Oh, Arte, Don’t Take Your Love to Town

Isn’t that just like a man?

He blows into your life, wines and dines you, makes you think you’re the best thing that ever happened to him and then ...

You know how the story ends. You’re sitting there with a hangdog look and a bouquet of wilting roses in your hand after finding out he plays around.

Take Arte Moreno. Please.

Maybe you’ve heard of him. Good-looking guy, richer than Colombian coffee, quite the charmer. He’s accustomed to getting what he wants, which in the spring of 2003 was the Anaheim Angels. After signing the check for $180 million, he had them.

His seduction of Angel fans was so swift and sure that he made George Clooney look like Dick Cheney. Moreno swept into town from Arizona and did everything but give away tickets. Come to think of it, he did something even better: He reduced beer prices.

To baseball fans, that was like getting a sapphire pendant. A man with a plan, Moreno worked the crowds at Angel games, whispering sweet nothings into the ears of Orange County fans and asking if everything was cool.

Everything was.

Until ...

Until the cad started sending signals that he wasn’t in love with Anaheim after all. Or even with Orange County. Last fall, he started backing away from using “Anaheim” to identify the team, going so far as to take it off the team uniform. That should have been a clue. He also removed the city name from virtually everything connected with the team.

Moreno even told The Times’ Bill Shaikin a few months ago that “we consider ourselves an L.A. team.”

But then Moreno turned on the charm again. He went on a spending spree over the winter, bringing in some big-time free agents, and we fell for him all over again. He said the franchise belonged with the elite. Our civic bosom swelled with pride.

We were kidding ourselves. It soon became clear why Moreno dumped Anaheim -- and it wasn’t so he could rename the team the “Orange County Angels.”

No, he had his eye on a good-looking lady up north by the name of Los Angeles. If Anaheim was cute, Los Angeles was beautiful. She turned Moreno’s head.

Last winter he made another move. His billboard campaign cast the Angels, previously the sole province of Orange County, as “L.A.’s Team.”

Then came the news this week that Moreno, that sly dog, had approached baseball’s hierarchy about reinstating “Los Angeles Angels” as the team’s name, something it had not been called since Orange County came into its own in the 1960s and became the team’s permanent home.

And now we know the truth: Moreno doesn’t love Orange County. It was all a charade.

Orange County’s 3 million people and undying devotion aren’t enough. Forget the huge crowds that showed up last year and again this year. What Moreno covets are the 10 or 12 million people who live in L.A. County.

Has anyone told Moreno that Orange County has its pride? That it doesn’t want to play second fiddle to Los Angeles? That O.C. is the anti-L.A. in the hearts and minds of locals?

What kind of company would try to do business in Orange County and identify itself with a Los Angeles corporate logo?

Oops. Bad example. Forget that.

Anaheim city officials have said they won’t relinquish their contractual right to the team name.

Kind of sad, isn’t it, when a jilted lover hangs on? But who can blame them?

Moreno said he loved us.

We believed the big lug.

And now this: wilted roses and lower beer prices.

I feel so used.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.