Angels Stay, Thank Heaven : Team’s accord with Anaheim is less than perfect but laudable

The Angels will stay in Anaheim after all, which is good. There are some aspects of the deal announced this week between the city and the Walt Disney Co., which is buying managing control of the team from Gene Autry, that may be less than perfect. However, the agreement keeps in place a viable baseball franchise with long-established Southern California roots, and it turns on a formula that has been successful before. It minimizes wishful dreaming. It’s the latest chapter in the biggest game in town, the collaboration between the host city and the entertainment giant that began with the opening of Disneyland in the 1950s.

For purists there will be the return of proper scale to a once-fine baseball park that was made into an awkwardly configured all-purpose facility to accommodate the now-departed Rams football team. If there is to be football in Anaheim’s future, it will have to be at a separate, football-only stadium.

The city wisely has downgraded its grand plans for a giant entertainment, retail and sports complex at the site. It recognizes the futility of trying to immediately install a football team, but it has retained the right to make that happen down the road.

Some of the loyalists of the team name “California Angels” may be unhappy about Disney’s concession to local chauvinism in renaming the team the Anaheim Angels. Area identification was a sore point when the Los Angeles Rams kept their name while playing in Orange County and paying little heed to local affairs. This tip of the cap to a city that is paying $30 million of the $100 million needed to remodel the stadium is something the fans ought to be able to live with.

It’s hard to identify anything concrete the city has gained in this agreement, but at least it hasn’t lost the team. It did come up on the short end in its quest for a 30-year lease agreement when it handed Disney the option of leaving 20 years after completion of renovations, expected to be a three-year job. Some will hear the echo of the Rams’ moving vans, but given the synergy of entertainment and sports activities in Anaheim, the city and Disney have a more identifiable stake in making this work.

We have seen a bit of everything in recent weeks, all in line with the colorful relationship between the city and Disney over the years--some fanciful dreaming, some hardball bargaining, and finally, to the relief of all, a recognition of mutual interests.