Orange County News Blog

​As anyone following your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim knows, free agency will likely create big holes the Halos must fill to remain a top tier playoff contender. A die-hard who realizes this oh-so-well is Stephen Smith over at FutureAngels.com, which today presents a painstakingly researched list of top 10 Angel prospects. 

Smith talked with at least one coach or manager for each player, examined statistical analyses and conducted his own extensive research. "For the Midwest League players, I also had access to a manager with another organization who was generous enough to provide a second opinion," he adds.

For fans who want to know anything and everything about each player they may be seeing in the bigs very soon, Clockwork STRONGLY RECOMMENDS clicking on Smith's link above. He's even got video of each farm hand! Until then, the crib-sheet version follows after the jump . . .

Take a picture of Lackey, it will last longer.

​The Angels have a tough decision to make: Do they try to keep pitching ace John Lackey or spark plug Chone Figgins?

So your Anaheim Angels of Anaheim lost the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees because of a shocking loss of their trademark sharp play (seriously, guys: that error in the bottom of the eighth?). Whatever--let's move on to meatier issues.

SO...at a carne asada Sunday event, I met someone who works as a chauffeur. This driver has driven New York Yankees to their hotel when they visit and has the pictures to prove it--for the playoffs, they stayed at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach, according to the chauffeur. All except two players, that is: A-Roid and another player I'll assume is another of their big names (Mark Teixera? Derek Jeter) but whom the person couldn't identify because they're not a baseball fan.

Awright, readers: in what hotel did the chauffeur say Alex Rodriguez stayed at in Orange County during the playoffs, away from his teammates? One hotel per guess, and the winner gets a baseball autographed by a random Weekling! Quick aside: the chauffeur said the Island Hotel lobby was PACKED with chicks trying to seduce any Yankee within their tanned grasp.

And now, the upcoming World Series!

DUI-OrangeCounty.com

What pen, officer?

​As this keyboard is being drooled over, the Angels have taken a 4-0 lead over the Yankees in the first inning of Game 5 of the ALCS.
​

If the lead held by the time you read this, that means there will be no need to drown season-ending sorrows and go driving through Garden Grove Saturday night.

However, there's a whole lot of baseball left, and Game 6 (if necessary) is Saturday evening. The potential for sorrow-drowning remains, as does celebratory hoisting.

In any event, avoid the Garden Grove Boulevard and Yockey Street intersection between 9 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. Sunday. Garden Grove PD explains why after the jump. And keep in mind the Angel season is dedicated to a pitcher who died (along with two others) in a drunken-driving crash . . .

McClelland. McDipShit.

​In the top of the fifth inning of the Angels' 10-1 loss to the Yankees last night, umpire Tim McClelland made what Yahoo! Big League Stew blogger Duk has labeled "the worst call of all time."  ​"Yes, you read that right," Duk declares. "The worst call of all time. Not just this postseason. Not this entire season. Not this decade. Not this century. I challenge you to think of one that was worse."

Watch the total injustice here.  

Sure, it's possible McClelland got paid off by the Yankees or the MLB or Rupert Murdoch. Or he could have suffered temporary blindness from the dirt kicked up by baserunner Jorge Posada. Maybe there was a shiny object diverting his attention. But in the replay, it looks as if McClelland totally forgot where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Keep in mind he also blew the call when Yankee Nick Swisher tagged up before a flyout the inning before.

No, something else was afoot. For your consideration are these five drugs McClelland may have ingested before making the worst call of all time.

A-Rod or A-Hole?

​Since it's now obvious there will be no freeway series (hey, Angels and Dodgers, here's an idea: bring your bats next time), the time has come to move beyond the brutal losses suffered by our soon-to-be-exiting home teams and concentrate on the really important stuff.

​Like, which city is filled with more assholes, Philadelphia or New York?

Hey, it's an important consideration to remember while you avoid the pain that will come from watching the Phillies and Yankees face off in the World Series.

What follows is a highly scientific breakdown of 13 key assholic indicators to help us determine which big city takes the cake . . .

. . . the ASSHOLE cake.

Continue reading " 2009 Postseason Throwdown: Who Are"...

Guerrero: Now, sadly mortal...

