Heartache Ahead for Angels’ Owner

Here’s a description you don’t hear very often: billionaire good guy.

Oh, there are billionaires (476 this year, according to Forbes magazine). And there are good guys (precise count unavailable). Put the two together, though, and I suspect you’ve got a decidedly smaller number.

Maybe that’s why Arte Moreno, the Angels’ new owner, made such a splash last week in Anaheim when he came bearing sombreros.

Judging by the media people regaled by him at his inaugural press conference, Moreno sounds like a cross between Gene Autry and Walt Disney. In a county that produces more faceless public figures per square mile than anywhere in the country, that could easily turn Moreno into a local hero.

It’s not just that Moreno, who made his fortune in the outdoor billboard business, made a point of saying that beer at the stadium costs too much. It’s that he had the instinct to bring it up. A lot of corporate types might have said it if someone wrote it down for them in a speech, but Moreno apparently writes his own lines.

Case in point: A Times colleague who has interviewed enough executives not to be easily impressed thinks he spotted something rare in Moreno. In the popular vernacular, he’d be described as a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin.

It’s what consultants saw in George W. Bush but not in Al Gore during the 2000 election.

Anyway, my colleague says he saw Moreno outside the ballpark before a game last week, talking to a man escorting a large group of youngsters to the game. Moreno asked if the group had enough tickets. Yes, the man said. Moreno asked where they would be sitting and said he’d look them up during the game and buy the guy a beer. He also posed for a picture with some children and a group of women, one of whom threw her arm around him.

My buddy was seated near the left-field foul pole when, late in the game, he spotted Moreno patrolling the stands. He stopped to autograph a girl’s shirt. He talked to one guy in a leather jacket and another one in a cowboy hat. My friend has no doubt that Moreno found the guy with the group of kids and made good on his beer offer.

Arte Moreno, what a guy.

Which makes what is about to happen all the more tragic.

Pain and suffering await Mr. Moreno, and it has nothing to do with being on the Forbes billionaire list in 2001 but dropping off the last two years. Obviously, his glee at his Anaheim coming-out party suggests he’s got plenty of money to keep him happy.

No, Moreno’s tragic fate stems from a blind spot that he, even as a highly successful businessman, apparently has: the pain of having a passion for a Major League Baseball team.

As surely as Gehrig followed Ruth in the Yankee batting order, Moreno’s zest for life will be challenged as never before.

It won’t be a pretty thing. Who could be happy at this buoyant gentleman being laid low by the cruelties of baseball? I, for one, will try to remember the Moreno of last week, happily engaging fans and reducing beer prices.

Better that than the image of a man walking the streets of Anaheim, muttering long into the night after an especially tough loss.

I don’t know how angry Moreno has gotten at business competitors, but it’ll be nothing compared with watching a million-dollar player fail to bring home a runner from third base with less than two outs.

Has he ever lain awake over a business deal gone sour? Child’s play. Try sleeping after the Angels blow a three-run lead in the ninth.

It gives me no joy to report that Moreno will learn what all rich baseball owners have learned: All the money in the world can’t help your pitcher’s curve ball over the plate.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.