Still Gettin’ the Spirit
Manuel Moreno Jr. got his passionate love of the Rams from his father, Manuel Sr. But Manuel Jr. has embraced his Rams fandom with all his heart.
Staying at home every Sunday, no matter what, no matter what his gang friends wanted him to do, helped Moreno get away from trouble in his Santa Ana neighborhood.
And so on Sunday, when the Rams of St. Louis play the Tennessee Titans in the Super Bowl, 27-year-old Moreno will dress his 6-year-old son in the same Rams jersey, the Vince Ferragamo one, that Manuel Sr. put on Moreno once upon a time, and the family will go to the El Tapatio restaurant in Santa Ana with lots of other Rams fans and cheer for the Rams.
No matter what.
“I can’t stand Georgia [Frontiere],” Moreno says, “but I became a Rams fan, not an L.A. Rams fan, and that’s the way it is.”
Becky Esparza of Stanton, a 56-year-old mother of four sons, grandmother of 10, great-grandmother of four (No. 5is expected in another month or so), had season tickets for all 14 seasons the Rams played in Orange County. Esparza missed only one home game in that time and she traveled with the team too, to Chicago, New Orleans, even London for a 1987 exhibition game.
With her husband Robert, Becky will be in Las Vegas Sunday. She will try not to watch the Super Bowl. She knows that won’t be easy. Every television set will be turned on to the game. All the conversation will be about the Super Bowl. But for absolutely certain, Esparza knows one thing:
“If the Rams win and Georgia is going to get the trophy, I will not watch. I’ll go to Boulder Dam or something. I will not watch. I’m still heartbroken.”
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It is with mixed feelings that Orange County will greet the wandering Rams when they play in Atlanta for the Super Bowl title on Sunday.
“I just don’t have Georgia on my mind,” says Jack Lindquist, who was a leader of the Save the Rams committee that tried fruitlessly to keep the Rams in Orange County. Frontiere took the team away though. Lindquist says he’s over it now. Lindquist says he would have liked to see Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, “just because I like their team,” and not because it would have meant the Rams would be home this weekend.
“But I’ll still have a wonderful, happy Sunday,” Lindquist says. “And I will not think of Georgia once.”
Linda Moomau, who calls herself “a worker bee” member of the Save the Rams committee talked for half an hour about the sense of loss she still feels without the Rams.
“The final vote [to move the team] was taken on April 12,” Moomau says. “I’ll never forget the date. It’s the same date as my divorce. My divorce was easier to take.”
Moomau is having a Super Bowl party at her Cypress home because she always has one. “Any little part of me that is happy for some of the people still involved with the team is overshadowed by the nausea, depression, you know? Just the disappointment.”
There is a sense of betrayal still that Moomau feels. She was a loyal fan and she was abandoned. Moomau attended the final Rams home game, a loss to the Washington Redskins on Christmas Eve, 1993.
“I just remember the guys running into the tunnel at the end and wondering if this could really be the end. I wasn’t willing to accept it, but all the people sitting around me hugged and we walked into the parking lot and I burst into tears. I’m getting tears in my eyes now just talking about it.”
Moomau sees a difference in young people. Her son, Dan, she says, is not a fan of particular teams but of particular players. Wherever that player moves, Dan’s loyalties follow. That’s what happens as more and more teams pull a Rams, back up the moving vans and sign a new lease.
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Except then there is Moreno and his buddy, 27-year-old John Soto of Huntington Beach. Soto will also be at El Tapatio.
“It was real hard to swallow, when the Rams left,” Soto says. “I was willing to be teamless. I’ve been a Rams fan since I was little, 6 or so. [Moreno] took two days to talk me into staying a fan. He said the move was better for the team if the team ended up with more money for better players. It looks like that’s what happened.”
Moreno says, yes, that is one way he rationalized the loss of his team. That’s the thing. It’s a team, not a county that Moreno rooted for. It is the Rams. Here or there or anywhere.
“You see,” Moreno says, “it’s a link. It started with my dad and now I’ll have this in common with my son. You know, even back in the early ‘90s, when I was gang-banging, I would stay home, off the streets, on Sundays.
“You know, I have a 1951 Rams jersey. I got it at a swap meet. I asked the guy, ‘What do you want for that old, beat-up jersey?’ I didn’t let him know I’m a Rams fan and I got it cheap.”
Three years ago, Moreno, with the help of Soto, started Rams Central, a gathering each Sunday of fans who root for the Rams. Period. No discussion, no hanging on to grudges against anybody named Georgia.
“She did what she had to,” Moreno says. “Just because they’ve moved, that doesn’t mean my team isn’t my team anymore.”
Moreno is a rap singer. He’s done a song of his own composing about the Rams. “I spell out R-A-M-S. I bob and weave. The audience loves it,” Moreno says.
After the Rams beat Tampa Bay last weekend to earn the Super Bowl spot, Moreno said he tracked down every Rams doubter, every guy who told him he was nuts for letting the Rams step over his support on their way out of town.
“Yellow pages, 1-800-USSearch, whatever it took, I found whoever laughed at me. I invited them all to the party Sunday. Come one, come all.”
Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.