​
The most painful part of tonight's 4-3*, 13-inning loss your Angels suffered at the steroid-enhanced hands of the New York Yankees? Not the errors. Not Brian Fuentes blowing his save opportunity. Not the prospect of the Halos having to come back from a 2-0 deficit if they want to hold up their part of the Freeway Series. No, the moments that made me wince the most were those involving Vladimir Guerrero.

Oh, Vladdy: you're done. Your flailing at various Yankees pitchers during this series--including your feeble ground out to end the top of the 13th inning, with two runners in scoring position, is how I imagine Willie Mays played for the New York Mets at the end of his career, a run as synonymous with an athletic titan woefully past his prime as Joe Louis versus Rocky Marciano. You've never really hit them when they counted in the postseason, and your 2009 campaign might have seen you fight injuries, but cold streaks don't explain three inning-ending outs in a must-win game.

Forget about scoring a lucrative extension; call it a career. You had a great one, of the first-ballot Hall of Fame variety. Anyone who can tie a Lou Gehrig record in this age deserves all the praise in the world, but you had your day. Retire after this season--please. Porfas.

If the Angels are America's Team, does that make Barbara Coe the new Sarah Palin?

​What is going on with America? Forget about the economy, the Know Nothings, the garbage-dwelling Linda Ackerman campaign and refry this: in an ESPN SportsNation poll that I can't find online but was just broadcast on ESPN News, your Anaheim Angels beat out the other three remaining teams in the MLB playoffs as the squad fans most want to see in the World Series. It was a pretty healthy victory, too, with the Angels getting around 35 percent of the vote, followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, which were separated by a percentage point at around the 27-28 level (poor Philadelphia Phillies ranked last).

Haters can't accuse local fans of ballot-stuffing, either: more California fans who voted in the SportsNation poll chose the Dodgers over the Angels. The Angels? A team with no national-caliber star ala Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez? Are baseball fans finally catching up to the Halos' mantra of fundamentals, or has Orange County bled enough residents this decade to make the team so popular nationwide? I'm a Chicago Cubs fan, so don't truly care either way, but I do love to see Angels fans and their detractors go at it. So: go at it! 

Johnny Damon's inability to hit the ball is really pissing off the above Yankees fan whose voice doesn't quite match his lips. (But love the hair!)

Nick Swisher, who is also lugging an unblemised stick into the ALCS against the Angels, is  apparently on notice with this fellow, too.

A-Rod and Jeter? Not so much.

​

Read alt. weekly 2009 Postseason Throwdown coverage for:

New York Yankees: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/baseball/

Los Angeles Dodgers: http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/sports/

Anaheim/LA Angels: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/baseball/

All together: http://www.villagevoice.com/baseball/

​

New York still has fresh memories of winning three of four from the Angels in September, and having home-field advantage for the best-of-seven American League Championship Series as well as A-Rod suddenly finding his postseason bat are huge. But the Yankees live up to their team name when playing the Angels, who should be renamed the Yankers. For no one applies the ultimate titty twister to New York like Anaheim.

The Bronx Bombers' captain, Derek Jeter, certainly appreciates Angel manager Mike Scoscia's brand of pressure baseball.

"What makes them tough is they hit, they pitch, they run, they steal, they play defense, good bullpen, good closer, good manager," Jeter told the media after his team swept Minnesota last night. "I think that pretty much wraps it up."

No, Jeetz, this baker's dozen wraps up why Angel fans should feel comfortable heading into the Big Apple Friday.

1) The only American League team to have a winning record against the Yankees during Joe Torre's 12 years as manager (through 2007) was the Angels. They won 7 of 10 against the Joe Girardi-skippered Yankess in 2008 and the teams went 5-5 in regular season games this regular season past.

"Weave"

​With this being "Best of OC 2009" week all over ocweekly.com (and in those old-timey newsracks), and Angels hurler Jered Weaver scheduled to take the mound for tonight's game 2 of the American League Division Series against the Boston Red Sox, it's appropriate to revisit Weave's appearance in "Best of OC 2008." ​

Heck, if he isn't at the ballpark yet, you might even catch him wiping the crumbs off his chin from the California turkey sandwich he devoured at Hector's Subs in Long Beach or begging that the river be the Jack of Clubs at the Hawaiian Gardens casino.

