Split by a Ravine

Even in that long-ago time when they weren’t mere carpetbaggers, when they could justifiably refer to Los Angeles as their home turf, the Angels knew they were just passing through.

That’s the way it is again tonight as L.A.’s two baseball teams -- one facing legal and legislative challenges to that geographical designation -- open a three-game interleague series at Dodger Stadium.

This is where they were once the established landlord and the expansion tenant, and the Angels were aware from the start they would have to move to find an identity, ultimately choosing the Orange County city that they have now virtually disowned for failing to symbolize a big enough and broad enough marketing base.

So, the onetime Los Angeles Angels return as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and if there’s some 40-year irony in that ... well, it doesn’t change the fact that they had no alternative other than to move in the first place.

Baseball history had shown that two teams playing in the same facility didn’t work, and in four years at Dodger Stadium -- from 1962, when Walter O’Malley’s new park opened, through 1965 -- the Angels were dissed and dismissed by fans, media and the Dodgers

Said a reflective Buck Rodgers, a young catcher during those years and later an Angel manager: “All you had to do was pick up the newspapers during that time. We always felt like we were like a stepson or poor cousin.”

Said a reflective Ron Fairly, then a young infielder-outfielder with the Dodgers and now a Seattle Mariner broadcaster: “The only time we talked about the Angels was in the context of hoping they didn’t tear up the infield. Otherwise, there weren’t any interleague games then and we simply didn’t pay much attention to them. They were trying to build a team. We were the Dodgers, for goodness sakes. We were focused on the World Series.”

They were the Dodgers then of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, Tommy Davis and Maury Wills. In that four-year span, coming off a 1959 World Series title when they played at the Coliseum, they won two pennants and two more World Series titles, tying for a third pennant before losing a 1962 playoff to the San Francisco Giants.

With an expanding season-ticket base of about 27,000 in the new park, they drew more than 10 million fans in the four years, attracting between 2.2 million and 2.7 million annually.

The Angels, moving from the cramped confines of the now demolished Wrigley Field, where they had drawn 603,510 in their 1961 debut, attracted 1.1 million while making an improbable pennant run before finishing third at 86-76 in their first year at Dodger Stadium. Then, expansion reality hit.

They were 31 games under .500 in the next three years there, lame ducks in more ways than one as attendance fell from 821,015 in 1963 to 760,439 in 1964 to a dismal 566,722 in 1965, when they sold 2,600 season tickets, drew only 945 for their last day game and the players complained they couldn’t even give their passes away.

By then, of course, Hollywood starlets such as Mamie Van Doren, Tina Louise and Juliet Prowse had stopped dressing up the dugout box seats, and Bo Belinsky, the object of their attention and affection, had been traded after the 1964 season to the Philadelphia Phillies when the Angels finally lost patience with his off-field escapades and on-field failures.

A character among characters on the early Angels, Belinsky’s 5-0 rookie start and May no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles had triggered the remarkable pennant bid in ’62 --”Heaven Can Wait; Angels 1st on the 4th,” read the headline on Mal Florence’s Independence Day story in this section. Only a year later, with the neon lights fading and his personal Boswell, famed columnist Walter Winchell, having attached himself to more attractive stars, Belinsky knew he would be gone and knew the Angels would soon follow.

For Belinsky and the Angels, their tenuous status at Dodger Stadium was epitomized in 1963 when the left-hander was brought back from triple-A exile to make a late-summer start against Baltimore and vowed if he didn’t attract at least 15,000 he should be returned to triple A.

Belinsky did his part, throwing a five-hit shutout, but the Thursday afternoon game drew only 476 fans -- a telling tale for the pitcher and his team -- and the streetwise Belinsky said, “We wouldn’t even have drawn that many if half didn’t come out to boo me.”

The inimitable Belinsky died in 2001 at 64, having often said of his lifestyle that he knew the “bills would come due.”

In his too-brief incandescence, he may have provided the Angels with as much publicity as Koufax provided the Dodgers. But it was the Dodgers who owned the city and the stadium, and Gene Autry, the Angels’ original owner, was too much of a corporate cowboy to let the financial bills keep coming due.

“Gene knew there was no way for the Angels to build a fan and revenue base playing in a stadium so closely identified with a team of the history and tradition of the Dodgers,” said Stan Spero, one of Autry’s initial partners in the team and long a top marketing and sales executive at his broadcast network.

“Gene knew it was a temporary situation. That was part of his initial understanding with the Dodgers.

“By the time he moved, he definitely felt the Dodgers had nickel-and-dimed him in many ways.”

The Angels didn’t have the two- or three-year start-up cushion provided some of the recent expansion teams. Autry and partner Robert O. Reynolds were awarded the franchise in December 1960 and went to spring training two months later. There was no time to create a blueprint for the building of a team or stadium. The Angels paid a $350,000 indemnification fee to the Dodgers, part of which entitled them to call their team whatever they wanted, including “Los Angeles Angels.”

