Anaheim Primping for Suitor
The first victims of this dangerous liaison between the Seahawks and the city of Anaheim were the two homeless men tossed out of Rams Park shortly after sunrise Saturday morning.
Ramless Park, as it has been known since last May, had provided the men shelter from the storm, giving them good eaves under which to sleep, but that was before Ken Behring winked and whistled in Anaheim’s general direction, sending the city scurrying to spruce up for its hot date.
Early Saturday morning, the maintenance trucks came. Their mission: Make the place presentable for today’s scheduled walk-through by Seahawks officials.
Presentable?
Hadn’t that been achieved once the Rams stopped practicing there?
No, these workers had their orders, and they included replacing old fluorescent lighting tubes, putting up dry wall, patching roofs, moving furniture, cleaning out offices and evicting the facility’s two most recent tenants--rendering them, yes, of course, so fitting:
Sleepless in Anaheim.
From across the street, resident David Baker watched the bustling activity and asked a reporter, “What the . . . are they doing to my neighborhood?”
Fixing it up for the benefit of another bad football team, what else?
“I hope the Seahawks don’t come here,” Baker told the reporter. “I wish they’d get an expansion team. We don’t need someone else’s problem.”
Oh, but the Seahawks are coming. At least for a look-see today and, most likely, to set up headquarters while they dig in to wage battle against Seattle and the NFL. The court fight has just begun, but already the Seahawks are seeking a change of venue.
Anaheim, for better or worse, is only too eager to accommodate.
At present, Rams Park is in no condition to serve adequately as an NFL training facility. The practice field is a mess, nothing but weeds and huge divots from old Chris Miller incompletions. The lone remaining goal post, ever Orange County, leans to the right--Tony Zendejas’ sudden loss of form late in the 1994 season, explained at last.
But the field can wait. The Super Bowl just ended; NFL mini-camps aren’t due to open for, oh, days. What Behring and his staff want to see today are the offices--the bunker--and maybe scout out a few positions for machine-gun turrets and spotlight stations. And ask some questions. Such as: “Might a moat be possible just north of Lincoln and east of the golf course?”
It was raining cats and dogs and heavy symbolism Saturday morning. Georgia Frontiere’s old parking space is still there, her name still stenciled in paint. Occupying that space was a city of Anaheim maintenance van, there to clean up the dirty work Georgia left behind.
If the Seahawks are to become the Orange County C-Notes one day, Rams Park, as a first stepping stone, is built with bricks and irony. The Battle of Rams Park between Anaheim and John Shaw is what led to the current vacancy. In late 1993, Anaheim offered Shaw a 15-year extension on the practice facility lease; Shaw rejected it; Shaw countered by proposing a two-year lease; the Magnolia School District rejected that; the city countered with a 10-year lease; Shaw rejected that; the city threatened to evict the Rams from Rams Park in early 1994; Shaw and the city finally agreed on a flimsy 10-year lease that included a six-month escape clause.
Not that Shaw and Frontiere needed motivation, but the acrimony over Rams Park was a hefty nudge toward the Interstate, toward St. Louis. It was the first of several fights Anaheim would lose on the way to the Big One, a defeat that has left Anaheim vulnerable to the first caller to come round knocking, looking for a better deal.
And there Rams Park stands today--the hors d’oeuvre that could lead the NFL back to Orange County’s dining table.
The former Juliette Low Elementary School doesn’t have much to offer Behring that he can’t get elsewhere, even in Seattle. All the old Ram complaints about the place persist: Too small, too cramped, not enough practice fields, unsightly, state-of-the-art maybe in 1966, galaxies removed from the arrogant opulence of Dallas’ Cowboy Center or San Francisco’s Stalag 49.
The best claim Rams Park can make is that not a single bad practice was held there last football season.
Beyond that, it’s available.
Today, if not sooner.
And it’s situated within the boundaries of Anaheim, a city blatantly on the make, with grandiose plans of a “Sportstown” promising all the baubles Behring mentioned in a Saturday interview, and I quote: “I want to see maybe the NFL Experience, retail stores and a huge complex surrounding a football stadium.” If you haven’t yet seen the promotional brochure for “Sportstown,” that’s pretty much the condensed version.
Behring has also granted Anaheim “exclusive negotiating rights” for six months, which either means the city can be used from here to July or that the Seahawks are Anaheim’s team to lose.
One way or another, courting season has opened. Who knows? From the humblest beginnings, mediocre NFL football could be on its way back to Orange County.
