Fans Angry Over Rams Move Plans : Pro football: While efforts continue to keep the team in O.C., bitter devotees say they were duped by owner Georgia Frontiere and the team’s management. The deal is set to be signed Tuesday.
As fans toasted two other California football teams headed for the Super Bowl, supporters of the Rams were swallowing losers’ beer Sunday--angry that their lackluster team is headed for the Midwest.
Members of Save the Rams, the group trying to keep the franchise in Orange County, had hot words Sunday for team owner Georgia Frontiere, who announced Saturday she could not resist the golden bait dangled by St. Louis. Save the Rams members declared, however, they were duped by the team management and vowed to keep fighting.
“I truly feel sorry for the people of St. Louis. . . . “ said Jack Lindquist, former president of Disneyland and co-chairman of Save the Rams. “I think for the last five years, the Rams have deliberately been destroying a very proud franchise with only one thought in mind, and that is the financial end of it.
“I think they’ve been working toward finding somebody somewhere that they could just make a killer deal with.”
Save the Rams members will “do whatever we need to do and fight as hard as we can” to persuade league owners to bar the Rams’ exit, he said.
All around Southern California, anger was mixed with a realization that the high-stakes game to keep the Rams is likely over and, once again, long-suffering Rams fans are losers.
The apparent final whistle came Saturday when Frontiere told The Times that on Tuesday she will ink one of the richest deals in football in St. Louis, taking her team, an institution in Southern California since 1946, to her hometown.
The Rams, who moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland, were the first major-league sports team to come to the West Coast and, should the deal go through, it will be one of a handful to leave.
The deal will give the Rams, who project a loss of $6 million to $7 million in 1994, more than $20 million in annual profits, a new stadium and practice field, according to Rams President John Shaw, who masterminded the escape.
It includes unprecedented guarantees from a St. Louis business group that at least 85% of the luxury boxes and club seats will be sold for the next 15 years and that St. Louis fans will cover the Rams $33-million debt to the city of Anaheim.
Frontiere also will sell 30% of the team to Missouri businessman Stan Kroenke for about $60 million.
“It’s wonderful, and the future looks so bright, but I’m also sad that things were not able to work out here,” Frontiere said. “But weighing everything, there seems to be no other way out.”
5 Years in Making
The plan to move was five years in the making, according to a story Sunday detailing Shaw’s deal-making, which made clear Shaw played the different bidders against each other, with Anaheim always coming up short.
For thousands of Rams fans, former players and community leaders, these words stung like a slap as they read them with their morning’s coffee.
“I had a hard time reading the the article on Georgia (Frontiere) and an even harder time reading the one on John Shaw,” said David Bueche, a 20-year season ticket holder from Irvine. “They can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I really feel empty.”
But in St. Louis, Frontiere’s words triggered plans for a blowout celebration.
“I feel for the people in Southern California,” said Chad Everett, already a member of the St. Louis Rams Fan Club. “We know what it feels like to go through that. For both sides, I’m glad it’s over because it’s been dragging on and on.”
But, too bad, added brother Derrick: “We’ve got the funds, they’ve got the team. It’s a good marriage.”
In preparation for Tuesday’s signing, Frontiere and Shaw arrived Sunday night in St. Louis by plane, dodging a few dozen fans and reporters by slipping into a car waiting on the Tarmac.
A St. Louis official said Frontiere and Shaw’s hotel has added security to ensure the pair are insulated from the media and the public.
“It’s like when the Emperor and Empress of Japan were here last summer,” the official said. “No one is going to get near them.”
Half a continent away, fans and former players said Frontiere is not exactly sneaking out in the middle of the night--a bandit stealing a city’s heart--the way Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay did when he took his team to Indianapolis.
By the time Frontiere finally decided to move her Rams, the heart was barely beating.
“To see what these people have done to destroy a franchise, to grind it into the ground in front of everyone,” groused former defensive end Fred Dryer, “then for the so-called leadership to tell people that they’re angry that they’re not getting a better deal (here), to point their finger at the fans, is blasphemous. It’s an outrage. . . . The lawyers and accountants have ruined the team.”
Instead, said Dryer, who played for the Rams from 1973 to 1981, the team will leave much as the St. Louis Cardinals did when they slunk out of the heartland seven years ago to jeers of “good riddance.”
Five consecutive losing seasons and a marked disdain for the community have ground down the type of fan fervor that could have kept the team in town, community leaders said.
“If the Rams do move to St. Louis, I hope they don’t make the same mistakes--their arrogance, their unwillingness to identify with the community, their disregard for the fans,” said Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner, a prominent member of Save the Rams.
“It’s disappointing, obviously, for the people here in Los Angeles,” said former coach John Robinson, who led the team from 1983 to 1991. “It’s a sad case that the franchise deteriorated over a period of time. . . . I think that the people that are the customers here are the losers. Obviously, the owners come off good, at least financially.”
Fans said it had become increasingly apparent that Rams management didn’t care if anyone showed up for the games.
“The owners have no consideration of the fan,” said Chuck Sowers, 58, a seven-year season ticket holder. “For instance, this is a small deal but big to the fans who go early and have tail-gate parties; there are no restroom facilities. In San Diego, they have porta-potties.”
In years past, a snack bar and restrooms were opened early for the fans, but “this year they didn’t even open that,” Sowers said.