But whatever you do, tread gently lest you have a burning desire to be branded the goat who jinxed Weaver's pre-game rituals.

Meanwhile, should you feel brisk gusts coming from the direction of Anaheim tonight, let's hope they have not been produced by Santa Anas but Boston bats whiffing at whatever Jered and the 'pen throw at the Sox. Of course, meteorologists will tell you there's always a 90 percent chance such windpower was derived from Vlady's wild swings.

As for our competition crying in their overpriced beers in Beantown, their strategy to reverse their fortunes apparently involves hiring a witch doctor to soak Weaver's jersey in chicken blood--something they admittedly should have done before Thursday night to Torii Hunter's.

Ah, Bostonians and their quaint little local customs.

Those rubes in Boston probably find this pretty.

​UPDATED WITH CORRECTIONS . . .

Before Angel fans can truly hate the Boston Red Sox--actually, if 1986 playoffs didn't do it, nothing will--they must first hate the team's fans, the residents of the town surrounding Fenway Park and the town itself. ​(Along those lines, a Halos cap tip to Village Voice Media Vice President of Blog Stirring Bill Jensen for this apt name for annoying Bostonians: Massholes.)

To get you juiced for tonight's game 1 (6:37 p.m. PDT at the Big A), behold these 26 reasons to hate Massholes, Bostonians and Boston:

1) No street signs, and the ones they do have that say things like "Thickly Settled." WTF? Give me a good, old-fashioned illustration of a family running across a freeway with a slash throught it any day.

2) Boston gave us Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits.

3) Boston baked beans. You call that a hearty bean? It's so tiny. Now, Texas ranch style beans--there's a right-sized bean. And take away the brown sugar or whatever it is that makes the sauce so sweet and you've got nothing, Boston baked bean, NOTHING!

4) This child-scarring teacher.

5) Old money snotheads. Give me the new money and paper rich denizens of Newport Beach any day.

Mike Scioscia fires back.

Before the first pitch is even thrown in the first game of the American League Division Series pitting Your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim against the Boston Red Sox (game time is 6:37 p.m. Thursday at the Big A), manager Mike Scioscia has been asked incessantly about the same painful subject: His Halos' string of playoff losses to the bruisers from Beantown.

​Strangely, he is not asked so much about the Angels' mastery of the Sox during the regular season.

The critics have a lot of cannon fire: there were, of course, the losses to Boston in October of 2007 and 2008.

But the Angels' skipper is also being pressed about the most disheartening defeat of all, Game 5 in the 1986 ALCS, which Boston won with Dave Henderson's ninth inning homer.

Fortunately, Scios' has a good comeback for that one . . .

Continue reading " 2009 Postseason Throwdown: Angel Skipper"...

FanSnap

​FanSnap, a free search engine for online tickets to concerts, sporting competitions and other live events, has come up with a price comparison that shows it can be almost $20 less per ticket to see the Dodgers host the Cardinals in game 1 at Dodger Stadium than it is to see the Angels open their division series against the Red Sox at the Big A.

​"For both games, there is tremendous price variability," claims Palo Alto-based FanSnap, which claims:

* Fans can find tickets behind home plate to the Angles game listed for $279 and $305 in the same row.

* On the third base line, fans can find tickets listed for $109 and $176 in the same row at Angel Stadium.

* Dodgers fans can find Dugout Club seats directly behind home plate for $454--about half what other Dugout Club seats are listed for.

* Along the first base line in Chavez Ravine, fans can choose tickets listed at $98 or $120 in row A in Field Box 44.

Stadium breakdowns follow after the jump . . .

​
The American League Division Series between the Red Sox and Angels is not only the battle of Boston vs. Los Angeles of Anaheim, of East Coast vs. Left Coast, of Beantown vs. Beanertown.

It is also an epic war being waged between the cryogenically frozen heads of each town's most iconic undead: Ted Williams and Walt Disney.

John Lackey (left) and Jon Lester get the starts to begin the Angels-Red Sox AL Division Series.

​

We know the who (Angels vs. Red Sox), we know the what (best out of five American League Division Series), we know the where (game one at Angel Stadium) and we know the why (so that the winner can advance to the American League Championship Series).

