Sportfolio Journalism

On Sat, May 23, there was a boycott protest held in Anaheim, Calif outside of a street entrance to Angel Stadium, the home ballpark of the Los Angeles Angels MLB franchise. Plenty of fans showed up around two hours before the first pitch of a game between the Angels and Texas Rangers to voice their frustrations towards the management of the team under current owner Arte Moreno, who made some comments in February about the fans of his team caring more about “affordability” and “safety” rather than a winning ballclub.  

The ringleader of this energetic Angels Boycott movement is Jonny Gonzalez, a 27-year old resident of Anaheim and a lifelong fan of the Angels. Gonzalez created an Instagram account called @angelsboycott as a reactionary response to Moreno’s comments and the Angels being mired in a playoff drought that has lasted over a decade.  

Gonzalez says that the last-place Angels have had a “lack of commitment of working towards competitive baseball” and that priority doesn’t seem to be at the top of the list for Moreno, who has owned the team since 2003 and will turn 80 years old later this year.  

“I would definitely say that his negligence on trying to get this team to win is just horrible”, Gonzalez said.  

Gonzalez added that this current situation “reached a boiling point” due to the Angels’ last-place position in the AL West and where this team has been for the past 12 years. He also said that the Angels fans in Anaheim and throughout Orange County “got hyped up” by the Anaheim Ducks NHL team making the playoffs this season and due to the hype that the Ducks created, the fans want to see improvement from their local baseball team.  

“I just feel like there’s not a good enough reason why they can’t be that great of a team. It’s pure negligence and the fans deserve more”, Gonzalez said.  

Another frustrated fan who took place in the protest was Tony Page, an older generation fan who started following Gonzalez’s @angelsboycott Instagram account earlier this year. Page says that the Angels have “done nothing from the farm system to the big league manager to Perry the puppet to trying to win other than Arte Moreno worrying about his checkbook”.  

The reference to current general manager Perry Minasian as a “puppet” for Moreno is telling, since the Angels have not done well in acquiring top-tier free agents in recent years and the managers who have gone through Anaheim during Minasian’s time have taken the brunt of the burden by being fired within two years or less of their tenure.  

Page also thinks that the Angels should drop their Los Angeles moniker and bring back the moniker of Anaheim, which they had in their name in some form for almost two decades before dropping it prior to the 2016 MLB season.  

There is a bill that is up for a vote in the California state legislature that would force the Angels franchise to re-adopt the Anaheim moniker into their name and Assemblyman Avelino Valencia, who served as a member on the Anaheim City Council before being elected to his current position, has authored the public services bill called “Home Run for Anaheim”.  

Page agrees about the state legislature potentially passing AB 2512 and that the government officials “need to put their foot down and make it happen now.”  

As for the future of the Angels Boycott movement, Gonzalez says that the intent of his protest movement is to try and “get some change happening, whether the fans are going to be more vocal or until ownership or the front office starts taking notice of what we’re doing and start working towards competitive baseball at the end of the day”.  

The Angels currently have the worst record in MLB this season at 19-34 entering Sun, May 24 and even though they defeated the Rangers 5-2 to clinch a series win at home, the Angels Boycott movement isn’t going away anytime soon. With cohorts of fans chanting “Sell the Team!”, “Arte Sucks!” and “Winning Matters” inside and outside Angel Stadium, this phenomenon is very likely to continue until actual progress is made by the team in being able to compete for the playoffs in the near future.