Disney Co. to Buy 25% of Angels : New Partner to Run Team’s Daily Operations : Baseball: Plan still needs approval of Major League owners. The entertainment giant will have option to purchase the rest later. News gives boost to Anaheim’s plans for massive sports complex.

The Walt Disney Co. took another giant step into the professional sports world Thursday, announcing it has agreed to buy a 25% interest in the California Angels baseball team with an option to buy the rest later.

Team officials said that Disney would take over the day-to-day operations once the deal with owners Gene and Jackie Autry is consummated after “the next several months.”

“What a shot in the arm for Orange County,” Supervisor William G. Steiner said, relishing a dose of good news amid the county’s bankruptcy woes. “It’s a great time for this to happen. Our self-esteem hasn’t been the best. . . . This is nothing but a plus for the county.”

Disney’s plans are likely to give a lift to Anaheim’s plans for a massive sports and retailing complex, and the company’s marketing skills could spark renewed fan interest in a sport tarnished by a long players’ strike.

Steiner said the deal “is another recognition of the positives of Orange County. This helps to gold-plate the Angels and will make everybody feel pretty good.”

Anaheim City Manager James D. Ruth said the announcement allays some of the sting caused by the Rams’ pro football team leaving Anaheim for St. Louis this year. “This should restore faith in the area,” he said, adding that he expects basketball and football franchises to follow.

John Dreyer, a spokesman for Disney in Burbank, said the company would, as it did with the Mighty Ducks hockey franchise, try to make the sport even more family oriented.

“Baseball is already very family oriented,” he said, “but I’m sure what we would do is build on what Gene Autry has already achieved in the last three decades.”

The announcement characterized the deal as an agreement “in principle.” Any sale requires the approval of three-quarters of the 14 American League owners and a majority of 14 National League owners. But Richard M. Brown, Angels president and chief executive officer, said he foresaw no difficulties.

Allan H. (Bud) Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and acting baseball commissioner, said he was “delighted” with the prospect of Disney ownership of the Angels.

“I really don’t have any comment at this time, other than to say that we’ve been informed,” he said. The next baseball owners meeting is June 6 and 7 in Minneapolis, but Selig said there is no timetable for a vote on any Disney-Angels deal.

A sale would add a second franchise to Disney’s entertainment and marketing portfolio in Anaheim. The company, which put Anaheim on the map when it opened Disneyland in 1955, obtained a National Hockey League expansion franchise for Anaheim in December, 1992, and named the team the Mighty Ducks, after a Disney movie.

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Asked whether this investment means Disney won’t be getting a pro football franchise for Anaheim, Disney Sports Enterprises President Tony Tavares said that “anything’s possible.”

“If you’re asking me to rule it out, I’m not going to rule it out,” he said. “This is a big company.”

He said Disney entered baseball before football because “something was for sale.”

That the Angels were up for sale has been talked about for more than a year, and as recently as this month, former baseball commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth was considered the front-runner.

The team’s founder, former singing cowboy Gene Autry, bought the expansion franchise for about $2.45 million in 1960. Recently, Financial World Magazine estimated the team’s worth at $88 million, but that was considered low by others.

Insiders said Ueberroth, who had gathered six to eight investors, began by offering a total of $130 million--$30 million for the initial 25% ownership, the rest upon the death of Autry, now 87.

But the Angels reported losing $11 million in 1994 because of the baseball players’ strike. They are expected to lose more this season, and Ueberroth’s reported reluctance to assume future losses put a strain on the deal, insiders said.

“We’ve been told that the Disney offer exceeded ours,” Ueberroth said Thursday. Disney officials declined to elaborate on the terms of their agreement.

“The most important thing for us to do is to say nothing until this is approved,” Tavares said. “The only thing that can happen from us talking is to muddy the issues and place ourselves in a situation that is detrimental to the approval process.”

Sources put the prorated price of the Angels about $120 million, midway between the $108 million and $130 million that have been considered the “ballpark” price. That would put the cost of Disney’s 25% share at $30 million, close to the start-up costs of the Mighty Ducks.

The cost “is high for a baseball team, but for Disney it’s a raindrop,” the source said. The company had profits of $1.1 billion in its fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

The prorated price of the team is substantially more than was paid for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but considerably less than costs for expansion teams in Tampa and Phoenix.

Brown said a sale would a boon for Disney and the team. “Teams that are owned by individuals [such as the Angels], who don’t have their own stadium, are always going to have a difficult time competing,” he said.

Disney, however, has shown with the Mighty Ducks that it can not only compete but dominate in such areas as sports merchandising. In the Mighty Ducks’ first season, Ducks’ merchandise was the No. 1 seller in the league.

Disney, saying it would make rough-and-tumble pro hockey into family entertainment, added ice dancers, cheerleaders, a mascot that descended from the rafters, laser shows, scoreboard cartoons and trivia quizzes.

“If anything, what they have done with the Ducks so far is maybe a forecast of what they can do with baseball,” said Joe Zemla, merchandise manager for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.

“They listen to what the fans want and that’s what they give them,” said Zemla, who helped open The Pond when he worked for manager Ogden Services.

“I grew up in Detroit, a hard-core hockey town, where if there had been cheerleaders, [fans] would have thrown beer at them,” he said.

Autry purchased the Los Angeles Angels franchise in 1960 when he found he could not otherwise sew up the broadcasting rights for his radio station, KMPC.

The team first played in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field, then Dodger Stadium. But in 1966, the franchise moved to Anaheim Stadium, and the name was changed to the California Angels.

Autry’s front-office personnel and managers have come and gone with great frequency, and all had the same mission: “Win one for the cowboy.” But the quest for a World Series championship resulted only in several agonizing near-misses in the American League playoffs.

Autry, beginning in the mid-1970s, invested heavily in his team, signing free agents such as Don Baylor, Bobby Grich and Reggie Jackson to make the Angels winners.

His spending paid off in division titles in 1979, 1982 and 1986, but the Angels never advanced past the league’s championship series.

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The most crushing defeat came in 1986 when the team came within one pitch of reaching the World Series. The Angels were ahead with two outs in the top of the ninth inning of Game 5 but lost after Boston’s Dave Henderson homered.

The Angels have had only one winning season since then.

Autry has sold other business interests in recent years, including radio station KMPC to Capital Cities for $18 million in April, 1994.

He also has sold radio station KLIT and television station KTLA.

Ruth said Autry’s latest deal will help advance the city’s plans to build a massive sports and retail district around the current stadium property.

“We have great plans for that area,” he said.

Disney’s commitment to the professional sports in the city should dismiss “any fears people have about the marketability of sports in the city. This reinforces what we’ve always said here. This is a great area if you’re a professional franchise,” Ruth said.

Times staff writers Lon Eubanks, Greg Hernandez, Matt Lait, Robyn Norwood, Elliott Teaford and Chris Woodyard contributed to this report.