​

What we don't know is the when because New York, which boasts the league's best record, can't announce the playoff schedule they will choose until their Division Series opponent--Minnesota or Detroit--is decided after Tuesday's one-game playoff between the Midwesterners.

The Yanks can start either Wednesday night or Thursday night, with Boston and LA of Anaheim getting the schedule New York discards. Pundits think the Bronx Bombers take the Wednesday option to compound their opening-round opponent's jet lag and to get a between-game rest advantage over their arch foe Boston before those two inevitably square off in the ALCS.

But the Beantowners must first travel through Anaheim and the Halos' game 1 pitcher, John Lackey.

Thank God he's not starting in Boston.

OC founding father Henry W. Head: Could take on a Bostonian any day

​Let the baseball pundits obsess over whether your Angels will finally beat the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs next week--I care about stripping from Beantown what's now rightfully ours: the title of most-racist 'burb in America.

​For decades, critics rightfully deemed Boston as the country's most racist big city, and seriously: what do you expect from a town where micks and goombahs have long dominated politics, culture and demographics (ethnic Catholics, as we wabs have shown here, make fine racists), and had to fight Brahmins (the WASP kind, not the cool ones) to get there? Go read the biographies of Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell if you don't believe me. And the desegregatin' buses of the 1970s further solidified the city's racist image. Coupled with an unhealthy obsession over Larry Bird, fan antagonism toward Jim Rice, and the curious worship of scrappy (read: gabacho) Red Sox players, and outsiders might understand why as recently as 2004, Barry Bonds refused to even entertain the thought of playing in Boston.

But that was so long ago. Seriously: what has Boston done in the past 20 years to justify its label as the Land of Bigotry? Orange County, on the other hand? Well, I don't really have to repeat what I write about nearly every week, do I? You know I do!

Nothing more can be said about the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim's dominating 11-0 shutout of the Texas Rangers last night to win the American League West crown. The offense, defense and especially Ervin Santana's pitching were of a caliber one would expect from a World Series-bound team. So, let's instead relish the top 11 moments from the Halos' victory celebration . . . while we don't have to think about Boston. Yet.

1) Champagne-, beer- and milk (?)-drenched Angels players jogging out to center field and lovingly tapping the memorial to Nick Adenhart, the rookie pitcher who died in a tragic car accident along with two others after he won his first major league start for the ballclub. Reliever Brian Fuentes also poured victory juice over the Adenhart image's head like the kid's one of the American League West champs. He is.

2) Pitcher Sean O'Sullivan showing off a wide-array of dance moves in the plastic-covered clubhouse, including a tribal booty shake that had the black guys looking at each other saying "Damn!" and Fox Sports West announcer Bill MacDonald remarking, "That's 100 times better than Mark Madsen a few years ago with the Lakers when they had their celebration." 

3) Usually stoic manager Mike Scioscia's smiling widely as he watched O'Sullivan.

Continue reading " 2009 Postseason Throwdown: Top 11"...

Courtesy of FutureAngels.com

Seven of the eight Statesville Owls of 1961 who came to Tempe pose for the camera.

​​The not-yet-dead Texas Rangers are trying to prevent the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim from winning the American League West crown, something the Halos can achieve as early as tonight at the Big A with a win against their Lone Star state rival.

It makes one wonder who players from the old Dallas-Ft. Worth Rangers of the American Association are rooting for. They were the Angels' Triple-A ballclub when Los Angeles made its major league debut in 1961, also being affiliated with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Judging from the Angels' caps worn by the chaps pictured above, there's no question where the loyalties lie among the Statesville Owls of 1961. Forty-eight years after the Angels' North Carolina farm club ended its inaugural season with a playoff loss to rival Lexington, players from the Owls reunited Friday at the franchise's Tempe, Arizona, minor league facilities.

A former Orange County resident brought them all together.

