Angry Fans Rush to Condemn Rams’ Planned Move

As fans toasted two California football teams heading for the Super Bowl, supporters of a third, the Los Angeles Rams, were swallowing losers’ beer Sunday, angry that their lackluster team is headed for the Midwest--for good.

Members of Save the Rams, a group organized to keep the franchise here, had hot words for team owner Georgia Frontiere, who announced Saturday that she could not resist the golden bait dangled by St. Louis.

“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.”

The apparent final whistle sounded Saturday when Frontiere told The Times that she will accept one of the richest deals in football, taking her team--a Southern California institution since 1946--to her hometown.

The Rams, who moved here from Cleveland, were the first major professional sports team to come to the West Coast, and, should the deal go through, the first returning East.

For thousands of Rams fans, former players and community leaders, the news hit like a quarterback sack.

“I had a hard time reading 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.”

Fans and former players said Frontiere is not exactly sneaking out in the middle of the night, 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 Rams 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 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 (well), 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 season ticket-holder. “For instance, this is a small deal but big to the fans who go early and have tailgate parties: There are no restroom facilities. In San Diego, they have Porta Pottis.”

But still, despite the marathon will-they-won’t-they-go debate, former players, coaches and fans Sunday couldn’t suppress memories of the Rams as a feared football institution.

Former National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle remembered cutting and pasting the Rams first game programs while he was 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 their 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, 79, 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.”

Dick Hoerner, 72 and a Rams fullback from 1947 to 1951, remembered reading in a New York City paper in 1951 that if the Rams had a fullback they’d be a great team.

He called his wife 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,” Hoerner said.

“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 fans with an ugly inside peek at something the players have always known: Football isn’t a game, it’s a business.

Current Ram players said they hoped until the end that the team might stay in Anaheim.

The move was “something I thought was just talk,” said tight end Troy Drayton. “I thought the talk would die down and everybody would get what they want.

“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.”

The move still has to be approved by the NFL, and Lindquist said that while local officials will continue to lobby the league to reject the deal, he has mixed feelings about the team.

“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.”

Mighty Ducks President Tony Tavares, who negotiated his hockey team’s extremely favorable lease agreement with Anaheim, spoke enviously about the financial details of the Rams’ pact with St. Louis.

“Can you believe that deal? And you thought we were pigs,” he 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 and correspondent Gabe Lacques contributed to this story.

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