He showed up 23 years ago as the lovably grounded steward of one of baseball’s soaring sports franchises.
Remember the first thing Arte Moreno did as Angels owner? He lowered the beer prices!
“I’m not going to think about it,” he said boldly and decisively. “I’m going to.”
The second thing he did was hand out sombreros in honor of his Mexican heritage and status as the first Latino majority owner in America’s major professional sports.
“Being Mexican American, I’d like to reach out to Mexican Americans,” Moreno said. “But also to everyone.”
The third thing he did was answer a question about the Dodgers with a question.
Angels fans wave signs and urge owner Arte Moreno to sell the team to an ownership group willing to invest more in winning during a pregame protest Saturday at Angel Stadium.
(Joaquin Ruiz / For The Times)
“Who?” he said, “The Angels won the World Series. We are the No. 1 baseball team in the world. There is no reason for us to look over our shoulders.”
It was the most delightful introductory news conference I’ve ever attended, Moreno saying all the right things, doing all the smart things, and ultimately embracing his new purchase’s greatest asset.
“My responsibility is to take care of the Angel fan,” he said. “My job is to make sure we live up to the tradition. My job is to make people comfortable here.”
Twenty-three years later, those first impressions have long since been replaced by lasting erosions.
On nearly every weighty promise, with the exception of those beer prices, Arte Moreno has failed.
Take care of the Angels fans? Those fans profanely chant at him, loudly protest against him, universally despise him.
Make sure the team lives up to its tradition? He has taken a glittering inherited World Series championship culture and frittered it into an unrecognizable lump that is undeniably the worst in baseball, 11 straight years out of the playoffs, 10 straight sub-.500 seasons, nobody that bad.
Make people comfortable at Angel Stadium? The only way that is happening now is if Moreno isn’t there.
Arte, please, listen to your customers, heed your record, recognize the inherent sadness of a 79-year-old man being chased out of his own home.
Sell the team.
You’ll make a ton of money while escaping a ton of heat. You can buffet your ownership legacy by handing this civic jewel to someone who will appreciate it. The reputation rehabilitation that once worked for Shelly Sterling in selling the Clippers to Steve Ballmer, it can work for you.
Sell the team.
You made Shohei Ohtani disappear, you made Mike Trout anonymous, you made bright hopes vanish by betting on broken former stars like Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton and Vernon Wells and Anthony Rendon.
Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani is honored by owner Arte Moreno, who presented him with the team awards as most valuable player and pitcher of the year in 2021.
(John McCoy / Getty Images)
Now it’s time for you to go.
Sell the team.
The experts will say the Angels should not be sold until a new labor agreement is signed, potentially increasing their value. C’mon, the worst franchise in baseball still has an estimated worth of $2.75 billion, a 1,400% increase from the $183 million Moreno originally invested.
Wouldn’t it be worth it to sell as soon as possible before the stands empty and the chants grow and commissioner Rob Manfred gets involved?
Just ask Frank McCourt what happens when a commissioner gets involved.
Sell the team, and here’s guessing at least one local titan would be interested, that being Rams owner Stan Kroenke. Under the daily leadership of Kevin Demoff, Kroenke’s well-run Rams have joined the Dodgers as this city’s two premier sports operations, and just think about what SoFi Stan could do with a storied baseball franchise in baseball-loving Orange County.
The Angels were once the Rams. Heck, the Angels were once the Dodgers.
Angels owner Arte Moreno signs autographs and poses with fans as he attends Angel Fest in 2004.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Moreno, who declined to be interviewed for this column, bought the Angels shortly after they won the 2002 World Series, and watched them win five American League West titles in the next seven years, twice finishing one step from the World Series.
But, following the 2007 season, the great Bill Stoneman retired from his general manager position and the direction of the club slowly began to change. Moreno, once satisfied with being just another suds-loving die-hard, became more involved in player acquisition while surrounding himself with inexperienced general managers who struggled along with him.
Every time Moreno tried to make a big splash, he wound up soaking wet. Pujols couldn’t reverse aging. Hamilton couldn’t stay clean. Wells couldn’t play, period.
In a brief moment of clarity in 2014, they won the West, but were swept out of the division series by the Kansas City Royals as Pujols and Trout combined to go three for 24.
They haven’t sniffed the playoffs since while undergoing seemingly constant leadership changes that have allowed their culture to slowly rot.
The team has gone through four different general managers since Stoneman, and five different managers since Mike Scioscia left the team eight years ago, and this lack of stability points directly at the owner who just can’t let people do their job.
An owner, by the way, who several years ago personally canceled a trade that would have brought them the Dodgers’ Andy Pages.
But nothing is more damning to the Moreno era than the handling of arguably the greatest player in baseball history. When Ohtani joined the Dodgers two seasons ago everyone celebrated him as the new kid in town, yet he had previously played in Anaheim for six years! It’s as if those six years never existed! This, even though Ohtani spent them alongside a guy who was once nearly as accomplished.
Ohtani and Trout never synced their skills between various injuries and surgeries, but still … years from now historians will still marvel how two of the greatest players ever could play together for a half dozen years and never once step on an October stage.
Only in Anaheim. Then, to complete arguably one of the most wasted tenures in the history of sports, Ohtani was unconscionably allowed to walk to Chavez Ravine as a free agent with the Angels getting nothing in return.
They should have traded Ohtani during his final season there, but Moreno wanted to squeeze every last dollar out of his marketing power. Then, once Ohtani became a free agent, he reportedly would have considered returning to Anaheim, but Moreno wouldn’t match the Dodgers offer.
The departure of Ohtani for zero prospects, zero young stars, nobody … seriously damaged the remaining shreds of trust between their many loyal fans and the team.
That bond was further strained this winter when the Angels settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of the late Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who died in 2019 of a drug overdose. The settlement was reached during jury deliberations after a trial that jurors later indicated showed the Angels’ negligence. The jurors were simply trying to determine the amount of punitive damages when the settlement was announced.
The belief that the Angels could have done more to save Skaggs’ life was yet another giant crack in Moreno’s crumbling foundation.
As a final insult in this downward spiral, this spring Moreno amazingly told the Orange County Register that for his fan base, winning wasn’t their priority.
“They want affordability,” Moreno said. “They want safety, and they want a good experience when they come to the ballpark. Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.”
The Angels have since contextualized that quote to point out that Moreno was talking about what fans were seeking in deciding to attend a specific game, not about their fandom in general. And over the years, even his biggest critics have acknowledged that Moreno is a hardcore fan who wants to win.
But, again, still, the sound bite sizzled. Winning not in the top five? Are you kidding me?
To be fair, the Angels’ fan experience is still generally outstanding. Parking is easy, food is good, ushers are nice, it has the potential to be great fun. Then again, there was a recent rodent infestation in a concession stand, painting even the best parts of their operation as Mickey Mouse.
All told, the Angels are a glorified minor league team with no apparent vision and no obvious hope for the future and not worth the money at any price.
Arte Moreno has taken a crown jewel and turned it into a punch line.
The Halos have gone to halo, the Big A is now the Big L and, somewhere, a rally monkey weeps.
Sell the team.
More to Read
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