​Jered Weaver takes the mound against the A's this evening with the Angels (90-62) seemingly in the driver's seat for their third consecutive American League West title. The only Angel starter who hasn't missed a turn in the rotation, Weaver will be throwing on an extra day's rest. Nine of his team-high 15 wins have come at the Big A, where he has a 2.89 earned-run average. He should get plenty of backup from an Angels lineup that has the best record in baseball against lefties. And they're facing a weak one. Oakland starter Gio Gonzalez has failed to get out of the fourth inning in his last two starts, giving up eight earned runs and 10 hits in his last 6 2/3 innings against Cleveland and Minnesota. He has only five wins all season, and his last one came Aug. 10. The Angels' best hitter, Kendry Morales (his .303 batting average, 31 home runs and 99 RBIs lead the team), feasts on the A's, batting .538 with five homers and 12 RBIs in seven games versus Oakland since the All-Star break. Los Angeles of Anaheim's magic number is now four, so they could conceivably clinch at home this weekend. 

Angels owner Arte Moreno don't need no stinkin' ticket price cuts.

Major League Baseball franchises have taken a hammering in attendance this season (thank you, shitty U.S. economy!), so all the teams that are playoff-bound or possibly so are resisting the common end-of-season ticket-price gouging.

That is, all teams are except one.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim!

Reports Forbes:

Clubs poised for post-season play have learned a lesson from the economic havoc that tore through the regular season, knocking down attendance figures across the majors even as teams fell over themselves offering discounts and specials. Four of baseball's eight likely playoff teams--the Angels, Yankees, Cardinals and Rockies--have announced their post-season prices. Non-suite seats aside, all but the Angels are offering up plenty of cut-rate tickets from the regular season.

The bold was added by yours truly for shameful emphasis, of course.

​If the Angels and Yankees wind up facing one another somewhere on the way to the next World Series, it'll be tough to beat the playoff atmosphere that was already evident at the Big A last night.

Yes, those bastards in pinstripes eked out the 6-5 win (after blowing a 5-0 lead--HAH!), and they clinched their 14th trip to the playoffs in the past 15 seasons.

But, according to our highly placed source who was sitting in the Angel Stadium stands, fans who have been painted by the East Coast-dominated media with the "flaky Californians" brush were refreshingly really, really, really into the game.

Why, no one even started the wave!

Wait, are we talking about the same Angel Stadium?

​The public's first crack at Angels playoff tickets begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday, but don't bother showing up at the box office at the Big A. They are only available online at the Angels Web site or by calling Ticketmaster at (714) 663-9000.

There's a limit of four tickets per household. Since the Angels will have home field advantage in the series (most likely against Boston), as many as three games could be played at Angel Stadium.

Those lucky enough to have had MLB.com's Angels Insider subscription actually got first dibs at the tickets this morning. It's too late to sign up for a subscription now to get division-series tickets, but if you register, like, RIGHT THIS SECOND you'll be first in line for tickets to the American League Championship Series, which will go on sale Sept. 29 or 30. Insider subscriptions end today.
 

The Angels open the Division Series at home either Wednesday, Oct. 7, or Thursday, Oct. 8, depending on where the Yankees wind up. Look for the logo above on blog posts here as the Weekly steps up its Angels coverage during the playoffs.

*  *  *

What are they saying about us in other playoff cities? More 2009 Postseason Throwndown action can be found for the following teams:

New York Yankees: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/baseball/
St. Louis Cardinals: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/baseball/
Colorado Rockies: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/baseball/ 

More teams will be added as the playoffs near.

Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, Eddie Murray, Frank Robinson, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Hoyt Wilhelm, Dave Winfield AND RICKEY HENDERSON are enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame. All spent parts of their careers in Anaheim playing for the Angels. But none of the inducted members elected to be depicted wearing an Angels cap on their Hall of Fame plaque.

Will Vladimir Guerrero be the Angels' first?

Having stroked two homers--including the 400th of his career--in the Halos' 8-7 win over Tampa Bay at the Big A Monday night, Vlady could hang up his cleats today and be a lock for Cooperstown, blogs Stan McNeil of The Sporting News.

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=foxsports&vid=fde644e7-f0f1-4dba-b689-30e71b3a9463" target="_new" title="Happy to be alive">Video: Happy to be alive</a>

Before Friday evening's Angels game, Fox Sports Network carried a short video piece on Jon Wilhite visiting Angels Stadium followed by the young accident survivor joining his father on the Angels Live dais with play-by-play broadcaster Rory Markas.

