Los Angeles: City That Fans Forgot

I am a sportswriter in a dead sports town.

The more I look around Los Angeles, the more I realize that no city in America has less interest in its teams and athletes. A slow, gradual decay has eaten away at the core of L.A. athletics, leaving little but indifference, dispassionate curiosity and unsold tickets. This town isn’t laid back. It’s laid to rest.

No pro team in any sport sells out on a consistent basis. Neither do L.A.’s top college football teams. Our pro basketball teams rank 26th and 29th in the NBA in attendance. We have no pro football, and when we did, the stadium was half-full. Hockey attendance is off. Sports talk radio in Los Angeles, which thrives elsewhere, died a quick and painless death here.

When interviewers once asked me what L.A.’s fans were like, I would answer: “Smart. Loyal. Classy.” Things like that. Now I answer: “Gone.” They no longer go home early; now they don’t come out at all.

Baseball playoff games failed to sell out. In Anaheim, where fans have rarely seen a better home team, pennant-race baseball games drew crowds of 20,000 or so. The only large attendance was for a Fourth of July fireworks show. Dodger fans, numbering in the millions, blamed a poor turnout on a Jewish holiday, as though there weren’t 55,000 Dodger fans who weren’t Jewish.

Where is everybody? Why aren’t there 17,505 fans in the stands at every game for the Lakers, a team that surpassed expectations last season? Why must the Clippers, an authentic NBA team that dozens of cities would gladly take off our hands, pad a house of 4,000 and call it 8,000, as though one figure was less embarrassing than the other?

L.A. has become one of the few cities in the world where a major golf tournament, a grand slam event, still has tickets remaining on the first and last days of play. Top professional tennis events attract paltry attendance. Top auto-racing tracks in Riverside, Ontario and Saugus go out of business. Horse racing handle is way, way off. Boxing attendance is pitiful; Oscar De La Hoya had to leave home to draw a crowd.

In other large cities, a request for season tickets ends up on a waiting list, or in a lottery for a lucky few. Games in snowy weather, freezing cold, fog and rain draw lines reaching around the block. Spectators scream their lungs out, stomp their feet, make the visiting teams dread setting foot in the their arena.

Cleveland’s baseball fans have already bought every available ticket for all 81 of next season’s home games. Cleveland’s elected officials, civic leaders and dedicated fans fought to keep their NFL team, petitioned league officials, threatened legal action, did everything in their power to keep their team from leaving town. Cleveland, the city L.A. loves to mock.

L.A.’s leaders sleep the big sleep. They sit around, acting as though an NFL franchise is a birthright. They kid themselves that L.A. automatically will be in line for the very next available team, while cities with aggressive leaders such as Baltimore and Nashville act rather than talk.

The NFL isn’t going to expand into Los Angeles. The NFL is going to expand into Vancouver and Toronto, into Mexico City and London. NFL officials tell every abandoned city that pro football will return. Then they choose Charlotte and Jacksonville instead, same way next time they will choose San Antonio or Memphis.

L.A. hasn’t earned a thing. Pro football’s TV ratings aren’t particularly wonderful here; the NFL isn’t telling itself that Los Angeles loves pro football madly. Stop kidding yourself. The NFL says nice things about L.A. publicly, same way they do every other community. No NFL official is going to announce: “Nah, L.A. is dead.” What would he gain?

As a sports town, Los Angeles has an alibi for every occasion. Attendance is down because: “There’s so much else to do here.” Oh, really. Like what? Go to the beach? There aren’t a lot of people at the beach when basketball and hockey games begin, trust me.

What are these so-called “other things to do” that keep L.A.’s fans from supporting their teams? I have news for everybody who says this; Los Angeles people shop at malls, go to movies, eat at restaurants and drive their cars, same as they do in every other city in the world. They aren’t all out surfing. There are other things to do in Cleveland too.

Something has to wake up and shake up this town. The ennui is palpable. It is going to take the Lakers signing Shaquille O’Neal as a free agent next season to rouse this city from its athletic coma.

What else does it take? It isn’t enough to say: “We love our teams.” Saying so doesn’t make it so. From afar, Los Angeles has always looked like a sports paradise. It’s a mirage.