Dreamers Had Better Get Real

Who would you rather have in your backyard, the Angels or the Seahawks?

If that is the choice Anaheim has to make, and Jackie Autry seems convinced that it is, I have a piece of advice for the Anaheim city council:

Hold out for the 49ers.

The Seahawks or the Angels?

Seattle or Salmon?

The team that lost the heart of the Great Northwest to the Mariners or the team that lost the American League West to the Mariners?

It sounds like the kind of automated aggravation you get when you phone one of those companies too progressive (or, cheap) to hire a human secretary.

“Press one if you sincerely trust Ken Behring to bring his lousy football team down here and keep it here--barring the rare 3.0 Southern California tremor or aftershock, which would then send Behring immediately scurrying for Des Moines--and if you honestly believe the courts and the NFL will permit his lousy football team one day to play real league games in Anaheim, instead of just running wind sprints.

“Press two if you consider it wise and honorable to come crawling back on all fours to Disney, throw Disney the keys to Anaheim Stadium, throw Sportstown in the circular file, and surrender another 159 acres of prime territory to the goose-stepping, mouse-eared army so that Disney can run the Angels here for another 15 years before possibly taking them and running in Year 16.”

With options like that, who needs freedom of choice?

Anaheim, the little town that thinks it can, that thinks it can, is trying to stand tall on wobbly knees now, puffing up its chest in the face of flared rodent nostrils and gnashing duck bills. Yes, Anaheim finally said no to Disney--on the deal that would have rid the Autrys of their 35-year migraine.

How to caption this photo?

“Anaheim’s first bold step of independence.”

Or--remember those T-shirts with the condemned mouse flipping half the peace sign to the swooping hawk?--”Anaheim’s last great act of defiance.”

Initially, Disney was seething in silence, so Jackie Autry volunteered to serve as unofficial spokesperson.

She praised Disney’s offer to buy 25% of the Angels and invest $70 million for renovations to Anaheim Stadium for its generous benevolence.

She chastised Anaheim for casting its lot with a fanciful, far-off-if-ever Sportstown pipe dream instead of the tangible present--in effect, opting for pro football over baseball.

She threatened to move the Angels out of Anaheim in 2001, when the team’s current lease expires, if the city doesn’t capitulate to Disney’s demands ASAP.

(Does she want to dump this team or what?)

Anaheim city officials, meanwhile, scratch their heads like a crew of nutty professors, flapping their arms in their white lab coats and swatting pointers against the Sportstown blueprints, insisting that, see, this is conclusive proof they can easily accommodate the Angels and the NFL in the area around Anaheim Stadium.

Just as soon as they get an NFL team.

And raise a billion dollars.

Anaheim city officials need to read more out-of-town newspapers. In Seattle, it is being reported that Behring is close to selling the Seahawks to Microsoft co-founder and Portland Trail Blazer owner Paul Allen, who intends to keep the Seahawks in Seattle.

If true, Sportstown begins looking like a two-headed white elephant.

No Seahawks to put in the gleaming new 60,000-seat Jim Everett Memorial Field.

No Angels, if Jackie keeps to her threat, to put in the renovated, nouveau-retro Anaheim Stadium, complete with restored and replanted Big A scoreboard.

On the bright side, that might solve the Sportstown parking predicament.

Threats, insults and emotions aside, if Disney is removed from the equation, the Autrys and the Angels are simply back to where they were a year ago, before Michael Eisner’s sudden horsehide infatuation:

Doing business with Peter Ueberroth.

Ueberroth was the front-runner to buy the Angels before Disney lumbered its way into the board room last May and body-checked him out the door. Ueberroth’s contusions have had time to heal. He remains keenly interested.

Once the Angels-Disney deadline expires, Ueberroth II will be up and rolling. Several owners already have said they would approve a Ueberroth purchase. A new transfer of ownership could be completed within a month.

That would enable Anaheim to hang onto the Angels longer than six years and, most likely, much longer than 15 years.

Maybe even long enough to wait for the NFL to expand again.

Because if Anaheim is waiting for the Seahawks, Sportstown could be waiting for the 22nd century. Jackie Autry is right about this much: The city needs first to take care of what it has and can hold onto before it starts dabbling in maybes and the realm of wouldn’t-it-be-nice.

As the old saying goes, a bird in hand is worth more than a Seahawk in the bush.