Wilhite was the former Cal State Fullerton catcher who was in the car April 9 when Courtney Smith, Henry Pearson and Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart were killed after an accident with a suspected drunken driver. Doctors say Wilhite suffered internal decapitation, but his struggle to recover apparently has not changed his upbeat and joking demeanor as witnessed in the Angels pregame.  

Could his sunny outlook also have something to do with Fullerton "ball hawk" John Witt taking up the anti-drunken driving cause?

Roger Lodge, who hosts The Sports Lodge on AM830 that is broadcast live from Angel Stadium, went off on Joe Maddon, the Tampa Bay Rays manager who also skippered the winning American League team in Tuesday night's All-Star Game from St. Louis.

During a portion of his show that is simulcast on Channel 5's KTLA Morning News, Lodge took the flat-topped, snow haired manager to task for failing to get Los Angeles of Anaheim's Chone Figgins into the game, despite Figgy having moved mountains to make it to St. Louis in time for the player introductions.

Based on accounts on HalosHeaven.com and by Kathleen Nelson in the St. Louis Dispatch, here's what can be pieced together . . .

UPDATED WITH FIGGY NOW IN AND HUNTER CLARIFICATION (THANKS, HALOMANIA!) . . .

Neither Chone Figgins nor Jered Weaver were was not added to the American League roster of tonight's All-Star game. (But, as the Los Angeles Times just blogged, Chone Figgins was just added due to an injury to Tampa Bay's Evan Longoria.) Only closer Brian Fuentes, one of two Angels named to the team, will be in St. Louis. The other, outfielder Torii Hunter, will be at home in Dallas, nursing his right groin/adductor muscle that he injured crashing into a wall. (Hunter--or more likely his team assistant--blogs about his disappointment in missing what would have been his first All-Star game as an Angel here; he'd been named to the 2002 and 2007 All-Star squads as a Twin.)

Despite Hunter and Vlad Guerrero being on the DL, the Halos have a 1 1/2-game lead over the Texas Rangers in the AL West at the break after LA of Anaheim's sweep of the red-hot Yankees. OK, pushing aside the Posers in Pinstripes has become so frequent in recent years it's not news anymore. But this is: the very real prospect of a Fall Classic freeway series against the Dodgers, something suggested by the LA Times' Bill Shaikin (who adds the caveat of a NL West showdown first between the Doyers and those pesky San Francisco Giants). 

And then there is this: Mark Decotis in FloridaToday.com writing that the steroid-induced power game in baseball has been replaced by speed on defense and offense--you know, the way the Angels play. Decotis quotes John Boles, a onetime Florida Marlins manager who is now a special assistant to Seattle's general manager. Boles sums it up this way: "Speed kills":

"You can manufacture runs. The old Kansas City Royals, they developed a reputation, they were going first to third. You try to stop it. That's what Mike Scioscia does now with the Angels. The Angels play a National League-style game. Their kids are taught from the day they sign: 'We're going first to third, we're going from second to home.' That's a style of baseball that, if you have the ability to manufacture runs, you don't have to rely on the home run."

So, no, there won't be much for Angels fans to cheer about tonight while watching the action from St. Louis. But save those lungs for October.

I tuned into the Los Angeles Dodgers version of their game last night versus your Anaheim Angels on KABC-AM 790--only the bottom of the ninth, as the Halos failed in their comeback attempt. As each batter failed to do much, the roar of the crowd got louder and louder, prompting Dodgers broadcaster Charlie Steiner to make some remark about the Blue Crew nation and how they always travel well. But what I was hearing yesterday was full-fledged Reconquista.

This is nothing new, of course, but it got me thinking. When the Angels play the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine, as they did recently, Angels fans show up in big numbers but nowhere near as large an invading crowd as what Dodgers bring to Angels Stadium. I wish both of the teams well (I'm a Cubs fan and made my peace long ago with that), but it's painful to see home teams get invaded and lose in the fan department. Angels fan are much more smug than Dodgers fans, forever hold themselves as so much more civilized than the Doyers hordes, but isn't it telling that those wabs care enough about their team to actually go and see the team in action? I know I'm rambling here, but this post is more of an excuse to see the two sides go at it; such interactions are the best back-and-forth on this blog after pedo-priest apologists and sex-abuse victims. All right, Angels fans: defend your honor!

