Anaheim Angels

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are a professional baseball team based in Anaheim, California. The Angels are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. The "Angels" name originates from the city that was their original home, Los Angeles. more...

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They are informally known by many fans as "the Halos". The Angels have been based in Angel Stadium of Anaheim since 1966.

An expansion franchise, the club was founded in Los Angeles in 1961. Then the Los Angeles Angels, the team was based at Los Angeles's Wrigley Field (not to be confused with Chicago's legendary stadium of the same name). The team has gone through several name changes in their history, first changing to the California Angels in 1965 to emphasize their status as the only AL team in California. When the Disney Company took control in 1997, they extensively renovated Angel Stadium on the condition that both the stadium's name and the team's name contain the word "Anaheim". Disney was hoping to make Anaheim, the home of Disneyland, a major tourist destination and thus the team became the Anaheim Angels.

In 2005, new owner Arte Moreno wanted to change its name back to the original "Los Angeles" in order to better tap into the Los Angeles media market, the second largest in the country. However, the standing agreement with the city of Anaheim demanded that they have "Anaheim" in the name, so they became the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This name change was hotly disputed by the city of Anaheim and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who wanted LA to themselves, but the change stood and still stands today.

The Angels are the incumbent American League West Champions.

Franchise history

Prelude: The American League comes to Los Angeles

For many years, there had been talk of an existing American League team relocating to Los Angeles. In 1940, the St. Louis Browns asked AL owners for permission to move to Los Angeles, but were turned down. They planned another move for the 1942 season, and this time got permission from the league. A schedule was even drawn up including Los Angeles, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 made major-league sports of any sort on the West Coast unviable. In 1953, there was again talk of the Browns moving to L.A. for the 1954 season, but the team was sold and moved to Baltimore instead as the Orioles. There were on-again, off-again discussions between city officials and the Washington Senators regarding a possible move. There were also rumors that the Philadelphia Athletics' move to Kansas City in 1955 was a temporary stop on the way to Los Angeles.

In the end it was the National League that first came to the city, in the form of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley purchased the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels in early 1957 from Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley. Under the rules of the time, he also acquired the rights to a major league team in Los Angeles, which he used to move the Dodgers there a year later. Under ordinary circumstances, that would have precluded any subsequent American League presence in the Los Angeles area. However, in an effort to prevent the proposed Continental League from becoming a reality, in 1960 the two existing leagues agreed to expand, adding two new teams to each league. Though the understanding was that expansion teams would be placed in cities without major league baseball, that agreement quickly broke down. When the National League placed a team in New York (the Mets) as its tenth franchise, the American League announced plans to place an expansion team in Los Angeles, to begin play in 1961.

Read more at Wikipedia.org