What Did We Do to Deserve Lacrosse?

Having lost an NFL team and been thwarted by the NBA, Anaheim has landed a professional lacrosse team. Wouldn’t you love to have a dollar for every time someone said to you, “I wonder if there’s any chance of ever getting a lacrosse team in town.”

Wish no more; you’ve got one. To the Mighty Ducks and the Angels, Orange County sports fans can add the Anaheim Storm of the NLL, known to a limited number of people as the National Lacrosse League. I’d never heard of the league or the team, but my research indicates that the Storm is being transplanted from New Jersey and finished 3-13 last season. The year before, it was 5-11.

Does it get any better than inheriting a losing team that couldn’t make it in New Jersey?

Let’s hope Anaheim isn’t resting on its laurels. Any tiddly-winks franchises available, too?

The negotiations to reel in the Storm probably went like this:

NLL officials: Sorry to bother you, but could we put a team in your town?

Anaheim officials: I guess so. Sure, why not?

Knowing nada about the team, which plays its first game eight days from now at the Pond, I suggest the following marketing slogan for the season: “Plenty of Good Seats Available.”

After some Internetting, I learned that lacrosse as we know it today dates to 1636, which explains its immense popularity some 370 years later. Conceived by North American Indians, the game often was played, according to one Web site, “to resolve conflicts, to heal the sick, develop strong, virile men and to give thanks to the Creator.”

That’s the exact model later adopted by the National Hockey League.

By now, discerning readers are probably asking, “Hey, sport, why the attitude? Enough of the cheap shots.”

Yes, I am copping an attitude. There’s no reason to poke fun at bringing lacrosse to Anaheim. After all, if I’m not interested in the games, I can stay home (you can count on it).

There I go again.

OK, here’s my gripe: If Orange County was so hard up for an oddball sport, why couldn’t it have been cricket? Do you really want to pick up the sports page the day after the Storm’s big win and read a story with words like “slashing,” “goal,” “face off” and “midfielder”? That’s the language of lacrosse.

Imagine, instead, reading about “Your Anaheim Chirps!” cricket team. Here’s the kind of sportswriting you’d get, based on an account this week in the New Zealand Herald:

“Ricky Ponting scored a career-best 257 and then 31 not out to guide Australia to a nine-wicket victory in the third test against India yesterday.”

The article continues: “Set 95 to win, Australia reached 97 for one when man-of-the-match Ponting swept a boundary 21 minutes before lunch on the final day.”

You think the phone lines wouldn’t light up on talk-radio sports shows after a match like that? And the story didn’t even use the cricket expression “out for a duck.”

Ponting sounds like someone Orange County sports fans would embrace, like last season’s Stanley Cup hero Jean-Sebastien Giguere. Here’s what the Herald wrote: “But the match belonged to Ponting, who became the first player since Don Bradman in the 1930s Ashes series in England to score three double-centuries in a year.”

Three double-centuries? In one year?

Don’t tell me lacrosse provides excitement like that. In fact, answer me this: Name anyone in lacrosse history who has ever done anything 21 minutes before lunch on the final day.

I didn’t think you could.

Cricket fever. Catch it.

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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.