ANGEL REPORT

The Angels tried to delete an entire Web site Monday, wiping out every message--thousands in all--on a virtual bulletin board popular among fans but unaffiliated with the team.

Teams previously operated their own sites. Major League Baseball Advanced Media now runs all team sites, including bulletin boards. However, because the new sites were plagued by technical glitches, many Angel fans continued to use the bulletin board on the old Angel site, otherwise abandoned by the team.

One cannot do anything other than post messages on the old site. But because the site still includes the team logo, Angel Vice President of Communications Tim Mead said the team was justified in deleting the messages because fans might believe they were using the official team site, https://angelsbaseball.com.

“This has nothing to do with censorship,” Mead said Tuesday. “We don’t want our fans to be confused.”

The Angels thought the old site, https://angelsmb. acssports.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi, was long gone when a reporter called Monday morning to verify a message saying Molina had been put on the disabled list. The message, apparently posted by a friend of Molina, was true, but the Angel media relations staff was unaware of the move at the time and was not so informed by team executives until later in the afternoon.

The Angels originally intended to delete only the Molina message and it was “a mistake in judgment” to delete every message, Mead said. Still, while the Angels do not object to a fan-run site, Mead said the team will demand the current operator of the old site either shut it down or stop using the Angel logo.

The operator did not return an e-mail message seeking comment Tuesday, but the site was up and running again. On the site, the operator says he neglected to ensure the Angels’ ability to delete messages and otherwise control the bulletin board had been removed after the MLBAM site launched. “This oversight has been corrected,” he wrote.