Stephen C. Smith calls on others to keep tabs on Irvine City Hall.

CORRECTED!

Lost in Santa Ana a few months ago, half paying attention to the street signs and half to Larry Mantle's KPCC interview show blaring out of the car speakers, I heard the host steer his Orange County "roundtable" guests--Orange County Register senior editorial writer Steven Greenhut; former LA Times religion writer William Lobdell and the Weekly's irrepressible Gustavo Arellano--into the topic of local bloggers. The three amigos had just been talking with Mantle about the demise of daily print journalism in Orange County, and among the first bloggers they agreed was admirably filling the local news-gathering void was Stephen C. Smith, who'd kept tabs on Irvine City Hall through his website, the since-shuttered "Irvine Tattler."

This filled me with pride because Smith and I had many running email exchanges going about Irvine city politics, Islamic radicals, the Orange County Great Park, UC Riverside's former Bull & Mouth pub and players within the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim's minor league system, which Smith tracks through his other website (and passion), "FutureAngels.com."

Smith could comfortably comment on the local goings on in Irvine because he previously worked at City Hall and was once part of the so-called "Larry Agran machine." Insiders agree that Agran--the town's former mayor and onetime U.S. presidential candidate and current city councilman and Great Park Board of Directors chairman--pulls the political levers in Irvine, which leans to the right in every elected office above a City Council that is controlled by the left-leaning Agran bloc. But what made Smith an indispensible blogger was that he eventually became so disenchanted with Agran that he turned on his former master--joining an ever-growing roster that most notably includes Mark Petracca, the UC Irvine political science professor, Orange County politics commentator and former Weekly columnist; Chris Mears, the attorney and former Irvine city councilman; and Will Swaim, the Weekly's former editor and publisher who'd previously been picked by Agran to serve on the city Planning Commission who worked for three years as Agran's council assistant and an employee in his outside urban affairs think tank. (It was Agran's longtime ally on the council, Paula Werner, who actually appointed Swaim to the Planning Commission.) 

That has also made Smith a target of critics, especially at the LiberalOC, who claim he's in the pocket of Agran's council and philosophical foe, Christina Shea. However one views Smith, if we are to pick up Mantle's theme and wonder about news bloggers filling the vacuum created by the demise of daily print journalism, what is to happen when the news bloggers disappear? That is happening sooner rather than later with Smith, who departs within days for his new home and life in Florida. Before the big move comes, I asked for an exit interview . . .

On the drive back from Rio Hondo College in Whittier yesterday, I managed to hear Angel Talk for the first time. It's the call-in show that follows any game by your Anaheim Angels and is hosted by Angels radio broadcaster Terry Smith. Yesterday, people called in whining about shortstop Erick Aybar not performing (although I saw him on Sportscenter's Top Plays yesterday...), how there are too many Halos fans who don't remember the lean years of the 1970s, and other such diamond minutiae. To be honest, I tuned out most of the back-and-forth between fans and Smith: pleasant enough, but dull. Besides, I'm a Cubs fan.

My inattention changed with one Tom of San Diego. He started his call by saying he was a longtime season-ticket holder until this year. His reason for not renewing? Too many Latinos on the team.

I was actually driving on the 5 Freeway at this point instead of texting away in traffic, so I couldn't take notes. But Tom's rationale will forever remain in my mind. He said that the recent influx of Latinos in the major leagues would ruin the "American" sport, that none of the Angels' Latino players spoke English and therefore "Americans" couldn't connect to the players (wonder what his response is to tow-headed kiddies and their Vlad Guerrero jerseys?) and that seeing the Angels' Latino players made any Halos home game seem as if "it was in Mexico," an absolutely hilarious proposition considering owner Arte Moreno and that the team's two players of Mexican heritage, third baseman Freddy Sandoval and closer Brian Fuentes, played college ball and are pochos. Of course, Tom wasn't racist, proclaiming he had friends of many races, but he just couldn't go to games anymore and support teams with so few Americans.

Smith's weak response after the jump!