Ultimately, the Angels agreed to a four-year lease at Dodger Stadium with an option on three more years. The Dodgers received 7.5% of attendance gross, 50% of concessions and all parking revenue.

“I think Dad was happy to have a tenant but disappointed with their attendance [from a financial aspect],” Peter O’Malley said of his father. “I don’t think he was concerned with the Angels from a competitive standpoint since we were pretty much entrenched with the new stadium and the ’59 World Series title. He knew the Angels would be looking for a permanent home, but he had no idea where they would end up.”

The younger O’Malley was a chief executive in training, working in the Dodger farm system during the period that the Angels shared Dodger Stadium.

He verbally winces now at the ad wars and pettiness of the current battle for L.A., but there was no love between landlord and tenant in the ‘60s, no absence of competitiveness.

It was the embarrassed Dodgers who called a hiatus in the preseason Freeway Series that had begun in 1962 after they had lost their fourth exhibition in a row to the Angels.

It was the Angels who angrily bristled at the extent of the charges at Dodger Stadium and the rigid refusal of Dick Walsh -- the O’Malley executive assigned with saying no -- to offer adjustments.

Walsh would receive the nickname “Smiling Python” from Angel players after a forgiving Autry hired him as general manager in the early 1970s, a brief and surprising appointment considering how Walsh had hissed at the Angels in Chavez Ravine.

“A lease is a lease,” Peter O’Malley said in reflection. “Dick was merely doing his job in enforcing it.”

Said Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodger general manager then and now retired in La Jolla: “If there was a dollar to be made, Walter made it.”

What didn’t raise the Angels’ ire?

* They were billed for window washing in catacomb offices at Dodger Stadium that had no windows.

* They objected to being charged half of the cost of resurfacing and repainting the parking lot because they received none of the parking revenue.

* They complained when regularly billed for landscape maintenance, arguing that the Dodgers were going to landscape no matter how many tenants they had.

* And, in what they considered the ultimate swipe, they angrily complained when charged for half a season of toilet paper, insisting it should have been prorated on the basis of attendance.

Looking back at those nickels, dimes and dollars, Roland Hemond laughed. Hemond was the Angels’ first farm and scouting director and went on to become a three-time executive of the year with the Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox.

“It was evident that we’d have to move to establish our identity,” Hemond said, “but I don’t think anyone regrets the years at Dodger Stadium. As an expansion team, I think we felt fortunate to be able to play in a new facility. I think there was a sense of pride involved, and that was a stimulant when we had the great year in ’62.

“I mean, there were some petty charges involved in the upkeep, but a lot of good things happened when we played there. Just look at the development of young players like Jim Fregosi, Buck Rodgers, Bobby Knoop and Dean Chance.”

A running mate of Belinsky’s, a Cy Young Award winner with the Angels in 1964 and now a boxing promoter from his home in Ohio, Chance described his four years at Dodger Stadium as the “best of my life” and the ’62 season, when only August injuries to pitchers Ken McBride and Art Fowler thwarted the second-year pennant bid by Bill Rigney’s team, as being the “most fun anybody ever had” while making $7,000 a year.

“A lot of us were young, everybody on that team had a personality, Bo’s no-hitter got us started and Dodger Stadium was a great place to play and pitch,” Chance said. “The ball wouldn’t go out at night and the mound was the best in baseball. Why in the world do you think the Dodgers have had five Cy Young winners there?”

*

Through it all, the Angels had eyes on a mound of their own.

Long Beach was the first consideration, but the city said it would try to use tideland oil money for the construction of an inland stadium in the area of El Dorado Park only if the Angels agreed to be called the Long Beach Angels. Autry refused in a hint of things to come under another owner in another place.

At that point, with property to offer and pride to swallow, Anaheim didn’t care about the name. Orange County was booming, the Angels were hurting and a board member named Walt Disney provided Autry with a Stanford research study showing he couldn’t go wrong.

The Los Angeles Angels became the California Angels, and now they return as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim -- LAA on most scoreboards except those at Dodger Stadium, where they are snidely labeled ANA so that nobody mistakes where their real home is.

At least, they won’t have to pick up a share of the toilet paper.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

L.A. duplex, big yard, with view

A look at the Angels’ stay at Chavez Ravine and comparison of Angel and Dodger attendance figures:

*--* Year W-L Pct. Finish Angel Attend. Dodger Attend. 1962 86-76 531 3rd in AL 1.14 million 2.76 million 1963 70-91 435 9th in AL 821,015 2.54 million 1964 82-80 506 5th in AL 760,439 2.23 million 1965 75-87 463 7th in AL 566,727 2.55 million

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Source: Baseball-reference.com and Los Angeles Times