Some Good Memories
But still, despite weariness over the marathon will-they-won’t-they-go debate, former players, coaches and longtime fans Sunday couldn’t suppress memories of the Rams when they were a feared football institution.
Former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle remembered cutting and pasting the Rams first game programs while a Compton Junior College student in the late 1940s.
“It was a big thing when they came from Cleveland,” said Rozelle, who began in football as the Rams publicist and later its general manager. “I remember the attendance at one game in 1957. I memorized the number 102,368. . . . I just never thought they’d move.”
There was the bone-crushing “Bull Elephant Backfield” of the late 1940s and the “Fearsome Foursome” of Rosey Grier, Merlin Olsen, Lamar Lundy and Deacon Jones in the mid-1960s.
“We had the best passing and the best receiving in the league,” recalled former coach Hampton Pool, spinning memories of when he piloted Ram quarterback great Norm (Dutch) Van Brocklin and Elroy (Crazy Legs) Hirsch in the early 1950s. “We just ran roughshod over people. . . . There isn’t anything like that today.
“Omigod, I can’t imagine it,” said Pool, 79. “It’s very difficult for me to imagine Los Angeles without the Rams.”
Dick Hoerner, a Rams fullback from 1947 to 1951, remembered playing in New York in 1951 and reading in a New York City paper that if the Rams had a fullback, they’d be a great team.
He called his wife in California before the game and warned her: “ ‘You’re going to have a live hero or a dead husband.’ I got them to give me everything, and I scored three touchdowns. I saw that reporter and I said, ‘Eat your words,’ and I shoved the story in his mouth,” said Hoerner, 72, and living in La Mirada.
“I don’t want to see them go. Hell, I’ve been a Ram all my life,” he said.
For some, Sunday’s announcement simply provided the fans an ugly inside peek at something the players have always known: Football isn’t a game--it’s a business.
“My gut feeling is that it hurts. It’s hard to see the team leave the place where you knew it,” said Tom Mack, a Rams offensive guard from 1968 to 1978 and a current finalist for the Hall of Fame. “Unfortunately, it’s a business. For a very, very long time that’s probably has been masked from a majority of the people.”
Current Rams players said they have hoped until the end that the team might stay in Anaheim.
“It’s something I thought was just talk,” said tight end Tony Drayton. “I thought the talk would die down and everybody would get what they want.”
“I’m very disappointed, not only for L.A. Ram fans but for Orange County itself,” he said. “I think they’re losing a great franchise, a franchise that’s young and growing. . . . We’re on the brink of something great. It’s unfortunate Orange County and L.A. won’t see us grow from boys to men.”
Linebacker Shane Conlan said the move will give the Rams a fresh start.
“It will be exciting to go somewhere where we’ll get some fan support, but if we don’t win, we won’t get the support,” he said. “Winners draw, that’s the bottom line. Where we do that is no concern to me.”
Get a New Team
But while current and former players reminisced, Anaheim city officials and Save the Rams members seethed and spoke of getting a new team if the NFL owners allows the Rams to move.
Task force members Sunday continued to charge that the Rams did not negotiate with them in good faith. Wayne Wedin said he thought Shaw used the local offer to help his negotiations with St. Louis.
“We’re sure that he did” use Save the Rams, Wedin said. “But in doing so, I feel we used him as well. . . . There has been a series of offers that haven’t been responded to, and I think we’ve got a story to tell the NFL as it relates to the Rams complying with NFL standards and rules.”
The local business group hopes to persuade NFL owners that the Rams have been offered a viable deal here, which could bar the move under league rules. To relocate the franchise, the Rams need approval of 23 of 30 team owners.
But Lindquist said that while the fight to keep the team will go on, he has mixed feelings.
“We haven’t lost this one yet, but it’s a bittersweet kind of thing in my mind,” he said. “That franchise was one of the most prestigious franchises in pro football at one time. I think under different management, they could regain the prestige they once had. But under current management, I think they are a bunch of losers.”
Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly said a Rams move would mean the loss of “a meaningful part of NFL history” but that the Rams management never seemed committed to Orange County.
“The partnership between the Rams and the city got off on the wrong foot 15 years ago,” Daly said. “We tried over the years to encourage the Rams to embrace Orange County in a sincere way. But, they have other priorities.”
The news is not all bad for Anaheim. If the Rams leave, the team would have to pay off the $33-million bond for Anaheim Stadium improvements, leaving the city stadium debt-free and Anaheim better able to lure another NFL franchise.
“I think the success of other teams in this market speaks for itself,” Daly said. “The Mighty Ducks hockey team has been one of the most successful new franchises in the history of professional sports.”
Duck Team President Tony Tavares, who negotiated his team’s extremely favorable lease agreement with Anaheim, spoke enviously about the financial details of the Rams’ agreement with St. Louis.
“Can you believe that deal? And you thought we were pigs,” Tavares said. “That’s a fabulous deal. That’s got to be the best deal in sports.”
Times staff writers David Reyes, Robyn Norwood and Mike DiGiovanna contributed to this story, as did correspondent Gabe Lacques.
* ANGRY WORDS: Rams owner Georgia Frontiere takes heat from fans, players, former team executive. A22
* ROAD MAP FOR A MOVE: Frontiere’s signature will seal the deal, but team President John Shaw made it happen. C1
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