s worth.”

The other great thing about being a Mighty Ducks fan?

Cincinnati doesn’t have an NHL team.