With three days until Christmas, you're running out of time to give the Angels fan in your life a gift. How about a Dodgers cap?
If ever winter was a test of loyalty, it is this one. The Dodgers spent $69 million on Edwin Diaz. best closer available in free agencyand another 2 million dollars in championship parade expenses. The Angels spent $2 million on a trustee who gave up. earned run average last season 8.23.
Next year, the Dodgers will try to become the first National League team to win. three World Series in a row. Angels will try to end Longest postseason drought in baseball at 11 years old, he still doesn't have much of a plan other than a quick first-round draft pick to the big leagues while treading financial waters until Anthony Rendon's contract expires.
On Sunday they missed Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakamiwho signed with the 102-losing Chicago White Sox. Of the Angels' five acquisitions this winter, three didn't pitch in the majors last season, and not because they're prospects.
If you're an Angels fan and you're sick of it, should you reconsider your allegiance?
Jim Bowden thinks you should.
Bowden, a former general manager of the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals, is a baseball insider on multiple media platforms. On “Dirty Territory” last week he suggested Fans of small-market teams have an option that may be more constructive than anger.
In Pittsburgh, for example, the owner would rather complain about the lack of a salary cap than spend enough money to build a winner around a generational pitcher in Paul Skeens.
“You don’t have to be a Pirates fan,” Bowden said. “You can retire as a Pirates fan or trade yourself to the Dodgers.”
“If you want your team to win, the Dodgers have the best chance right now to win the World Series again. As a fan, you can root for any team you want.”
“You don't have to root for your hometown team. You can see the Dodgers play in your hometown. They'll come to Pittsburgh and beat you.
“If it bothers you that much, just be a Dodger fan. That's okay.”
Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrates with teammates, coaches and owners after the Dodgers' World Series victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on November 1.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Angels no longer operate as a team operating in a major marketand their circumstances may become even more dire in the near future.
On Sunday, Sports Business Journal reported that the parent company FanDuel Sports Network is in danger of shutting down unless it can complete the sale to streaming service DAZN. The Angels won't disappear from your screens and streams, but it will likely mean the Angels will have to take a big cut in local broadcast revenue for the second year in a row.
The Dodgers' success isn't slowing down. The Dodgers established a franchise attendance record last season. They offer stadium tours in English, Spanish and Japanese. They launched fan club in Japan.
So, as a disappointed Angels fan, you can jump on this bandwagon. Or you could try another big team—say, the New York Mets.
What is Mets owner Steve Cohen worth? $23 billionaccording to Forbes. When Cohen bought the Mets in 2020, he said this: “If I don't win the World Series next three to five years “I wish I had done it sooner – I would have found it a little disappointing.”
The Mets still haven't won a World Series since 1986. On Friday, he took to social media to criticize ” ordinary idiots misinterpreted the Post's story on Mets payroll.”
On Sunday, given the Mets' losses of Diaz and beloved slugger Pete Alonso in free agency, New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro responded by comparing Cohen to deeply disliked former owner Fred Wilpon in this adaptation of a Christmas carol: “Steve is starting to sound a lot like Wilpon / Mets fans are saying, 'Hell no!' / What’s the point of being so rich / And a ruthless son of a bitch / If you don’t spend the dough?”
The concept of fan agency—essentially what Bowden proposed—is not new. Every now and then, a disgruntled fan publicly disavows his favorite team and then challenges rival teams to explain why he should support them. If you're creative enough, rival teams will send you free gifts.
That's the level of desperation many Dodgers fans felt a decade and a half ago when former owner Frank McCourt needed help. loan to cover salaryhired Russian physicist who radiated positive energy towards the team and “diagnosed disagreements” between baseball operations personnel and disparaged “un-American” the league's refusal to approve a television contract that it said would have provided revenue to keep the Dodgers out of bankruptcy court.
Fans wearing Shohei Ohtani Dodgers jerseys wait to enter Angels Stadium before the game between the Angels and Dodgers on August 12.
(Luke Hales/Getty Images)
In 2011, McCourt drove the team to bankruptcy. The Angels beat the Dodgers. the only time. Dodgers fans didn't give up on their team. They were waiting for better days.
That's where Angels fans are right now—and Pirates fans, too, for that matter. Bowden's suggestion that hapless Pirates fans were exhausted by the perpetual futility of the Dodgers' efforts did not go down well in Pittsburgh. On the Pirates fan site Ram Bunter, Emma Lingan wrote: “Fandom is not like a streaming subscription that you cancel when the content gets bad.”
This year's World Series was the best and most dramatic I've ever written about. But the most fun was the 2002 World Series: The Underdog Angels, a Disney team that no one predicted would have a happy ending, rampaged through October and toppled the giants. The Times' headline on the Game 7 victory read: “Fantasyland!”
If you were there in 1982 and 1986, when the Angels had six chances to win one game and make their first World Series appearance—and lost all six—then you might appreciate 2002 better. And if you were there at the time of McCourt's bankruptcy, you might better appreciate the greatness of the Guggenheim.
So give your Angels fan an Angels cap. In a few years, that fan will be able to wear this cap with pride, and all the tears will make the cap even tighter.
