BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Anaheim Put Its Name on the Line in Disney Deal

A statue of Jack Benny stands in front of the Epicenter, home ballpark of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League.

Will there be a statue of him in front of renovated Anaheim Stadium too, now that the California Angels are becoming the Anaheim Angels after the 1996 season?

It was Benny, long before Disney, who helped put the two cities on the map with his routine about the train leaving for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga.

When the Angels embarked for Anaheim in 1966, city officials said the team should be known as the Anaheim Angels. If it was good enough for Benny--and by then Disney--it should be good enough for Gene Autry, they reasoned.

No deal. It was one thing for a city of 150,000 to build a $16-million stadium, but club and baseball officials feared they wouldn’t be able to sell the Anaheim Angels on Madison Avenue. The California Angels have never really sold well on Madison or any other avenue, but that figures to change now, along with the name.

For its $30-million contribution to the renovation, along with assuming $9 million in stadium debt and about $500,000 of Disney’s annual stadium taxes, Anaheim will get its name on the team’s logo.

For baseball, this isn’t a case of what’s in a name, but what’s behind it.

“Disney brings a wonderful level of marketing expertise and quality of ownership,” acting Commissioner Bud Selig said, adding that consummation of the deal was “a high priority item.”

“It would have been a tragedy for the club, city and baseball if it had fallen through,” Selig said.

It will be a bigger tragedy for Anaheim and taxpayers if Disney exercises the escape clause it demanded and leaves after 20 years.

In the meantime, the stature inherent in the name identification was critically important to the city.

“After being known as California for the last 30 years, this team is now going to be called Anaheim,” Mayor Tom Daly said. “That’s huge.”

Since it was a potential deal breaker, Disney didn’t object.

“In the first place, everyone knows who the Angels are,” said Tony Tavares, president of Disney Sports Enterprises. “We don’t have to build a brand name.

“Secondly, we’ve run into no constraints or restraints marketing the Ducks [who are generally referred to without any city affiliation].”

Tavares also said it would have been inconsistent for Disney to object, since chairman Michael Eisner, when the deal for the Pond had been completed, pointed out that the city had stood up and taken the risk when the state and county had said no. Thus, Eisner had said, these would be the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

“The city stood up again in this case and deserves the credit,” Tavares said. “The name was an important issue.”

It took only 30 years and $30 million to get it right.

MORE ON McSHERRY

According to the autopsy, National League umpire John McSherry died Monday of severe heart disease. He had an enlarged heart, an irregular beat and a severely blocked right coronary artery.

McSherry, 51, was to have been examined Tuesday for the irregular heartbeat, an appointment he had delayed so that he could work the opener in Cincinnati.

Despite his weight--328 pounds--and a history of physical problems on the field, McSherry had been cleared to begin his 25th season as a major league umpire after his annual physical in February, during which the heart disease defined in the autopsy apparently did not show up during the stress test and EKG.

Many in the game were perplexed by this.

Asked about the inconsistency, National League umpire Bruce Froemming said it was not his position to question it, but he added:

“All I can say is that when I had my physical in 1992, they stopped the stress test after only two minutes because of an irregularity.”

Until this year, testing was conducted during an umpire’s first visit to New York. It was in mid-June of ’92 that Froemming reported for his morning physical and ended up in the hospital that afternoon.

An angioplasty was performed three days later to clear a blockage, and Froemming returned to the field within two weeks.

“I haven’t had a problem since,” he said.

National League Vice President Katy Feeney said the questions raised by McSherry’s death are similar to those raised when her father, former National League president Chub Feeney, died of a heart attack after having earlier suffered a stroke.

Feeney said none of the tests done after the stroke disclosed the heart disease discovered after her father’s fatal coronary.

“We asked why it hadn’t been detected and never received a definitive answer,” she said. “Maybe doctors are human and test results subjective. Maybe a condition has to be almost beyond repair before it’s disclosed by the tests.”

Froemming, however, knew about his problem two minutes into a stress test, and McSherry knew about his irregular heartbeat and was allowed to umpire in spite of it, although he reportedly told friends that he feared the league was going to make him stop.

Feeney said legal considerations make it difficult to impose restrictions on weight, but that the league encourages umpires to stay in shape.

Should there be parameters, tougher mandates?

Richie Phillips, the umpires’ union lawyer, will meet with American League President Gene Budig and National League President Leonard Coleman in New York today to begin writing a conditioning and nutritional program for umpires, but nothing is mandatory.

“Everybody is different and everybody carries weight differently,” said Froemming, who has lost 20 pounds since his angioplasty.

