These Angels Can’t Descend Much Lower

Of all the endless summers, poor seasons and very bad years the Angels have had, this one is by far the worst.

It began with an earthquake that took out their scoreboard and sent their “Big A” itself listing like the Poseidon.

It continued with the sudden and inexcusable dismissal of their manager, Buck Rodgers, a man who was getting the most out of this ballclub’s limited talent.

It worsened with the Angels’ becoming the worst team in baseball’s worst division.

It hit bottom with the death of the ageless, guileless, peerless Jimmie Reese, king of the fungo, friend and angel guardian to Nolan Ryan and Bo Jackson and Jim Abbott and more.

And just when you figured there is no place lower than bottom, the Angels descended again.

Jackie Autry said she and her husband Gene, upon the cancellation of the rest of the baseball season, have had enough.

They are expected to sell their beloved Angels, presumably to the highest bidder. Could be the nice mice from Disney. Could be the fat cat Marvin Davis. Could be some new Player, capital P, to be named later.

Gene Autry is stepping out of the saddle.

This is no cause for celebration. I don’t care how poorly the Angels have been run for the last 30-odd years. Gene Autry was totally and hopelessly devoted to this cause. It meant as much to him as anything he did on film on horseback. He deserved better. He got worse.

Somewhere up in Heaven, Jimmie Reese couldn’t bear to watch Wednesday. The baseball players he adored, the ones he rapped grounders and popped pop-ups to all day long, were nowhere to be found. Jimmie was the foreman on Gene Autry’s ranch. But all the hired hands had gone into town.

Dark day at the Big A.

There was a splendid TV special on Channel 5 a few weeks ago, assembled meticulously by KTLA sports producer Cathy Karp, in celebration of Angel baseball throughout the years. Each segment was bumpered by images of Gene Autry in his heyday, saying howdy ma’am and ridin’ off into the sunset and such.

Well, Gene really is riding off into the sunset. Oh, he has broadcast holdings and a fine Western Heritage museum bearing his name and who knows what else in his saddlebags, but by far his most public persona was as owner of the Angels, the losin’est team in the West.

I used to wonder why the Angels never were ridiculed around the country as hopeless losers similar to the Red Sox and Cubs and Indians. After all, what had the Angels ever won? At least those other clubs had been in a World Series, once upon a time or twice.

And then I realized, there is no sense of life-or-death passion among Angel fans, no sense of emotional need that would leave anyone with a bad case of the summertime blues, should the Angels flop again. Boston, Chicago, Cleveland fans care deeply about their teams, go into long funks over their failings. Nobody cares that much about the Angels.

Nobody but Mr. Autry, who has been their constant companion.

His wife, who is now the hands-on boss of the business, said with obvious sorrow Wednesday that it mattered not whether her husband had $300 million in the bank or not one penny. They were done with the Angels for good. They had had it.

Gene and Jackie evidently are asking $130 mil for the whole shebang. Even so, he cannot completely tear himself away from the team he loves. A proviso will be made that less than one-quarter of ownership profits will change hands while Mr. Autry is still around, which we hope will be forever. Nevertheless, the new owner will call the shots.

All this haggling and bickering, all these spiraling costs and deepening pools of red ink, they all got to be too much. As Jackie Autry put it, “This has been like a freight train coming down the track.”

Gene could stop a runaway stagecoach, but not a train. You can’t rope a train.

He made mistakes. He put the wrong guys in charge. He put too many guys in charge. He got poor advice. He got good people and then let them get away--Abbott, Dante Bichette, Rodgers, Whitey Herzog. He put champagne on ice and watched it go flat. He came so close but remains so far away.

In the Gene Autry regime, the Angels knew joy but never fulfillment. They had individuals but never the whole team. They lost strong young men to gunshots and accidents and watched teammates careen off a turnpike in a capsized bus. They abandoned the team’s most popular players and brought in some of the sport’s most obnoxious.

All along, you rooted for two guys. You rooted for Jimmie Reese, and now he’s gone. And you rooted for Gene Autry, who is parting company.

Pardon my sentimentality, because it really hasn’t been much of a baseball team. But I offer my sympathy today to Mr. Autry, who stuck with it through thin and thinner. His only Champion was his horse.