Anaheim Is Setting the Stage for World Series Celebration

It could be no other way. What are the Anaheim Angels going to do now? Yup, Disneyland.

The Angels’ World Series victory Sunday ended a 42-year quest for the team and its fans, who plan to cap the storybook season with daylong celebrations today in Anaheim.

The festivities begin with a 10 a.m. trip down Disneyland’s fabled Main Street. The celebration will continue with an 11 a.m. parade from Arrowhead Pond to Edison International Field, followed by a rally in the parking lot. The planned events will end with an Angels appearance at Disney’s California Adventure from 3 to 8 p.m.

City officials are anticipating 300,000 fans along the parade route and the Edison Field parking lot. “This is the first party of its kind in Anaheim,” said city spokesman John Nicoletti.

For Disney marketing, the World Championship is a bolt of lightning.

“We’ve never had something on this scale,” said Disneyland spokesman John McClintock. “It helps that they’re right down the street from us. It might not have been a big deal if it were not the hometown team.”

But it is. And the hometown is pulling out all the stops.

Workers at Edison Field were busy Monday building stages for today’s ceremony, which will include speeches from Angels Manager Mike Scioscia and many of the players. Police and city officials were holding last-minute planning meetings to throw the biggest party this city has ever seen.

And many Angels fans, although tired from celebrating late into the night Sunday, were still walking on air.

The lines were long Monday at the team store at Edison Field, where people were snatching up pennants, bright-red World Championship T-shirts, rally monkeys and the black caps the players wore during their champagne-soaked clubhouse celebration Sunday night.

“We’ve been waiting 42 years,” said Brad Farrell of Anaheim, who trudged out of the store with $250 worth of souvenirs. “We want it to last as long as possible.”

But the keepsakes Farrell is most proud of are three autographed guitar picks given to him late Sunday in the parking lot by Angels first baseman Scott Spiezio, who plays in a rock band on the side. “That was a special memory for me and my son,” Farrell said.

Kevin Lawton of Australia, who had booked a flight home Monday, was cutting it close when he braved the long lines to buy World Series souvenirs. He had caught the Angels bug while visiting Disneyland and watched Game 7 from his hotel room. “This is history in the making,” Lawton said standing in the hourlong line to enter the store.

National television ratings for this California Series were the lowest ever recorded for a World Series by Nielsen Media Research, but many who watched said the it had all the drama of baseball’s best matchup. For Anaheim, the smallest city with its name on a Major League jersey, the Series was a chance for recognition.

“It’s the creation of a suburban legend. And legends are what make places what they are,” said baseball lover Scott Bollens, a UC Irvine urban and regional planning professor.

“It’s putting Anaheim on the map.”

The focus on the Angels is also redefining people’s views and stereotypes of Orange County, said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University. “It’s forced the haughty and more arrogant L.A. people to recognize that Orange County has a lot to offer, as well,” he said.

The national media have also been forced to examine outdated views of Orange County “as a combination of right-wing, John Wayne guys with shotguns on the one hand and a bunch of airheaded blonds on the other,” Kotkin said. “I think there’s a sense that Orange County is a more sophisticated place. In a way, the Angels themselves represent Orange County’s best image of itself -- tolerant, earnest and hard-working.”

Today, thousands of people are expected to line Katella Avenue and pack the Edison Field parking lot to thank the team for an unforgettable season.

Crowds are expected to form early and police urged people to carpool, bike, walk or take public transportation because of limited parking.

“When you talk about these kinds of numbers, you talk about a once-in-a-lifetime celebration,” Nicoletti, the city spokesman, said. “Unless the Angels win another World Series -- then it’s twice-in-a-lifetime.”