“Half the [umpiring] staff is probably overweight. John was in terrible shape. He had [been forced out of games] a half-dozen times in recent years by physical problems. No one else has gone down like that.

“I talked to [umpire] Gerry Davis after he had worked a clinic with John in Atlanta in February and he said John could hardly move around.”

A series of work stoppages have led to improved conditions.

Umpires now get three weeks off during the season. Froemming calls that “a life saver,” but there is daily pressure even before confronting angry managers, players and fans.

The stress of travel, of almost seven full months on the road, living in hotels, eating what Froemming called “garbage in clubhouses and on planes,” makes it almost impossible to maintain weight and good nutritional habits.

In addition, Froemming said not every hotel the umpires stay in has an exercise room. They try at times to get 20 or 30 minutes with the equipment in the team clubhouses, but that requires awkward coexistence with the players.

It would seem that the cost of providing a treadmill or exercise bike in every umpires’ dressing room would be minuscule, measured against the benefits.

“We don’t have a home during the season and we don’t travel on charters like the players do,” Froemming said.

“We often change cities three times a week and travel 55,000 to 75,000 miles a year. People think we show up at the park as if we traveled on some kind of missile. I love umpiring and baseball, but it’s not the easy job people think it is.”

NAMES AND NUMBERS

--It took only a few hours for Reds’ owner Marge Schott to regain the Bad Taste of the Year award. She barged into the umpires’ dressing room after McSherry’s coronary, saying she felt “cheated” that the game was being postponed. She even called Feeney in the league office, pleading to play the game.

Said Schott: “Snow this morning and now this. I don’t believe it. Why are they calling it? Whose decision is it? Why can’t they play with two umpires?”

--This might change by August, but Mark Grace says of his Chicago Cubs, “This is a tight-knit bunch. There are no cliques. Everybody hangs out with each other--Latins, blacks and whites are all on the same page. I wish America could come in the clubhouse and check out how it is to shoot for the same goal and to get along.”

--By opening 2-0, the Pittsburgh Pirates moved over .500 for the first time since May 13, 1994. Of his lineup, Manager Jim Leyland, a .222 hitter in the minors, said, “There’s no Ted Williams in it, but there’s no Jim Leyland either.”

--Rey Ordonez, a former Cuban junior team player and rookie-of-the-year favorite as the New York Mets’ shortstop, needed only opening day to make the 1996 highlight film, taking a relay on his knees down the left field line and gunning out a St. Louis Cardinal runner trying to score from first.

Said a spectator named Ozzie Smith, “I think it’s safe to say he’s the second coming of me.”

Said Ordonez, through an interpreter, “I don’t want to be the second Ozzie. I want to be the first Rey.”

--Providing his marketing department with a sales slogan, Philadelphia Phillie General Manager Lee Thomas said his team may not be in for as dire a season as people think.

“The one thing that makes me feel better is, if you look around, there are some other clubs that aren’t so damn good either,” he said.

--Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who worked the threat of a move to Tampa-St. Petersburg into state financing for a new Comiskey Park, applied the same strategy this week on behalf of his pal Selig, who owns the Milwaukee Brewers.

With the Brewers facing an April 15 deadline for putting together an acceptable financing package for their $90-million commitment to an otherwise publicly financed new stadium, Reinsdorf called the Brewers’ financial situation “the most desperate” in baseball, insisted Selig will be ordered to move by other owners if he doesn’t get a stadium, said it was absurd for the Brewers to have to contribute $90 million and accused Wisconsin of doing nothing to help.

“Selig’s too nice,” Reinsdorf said. “He doesn’t like to play hardball, but that’s the only game you can play with politicians.”

In response, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson said of Reinsdorf: “Here’s a guy that went down to Florida and conned the St. Petersburg people into building a stadium for him. Then he came back and conned the people of Illinois. Now he’s not satisfied. Now he wants to try to con the people of Wisconsin.

“I think if there’s any way not to get this stadium built, it’s to have Mr. Reinsdorf advise Mr. Selig and this state how to do it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Big Bucks

A look at the highest-paid players by position, according to a survey by the Associated Press .

*--*

Pos. Player Salary Team C Terry Steinbach $4,200,000 Oakland 1B Cecil Fielder $9,237,500 Detroit 2B Robby Thompson $4,958,333 San Francisco 3B Matt Williams $6,550,000 San Francisco SS Cal Ripken $6,887,521 Baltimore LF Barry Bonds $8,416,667 San Francisco CF Ken Griffey Jr. $7,500,000 Seattle RF Joe Carter $6,500,000 Toronto P Greg Maddux $6,500,000 Atlanta

*--*