ANAHEIM — “Sell the team” became “sold the team” on Tuesday.
Back in late May, a growing group of shirtless young men began attending Angels games, standing in the upper view level of Angel Stadium and chanting “sell the team” while spinning their shirts over their heads.
Other chants were mixed in, some of which were not as benign as “sell the team” with some positive cheering for the Angels in the mix. The group, the local version of a “Tarps Off” movement that has spread nationwide this baseball season, can be heard in every corner of the stadium, and over the air on the radio and TV broadcasts.
If Angels owner Arte Moreno was at the stadium or had the sound on while watching the telecasts, he knows some of the chanting was derided him by name.
And of course the “Tarps Off” crew is claiming credit for Tuesday’s announcement that Moreno is in the process of selling the team to Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who owns several sports franchises.
“Absolutely,” said Gavin Sanders, 23, of Placentia who has been part of the “Tarps Off” movement from the start.
He was with a few of his “Tarps Off” friends, seated in the top row of the lower view section in the right field corner for Tuesday night’s game against the New York Yankees. At the conclusion of the sixth inning, the stadium lets the group congregate in the upper view. Ushers are planted there, with a couple of Anaheim officers, ready for the gathering.
Sanders is certain that “Tarps Off” influenced the pending sale that even some of the team’s broadcast crew privately say they did not see coming.
“I want to put myself in the shoes of Arte Moreno. I imagine turning on the TV … and every night hearing your own fans chanting ‘sell the team’ and other things with some expletives in there,” Sanders said. “You don’t want to hear that.”
Craig Cross, 75, of Long Beach has owned Angels season tickets since 1978. He wondered if the chants had some effect on Moreno’s decision.
“I’d like to say ‘no’ to that,” Cross said. “But even when you’re not here and watching the game on TV you can hear it. If Arte’s watching from Arizona and he can hear it, that’s got to grind on him.”
Cynthia Johnson is “Angels Grandma” on social media and on the shirts she wears to Angels games which she has been attending regularly since 1983.
Christmas came on the first day of September for her this year.
“I have never smiled so much,” Johnson said Tuesday, sitting in her seasons seat on the field level above the Angels’ dugout. “I jumped up in the air with such joy that, finally, Arte Moreno sold the team. I told my friends, ‘It’s about time!’”
Not everyone at the game was pumped up about the news.
Ontario resident John Schmoldt, 65, who has had season tickets on the view level for what he estimated to be 25 to 27 years, was stoic about the coming ownership change.
“It’s mixed feelings,” Schmoldt said. “Not upset, not ecstatic. I think Arte tried and got a bum rap. There were bad contracts he couldn’t foresee.”
And, Schmoldt noted, Moreno was not the only owner to fail in that category.
“He tried to do the same thing (original club owner) Gene Autry did,” he said. “Autry brought in all these high-priced free agents, like Reggie Jackson, and look how many World Series did we win?
(Answer: zero).
Some fans voiced concern about the future home of the team. Will the Angels remain at Angel Stadium, their home since 1966 when the venue was called Anaheim Stadium, or will Kroenke seek a move to somewhere else in Orange County? Or even outside of Orange County?
“I’m hoping that he know this knows this team has been here since 1966 and he wants to keep it here,” said John Steverding, 53, of Yorba Linda, who said he has been an Angels season-ticker holder since 1995.
“If it’s not going to be renovated, then build us a new one. It would be crushing if he decides to move the team.”