Anaheim Decides a Sacrifice Is Better Than Striking Out

Thank you, Anaheim.

On behalf of Orange County’s baseball fans, you did what you had to do. As they say in sports parlance, you took one for the team because, in the end, you had no choice.

Never have so few given so much to someone so rich.

Oh, sure, you could have played hardball with Disney and spiked the deal. You could have depended on Peter Ueberroth or someone else to step in, but then you would have been starting all over again and who else was going to spend $100 million to refurbish Anaheim Stadium? When you saw your attendance figures for the first two games of the season this week, you must have realized this team needs a shot in the arm from new ownership.

This team is a marketer’s dream. Good, young talent--much of it home-grown--and the kind of team that should score lots of runs and compete for the pennant. Most owners would kill for the Angels’ roster. The team ought to draw 30,000 fans a night by accident, and yet they couldn’t even get that many on Opening Night.

So, as usual, Disney was negotiating from absolute strength and had no reason to budge. They knew you wanted them and that everyone else wanted them too. You’re probably lucky they didn’t clean you out for any more than they already did. In fact, darn nice of them to let you call the team the Anaheim Angels next year.

Bluffing Disney was never in the cards. If Disney walked, it was out nothing. You, on the other hand, might have been out a baseball team in a few years, and I’m guessing it was that prospect that scared the bejabbers out of you. None of you, even the councilmen who voted against the deal, wanted to be known as the crew that lost the Angels. Looks like you checked out your hand, saw what Disney had showing on the table and folded.

Forget about what the city “gets” from this deal. It doesn’t look like you get much at all except keeping the ballclub in town, but that’s no small victory. Like it or not, it’s going to be your legacy from these negotiations and, as they say, history will judge.

I’ve got a phalanx of readers who think the Angels, or any professional sports franchise, are a needless commodity, especially in light of baseball’s labor-management problems and its disdain of ticket-buying fans. In their world, it would be good riddance to the sports world and its greedy denizens. Hard to tell how representative they are, but they’re adamant.

It’s hard to argue with their premise. It’s their conclusion that is faulty.

A community benefits greatly from a well-run sports franchise, but not always in ways that are seen. Ballplayers are among a select few in our society who can show up at a children’s hospital for charity and brighten a child’s day. Professional sports, just like the symphony hall or the museum or movie theater, offers people a chance to enrich their lives. Anyone watching a family at the ballpark realizes that the game’s value goes far beyond who’s winning and losing on a particular night. A championship can do more for a community’s sense of well-being and offer more pure joy to tens of thousands of people than most anything else you can think of. It may be temporary joy, but don’t pretend it isn’t real or that it’s reserved for a select few.

There is a societal value to that. Exactly what it is, though, propels the debate. Whether spoken or not, I suspect it was that question of value that sealed the Angels’ negotiations. I think everyone knew Anaheim wasn’t going to put one over on the Disney people. So the only real question was, how much did the city want to ensure the Angels stayed? Anaheim, and the rest of Orange County, would survive the loss of the Angels. But this wouldn’t be as good a place to live without them.

In this day and age, losing the team wasn’t as much an idle threat as it once would have been. Houston is America’s fourth-largest city and may lose its baseball team, the Astros, next year. The owner is threatening to move if attendance doesn’t pick up, and a group in the Washington, D.C., area is prepared to go after the Astros--or anyone else, presumably--when they become available.

So, Jackie Autry’s veiled threat to leave town when the lease expired in a few more years had to be taken seriously. It was probably bluff, but who knows?

Anaheim did what most Orange County residents probably wanted them to do--guarantee the Angels’ presence, even if the city got the short end of the stick.

It’s understandable if some Anaheim residents are irked by this deal. They’re the ones who will pony up. As for the rest of us, who only get taken financially when we get to the park, a tip of the hat.

Better you than us.

* Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.