Anaheim Thinking Twice

The city was a joke long before it was fitted with mouse ears, getting its first national call-out in a skit on Jack Benny’s old radio show, featuring a Union Station conductor announcing the departure of a train headed for the hinterlands of “Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc-a-monga!”

That had them rolling in the aisles back in 1945, 10 years before Goofy came to town and 50 before Georgia left. Eventually, the laughter died down in Azusa and Cucamonga, which appreciated the moment for what it was and let it go at that. Not so in Anaheim, where the ambitious and the foolish mingled regularly in the Matterhorn’s shadow, talking themselves into the cross-eyed notion that their deluded little burg was capable of trading fastballs with the big boys, thus ensuring an endless parade of belly-laughs and bellyaches from there to the end of the century.

The Anaheim Amigos.

“We can replace Nolan Ryan with two 8-7 pitchers.”

The Southern California Sun.

“Let him run 47 Gap.”

The California Surf.

“The Angels lead the 1982 American League championship series, two games to none....”

The Anaheim Oranges.

“The Angels lead the 1986 American League championship series, three games to one....”

The Freedom Bowl.

“And the hockey team will be named the Mighty Ducks.”

“No. Really.”

The Pigskin Classic.

“The Rams today announced they are exercising the escape clause in their contract ... “

The Anaheim Bullfrogs.

“The Angels lead the AL West by 11 games with 43 to go....”

The Anaheim Splash.

“The Clippers are coming to Anaheim.”

The Anaheim Piranhas.

“The Clippers are never coming to Anaheim.”

By the turn of the millennium, Anaheim’s sporting legacy appeared to be chiseled in the imported polished marble of the Pond: The little city that couldn’t win the big one, that couldn’t keep the Rams, that wasn’t good enough for Donald Sterling, that was stuck with periwinkle and pinstripes and Donald Duck hockey sweaters until the day -- and the city was on the clock -- when Disney decides to up and pull the plug.

Then the calendar hit October 2002, and a mighty wind swept across Katella Avenue, blowing away decades of heartbreak, curses and worse, prompting the crafting of the most incredible yeah-right sentence of our lifetime.

The Angels won the World Series.

More than six months have passed, and we still have trouble believing it, even if we see it every time we pass through the Edison Field turnstiles. There it is, glistening in its glass case, defying history and comprehension -- the World Series championship trophy.

It is Anaheim’s, at least through the remainder of the summer, and if the Angels never win another pennant, the city will always have 2002, its one moment of can-do glory.

Unless the Mighty Ducks win the Stanley Cup.

Drafting off the heat across the freeway, the long-hapless Ducks, 13th in the Western Conference this time last year, are four victories from the Stanley Cup finals after sweeping the 2002 champion Detroit Red Wings and upsetting the top-seeded Dallas Stars in six games.

Suddenly, the Katella corridor, usually available for tumbleweed races during the playoffs, is the postseason place to be, a power block drawing so much buzz and national attention, there are rumors of an actual Michael Eisner sighting at an upcoming Duck game.

“We’re on a roll, man!” says former Anaheim mayor Tom Daly, whose 10-year tenure ended last fall, just long enough to bask in the Angels’ championship confetti. “This run by the Ducks is a little bit like the Angels, except the wait hasn’t been quite as long. And in some respects, I think it’s more surprising because the Ducks have moved up so quickly.

“The Angels were sort of knocking on the door a few years. But the Ducks, what did they finish, 13th last year? The way [Bryan Murray] has put this team together has been breathtaking.”

Tim Ryan, general manager of the Pond, says he and assistant Mike O’Donnell were mulling recent events over lunch Wednesday and “both of looked at each other and said, ‘This is unbelievable.’

“You can put me in the group with every other citizen in Orange County, that this is so great. I mean, what every one of us felt during the World Series -- people talked about that for months. And to this day, I talk to an awful lot of people who say that that was the highlight of their life in terms of sports entertainment. And now to have the chance to repeat it is, I think, something that cities dream about the nation over.”

Never mind that this sudden surge of success has happened after Disney put both teams up for sale, or that much of the country ignored the Angels’ too-far-west victory over the San Francisco Giants, or that most of the Southland is now burning stomach lining over the plight of the Lakers while the Ducks perform their minor miracles under the radar.

Daly trots out the numbers. Anaheim, population 330,000, is the 10th largest city in California and 56th in the United States, which casts those victories over the Yankees and the Giants last fall and the Red Wings and Stars this spring in a curious light.

Consider the implications of these headlines:

“Anaheim Defeats New York”

“Anaheim Is Better Than San Francisco”

“Anaheim Outmuscles Detroit And Dallas”

“When you talk about the return that a sports franchise may or may not bring to a community, I think you could probably look right now at Anaheim, California, as a wonderful case study,” Ryan says. “Whether you pick up the paper in Dallas or Detroit -- I have received phone calls from Florida, acquaintances in Minnesota, Vancouver, Toronto -- everybody knows about Anaheim right now.

“And I don’t know that would be the case if we weren’t having this level of success.”

Any way you look at it, it’s culture shock for a city whose sports identity previously splintered into three dubious personas:

1) “Perennial underdog,” as Tim Mead, Angel vice president of communications, puts it.

