Orange County Register Angels Blogster Todd Harmonson wonders why no one outside Angel Stadium seems to notice that our Halos have the best record in baseball. He even has a poll asking which front-burner sports stories–including Brett Favre's on-again, off-again retirement, the yet-to-begin Olympics and “anything about the Lakers“–should be pushed aside in favor of Los Angeles of Anaheim coverage.
But another poll may answer why the Angels can't bust into national sports consciousness. Richard Nickerson at the Big A Baseball Blog reports today on the Harris Poll concluding Your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are the least-favorite baseball team in America. The survey of 2,454 people nationwide finds the only team less popular than the Halos are the Toronto Blue Jays. “Of course it was an unfair poll for the Jays whose bulk of supporters reside north of the border where exactly no one was polled,” notes Nickerson. “So you could make the argument that the Angels are likely the least popular MLB team in North America.”
The poll identified some Blue Crew Mutants up the freeway as the most popular dirt-baggers in the West, while Pinstriped Big Apple Adulterers are at the Tops of the Pops nationally.
Nickerson theorizes that Angels owner Arte Moreno adding “Los Angeles” to the front of the team name and the Halos perfecting small ball have turned off Americans. “The Angels are the Patton Oswalt of the baseball world, a likable bunch but essentially boring when compared to Brad Pitt,” Nickerson writes. “… Chicks dig the long-ball, not the 'first-to-third-runner-advancement-followed-by-a-sacrifice-fly' style of the Halos.”
It's now up to this year's Angels squad to not only win the world championship, but piss off the rest of the country. I can't think of a better reason to fight on.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.