The Other Red-Blue Divide

Team owner Arte Moreno’s thinly veiled ruminations about changing the name of the Anaheim Angels baseball team to the Los Angeles Angels have sent civic leaders and fans scurrying to price buckets of tar, bags of chicken feathers and a sturdy rail. Chalk it up to the ever-deepening red-and-blue divide -- that’s Angel red and Dodger blue.

This off-the-field feud has been complicated by the Angels’ heritage and Orange County’s uneasy relationship with its larger neighbor to the north. Former owner Gene Autry lit the slow-burning fuse in 1966 when he moved the team formerly known as the Los Angeles Angels to Anaheim. The city was deemed too provincial for the big leagues, so the transplant took root as the California Angels.

The county line blurred a bit more when the Los Angeles Rams sought temporary shelter in Anaheim on their way to St. Louis. And now Anaheim is hoping to secure an NFL franchise that might very well end up called the Los Angeles Whatevers.

Anaheim has drawn a line in the sand by threatening legal action to stop Moreno’s name-dropping. The team owner quietly has stripped his host city’s name from Angels uniforms (home and away), the team website and game broadcasts. It’s tempting to dismiss the tinkering as a rich guy playing with his expensive toy. But Moreno made his millions in the advertising business, and he seems to think that branding his Orange County team as something it isn’t would amount to a marketing home run.

Not amused are Anaheim’s elected officials, who fronted $30 million for stadium improvements during the mid-1990s because having a major league team was their idea of a marketing home run. The team’s owner at the time, Walt Disney Co., signed a contract that requires the franchise to pledge allegiance as Anaheim’s Team.

Moreno clearly knows where the county line runs, but his team also plays in the nation’s second-largest media market -- which is spelled “Los Angeles.” Media markets explain why fans don’t buy jerseys for the Irving Cowboys, Auburn Hills Pistons and New Jersey Giants. Perhaps a bit too optimistically, Moreno figures that changing the name would help him to squeeze $15 million in additional revenue from local television contracts.

It’s hard to know which team to root for. Orange County is a distinct place, and Anaheim paid $30 million in public funds to have baseball players wear its name on their chests. Then again, at least when compared to that liberal city up north, isn’t the county famous for letting entrepreneurs do as they please?