Disney Days Are Done

With the clock ticking now on its final hours as owner, with a four-year search for a buyer having reached fruition in a tentative agreement with Arturo Moreno, how strange is the temptation to ask Disney to reconsider and stay for a little longer?

How strange is it that a corporation that initially thought that the best way to lure fans was with cheerleaders and Dixieland bands on the dugout roofs, that thought that logo and uniform designs seemingly produced in its animation division could camouflage the product on the field, is bowing out at a time when it has a real handle on how to operate a franchise?

How strange is it that after serving as something of a fan and media whipping boy during much of its seven-year tenure, Disney now generates an aura of stability as it reaches for the door -- the beating of those noise sticks providing an improbable compliment and/or complement?

How strange?

Well, it is strange, indeed, and maybe it’s just that the departing Disney takes on a brighter sheen when measured now against the great unknown that is Moreno.

On the other hand, Moreno is buying a quality product significantly enhanced by Disney amid all of the trials and tribulations, the learning on the job.

For one thing, by staying the course, by maintaining a workable payroll instead of decimating it and the roster as other sellers have done, Disney goes out as owner of a World Series winner that incinerated a history of mistakes and misfortune and will remain in tact beyond this season.

Although many of the core players were scouted, drafted and developed by the Bill Bavasi and Bob Fontaine Jr. regime during the last years of the Autry ownership, it was Disney that funded the rebuilding of the Angels’ international operation, the reopening of their Dominican Republic academy and the overall revitalization of a minor league system that Baseball America ranks fifth among the 30 teams and now includes players who weren’t only drafted because of affordability but because of talent.

In addition, of course, it was Disney that hired Bill Stoneman as general manager, and it was Stoneman who hired Mike Scioscia as manager, and if both of those decisions had a lot to do with economics -- Stoneman because of his Montreal familiarity with restricted payrolls and Scioscia because he was comparatively inexpensive -- both decisions now seem fortuitous.

It was also Disney, somewhere along the line, that realized the best marketing tool is a winning team, and that the best administrators are those familiar with the business, and in time Paul Pressler -- who was supervising the Anaheim operation for Disney and had a passion for the game that others in Burbank lacked -- scrubbed the idea of a national search for an Angel chairman to succeed the micro-managing of Tony Tavares and decided that Stoneman would run the baseball end and that popular and respected Kevin Uhlich, who had been in the organization for 26 years, would complete the ascent from batboy to run the business side as senior vice president.

It was also Pressler, now CEO of the Gap Corp., who vetoed the done deal -- in a bit of serendipity that at the time seemed to strip Stoneman of some autonomy and came during a period when Pressler and Tavares were butting heads -- that would have sent center fielder and de facto captain Darin Erstad to the Chicago White Sox in December 200l and would have cost the Angels their World Series crown of 2002, and it was Uhlich, who, among other things, helped turn Edison Field into a sea of red with his push to make it the predominant uniform color.

Of course, there might be no sea of red, periwinkle or any other color, no Disney, in fact, if there weren’t a renovated Edison Field.

Disney has never quite achieved the marketing and business synergy it first envisioned by owning the Angels and Mighty Ducks in the Hub of Happiness, so close to the Magic Kingdom, and was never able to get its regional cable off the ground --outfoxed by Fox -- but by contributing $100 million to the renovation it achieved one of its primary objectives and one Jackie Autry could not have afforded: Allowing the Angels to remain in Anaheim in tantamount to a new ballpark, expanding the tourist attractions.

Now, of course, it appears that Moreno, paying a bargain price, will enjoy the benefits of the long Edison lease and a Disney legacy that will be measured, among things, by the renovated park and the remarkable championship, a legacy that included the tumultuous 1999 season when the Angels finished 25 games out and Bavasi and Terry Collins paid the price, the drug episode involving Tony Phillips in which Disney chairman Michael Eisner attempted to rewrite baseball’s drug rules, and the $80 million commitment to Mo Vaughn, a justifiable investment by an owner taking criticism, at the time, for its conservative finances but an investment that would turn to dust as another chapter in the franchise’s long history of injury and misfortune.

Disney stayed the course, changed the history and will soon depart, turning the Angels over to the unknown. How strange to think we might miss Mickey and Michael.