Rams Try End Run in Move : Football: Team tries, unsuccessfully, to take lockers from stadium.
Anaheim Stadium officials, with little left to lose where the Rams are concerned, are fighting to keep what remains.
Officials turned away movers Monday after they attempted to remove 63 locker room cubicles from the stadium. The movers were stopped twice before stadium officials changed the locks.
“Basically the truck showed up this morning and the Rams figured they could rip out the lockers,” Greg Smith, the stadium’s general manager, said. “We had no idea they would be doing this.”
Ram officials said the team paid for the lockers when the stadium was expanded before the 1980 season. They intended to move the stalls to their training facility at Maryville University in St. Louis.
Smith said attorneys will discuss the issue.
“Right now, we’re looking into who paid for them,” Ram President John Shaw said. “If we don’t own them, we won’t take them.”
Even if they do, they won’t, according to Smith.
“The Rams said they paid for them,” Smith said. “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. Regardless, they were put into that room. If you sell your house, do you pull out the kitchen cabinets and take them with you?”
The minor confrontation occurred Monday morning, when one moving van arrived at the stadium. Mary Kromolowski, the Rams’ executive director of administration, said stadium officials had been informed the Rams would be removing the lockers.
Smith said he was expecting the Rams to move only furniture from their stadium offices.
“When we asked Mary and their crew to leave the locker room and not remove the lockers, they re-entered and continued the process,” Smith said. “At that time, we decided to change the locks.”
Kromolowski said the lockers, which cost $400 apiece, cost the team $25,200 when they were installed.
“It’s a very minimal amount, they’re just being obstructive,” Kromolowski said.
Said Smith: “I guess they don’t have lockers in St. Louis.”
But they will.
“I’m not going to get excited about this,” Shaw said. “If we have to, we’ll buy them when we get to St. Louis.”
Times staff writer T.J. Simers contributed to this story.