For years, the Angels could never match the Dodgers. Same story for the Rams, who came to Anaheim in 1980 and could never escape the shadow cast by their Los Angeles tradition. The Freedom Bowl was not the Rose Bowl. The Ducks did not have Wayne Gretzky.

And renting the Clippers for a few games every season only meant that by 1993-94, Anaheim could lay claim to a quarantine of four of the world’s worst teams in their respective sports: the Kelly Gruber-Gary Gaetti Angels, the idling-on-the-onramp Rams, the expansion Ducks and the Clippers. Dark days.

2) Way station for every indoor soccer, arena football, team tennis and fly-by-night franchise you could shake a roller-hockey stick at.

3) Ignored altogether.

Before the birth of the Ducks in 1993, the city’s two main sports attractions, the Angels and the Rams, refused to include the name “Anaheim” on their official letterhead. The Angels, despite playing their home games at Anaheim Stadium since 1966, stubbornly clung to their title of “California Angels.” The Rams, who played 15 seasons in Orange County while maintaining their headquarters in Los Angeles, remained the “Los Angeles Rams” until they became the “St. Louis Rams.”

Even the city’s entries in the ill-fated World Football League and North American Soccer League bypassed the Anaheim name, opting for the “Southern California Sun” and the “California Surf.”

Initially, Anaheim didn’t mind, which is how it got the Angels in the first place. In the mid-1960s, owner Gene Autry first considered a move to Long Beach, but the city politicians insisted the team be known as the “Long Beach Angels.” That sounded minor league to Autry, who then turned to Anaheim, ever over-eager, and the California Angels were christened shortly thereafter.

But as Anaheim grew over the next three decades, so did its desire for self-validation. Daly considers two highlights of his tenure as mayor to be the negotiations with Disney that spawned an expansion hockey team called the “Mighty Ducks of Anaheim” and put the name “Anaheim” on the road uniforms of the Angels after their sale by the Autrys.

“Having learned from the Rams experience, where you had a team called ‘L.A.’ playing in Orange County, it’s just the wrong formula,” Daly says. “It’s an impossible formula. That’s why I insisted the Angels and Ducks be called ‘Anaheim.’ Especially with Anaheim providing the burden of providing the facility and the financial issues and the maintenance of the buildings, traffic and all those issues.

“I also think it’s better for the team to call themselves after the city they play in. Look at the Florida Marlins. Where do they play? As I’ve said to a lot of media folks over the years, part of the charm of professional sports is the Anaheim Angels playing the New York Yankees. The Anaheim Ducks playing the Dallas Stars.

“Anaheim beats Dallas is a great story. Almost as good as Anaheim beating New York.”

Anaheim paid a steep price for its name tags, however.

“The whole reason the Rams got an ability to get out of town, to terminate the contract with us, is because they sued the city in an effort to block the construction of the Pond,” says Greg Smith, former general manager of stadiums for Anaheim and currently executive director of the city’s conventions, sports and entertainment department.

“At that time, reflecting back now, you’re looking around the table and saying, ‘OK, the Rams are suing us on the environmental issues of the Pond and we can fight them over it and we would win.’ We knew they were groundless, basically. But we would lose time and possibly lose the [Pond] project by going through this litigation with the Rams, so they were willing to drop the lawsuit if we would give them an escape clause out of the stadium contract. And we felt at that time that was a good trade.

“Reflecting back, was that a wise thing to do? Absolutely. Certainly now, when you see the Ducks winning and doing so well. There was so much strain between the community and the Rams, something would have happened regardless. It just wasn’t going well. It was a point in time where there need to be a divorce. And we ended up entering into one.”

Disney did not provide an immediate magic wand, contrary to its carefully manufactured reputation. The Tony Tavares era of Duck-Angel management will be remembered, mostly, for the firing of popular Duck coach Ron Wilson and the hideous pajamas the Angels were forced to wear before the merciful, and karma-busting, switch to red before the 2002 season.

When Disney hired an investment bank last year to sell both teams, it settled on a management strategy that would change Anaheim’s luck, and Orange County’s sports history: If we’re going to lose money while waiting for buyers, we might as well try to win to interest more potential buyers.

Thus, the Angels were able to assemble the pieces for their unlikely ride to the World Series, and Duck General Manager Murray was allowed to spend the money necessary to resurrect the Ducks.

Daly sees similarities between the two success stories.

“Both teams have a never-say-die attitude, and an emphasis on team rather than superstars,” he says. “The Ducks, by most measures, you’d say they have one superstar, Paul Kariya, right? The rest of the team are a mix of young players and veterans. You might compare Jean-Sebastian Giguere to Adam Kennedy or Francisco Rodriguez, who sort of come out of nowhere and dominate....

“And they both have the surprise aspect. What struck me when the Ducks swept the Red Wings was that this is so much like when the Angels stunned the Yankees. The other guys really didn’t know what hit them. Brett Hull just looked stunned when he skated off the ice.

“Getting over that mountain that early in the playoffs, it’s like, ‘Hey, we just beat the monsters.’ After you beat the Yankees, the Twins don’t look so tough.”

It’s fantasyland time, all over again, so indulge a proud former mayor a moment as he swings for the fences.

“The Stanley Cup,” Daly says, “is going to look great sitting in the lobby of the Pond.”