I can best be described as an Angels-adjacent fan. On the few occasions when the Dodgers haven’t been all that competitive and they were I moved closer to being a Halo Honk than usual. The first summer I set foot in Southern California coincided with their first-ever Western Division title. They were one strike away from their first-ever pennant in 1986 and what would have turned into an epic cross-country World Series with the Mets, but as any Red Sox fan and the survivors in Donnie Moore’s family will attest the baseball gods had other ideas. And when then finally did ascend to the mountaintop in 2002 I eagerly watched every inning of their epic intrastate showdown with Barry Bonds’ Giants while recovering from my first gastric bypass surgery unable to celebrate with anything more macho than beef bouillon.
But since then there’s been scant little to get excited about short of the fact that it’s substantially cheaper to take in a major league baseball game at Angel Stadium than it is at Chavez Ravine. Not that the Angels have done all that much to live up their end of the bargain. The litany of negatives that THE ATHLETIC’s Ken Rosenthan rattled off this morning is downright sobering:
- 11 straight losing seasons.
- Conceding Los Angeles to the Dodgers, transforming a club in one of the game’s largest markets into an industry punchline.
- Failing to win with Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, ultimately losing Ohtani in free agency and never even winning a postseason game with Trout.
Underscore that with the fact that the current season’s team is tied for dead last in the game with the likes of the Colorado Rockies and the West Sacramento Athletics and it’s no wonder that the news giddily reported yesterday by CBS SPORTS’ Dayn Perry was seen as, well, heaven-sent:
The Los Angeles Angels are being sold. Embattled and often maligned owner Arte Moreno, who presided over the franchise’s decade-plus doldrums, has agreed to sell the club to Stan Kroenke. Kroenke’s company, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, announced the sale on Tuesday.
The deal is worth an MLB record $4 billion, surpassing the $3.9 billion Padres sale, according to the Athletic. The sale is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2027. Kroenke, 79, also owns the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS, and Arsenal of the Premier League through his holding company.
When one scrutinizes the balance of the KSE portfolio one notes that with the exception of the Rapids he’s delivered a league championship in four of the last five years. And the Rams, who celebrated their first-ever season with fans at Kroenke’s crown construction jewel to date SoFi Stadium with a de facto home Super Bowl win in 2021-22, are odds-on favorites to do that again in 2026-27.
It’s the kind of Midas touch that a franchise as embattled as were the Angels under Moreno’s impulsive and sometimes inept whims needs literally like breath. Moreno inherited the team just after the Autry family got their coveted title, heralded as a conquering hero in the Mexican-American communities that now dominate the immediate areas adjacent to Anaheim. But as Rosenthal further elaborated, since then it’s been anything but a religious experience:
The Angels reached the postseason in five of his first six full seasons, but since 2010 have made only one playoff appearance – in Trout’s third year, 2014. (swept by the eventual league champion Kansas City Royals).
When Moreno spent big (Josh Hamilton, Anthony Rendon, Albert Pujols for the second half of his career), it often went badly. He ran through six heads of baseball operations, almost all of whom functioned largely at his whim. The team also is on its fifth manager since Mike Scioscia’s retirement after the 2018 season.
The Angels continually failed to face the reality of their place in the baseball universe under Moreno, both declining to rebuild and declining to take the necessary steps to win.
So at least Kroenke provides hope. The fact he won titles in the same city where the Rockies reside and have rivaled the Angels for outright futility is an encouraging blueprint. I’d like to offer a few suggestions of my own for next steps:
- A gauntlet thrown to the good people of Orange County to finally put up or shut up: Angel Stadium is technically four years younger than Dodger Stadium but the one refresh it has had under the Disney ownership was de facto lipstick on a pig–the “faux rock” formation that dominates the outfield that prior to the Rams’ corruption of the facility once overlooked the beauty of the 57-405 interchange is a grim reminder to the tastelessness and tone-deafness it resulted in. At bare minimum a retrofitting into a baseball-friendly venue and crowd size is a mandate–and sorry, taxpayers, we are sick of hearing your “concerns” about who gets to pay for it. You bite the bullet and you split the difference.
- Because if you don’t want it Kroenke knows a couple of other neighborhoods pretty well that will. What Kroenke has created in Inglewood with SoFi is nothing short of revolutionary, transforming the onetime Hollywood Park racetrack into a world-class venue that will indeed host its second Super Bowl on Valentine’s Day, hosted several World Cup matches this summer and will host a number of Olympic events the summer after next. It’s since been joined by the Clippers’ Intuit Dome, providing a state-of-the-art basketball venue that now makes the one that sits adjacent to it–the Kia Forum–outdated and unnecessary. There’s precedent for an outdoor stadium to take the place of a decrepit Arena–the DTLA soccer venue that houses LAFC and Angel City FC sits on the former site of the Lakers’ previous home before the Forum, the Los Angeles Sports Arena. A tidy little baseball venue could easily be shoehorned in its place.
- And if that turns out to be overly problematic, there’s a Plan B.
There’s even more available real estate adjacent to the Woodland Hills venue that Kroenke is in the early stages of developing into what will eventually become Rams Village. The temporary training facility that now houses the football team is already an impressive improvement over the Topanga Canyon Mall. The balance of that footprint is planned to be dedicated to the kind of mixed-use development that is already in vogue at Atlanta’s suburban Truist Park, which has become the Holy Grail for pretty much all other MLB owners. There is certainly more than enough room for a baseball stadium to join the mix and make it all an even more viable year-round and daily destination. Have you seen the surrounding area north of Oxnard and just east of Owensmouth lately? I have. It could use all the help it can get. 
Now that we’ve settled the venue issue, how about giving them someone to watch? Getting players is one thing; the Angels do need to find permanent solutions to that–though interim GM John Mozeliak is off to an encouraging start. Job one is to find a more qualified and inspiring manager than one-time back-up catcher and on the cheap hire Kurt Suzuki. Here’s a thought that would immediately address of of the more unproductive and free agent singnings of the Moreno era who has suddenly become one of the sexier names out there thanks to his winter league and WBC showings: Albert Pujols. He was supposedly a candidate for the Mets’ vacancy before Steve Cohen got cold feet about making an immediate move in the manner that the Red Sox did with Chad Tracy and the Phillies did with Don Mattingly. Both are currently in wild card positions for the playoffs. The Mets will be on vacation before Cohen celebrates the end of Sukkot.- Then keep an eye on what’s going on to the east and north. Sure, it’s currently a Dodgers town. More than ever, in fact. For now. But we all know how things have unraveled quickly for Mark Walter with the Lakers. He can deny all he wants but there’s mounting evidence that his financial and legal woes are anything but over. And it just so happens that Ohtani–who decided to stay in Southern California because he truly loves the area–has a keyman clause and a lot of deferred pay that should anything significant happen to Walter and his ability to actually make good longterm he can conceivably take his talents elsewhere. If the Angels can provide stable leadership and a de facto Los Angeles address it is more than conceivable he could finagle his way back to the team that rescued him from Japan. And probably attract an outsized number of his countrymen in the process in the same manner that the likes of Yamamato and Sasaki have.
I realize these may all seem like wishes rather than immediately actionable goals. Today. But things do have a way of changing quickly in MLB. Less than two years ago the second banana team in Chicago was on its way to losing the most games in any one modern major league season. This morning they are a month away from winning the American League Central. All it takes is some savvy management, wise spending and a little faith. Angels do have a head start on that.
Courage…