Miffed Angel Fans Find Visible Way to Scorn Team's Two-City Moniker

By Dave McKibben

April 13, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

There’s a lot of red at Angel Stadium these days, and it isn’t worn just by the players taking pregame batting practice. A small but growing number of fans are wearing bright red T-shirts emblazoned with a message for Angel owner Arte Moreno, who renamed the team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The shirts proclaim: “We Are Not L.A.”

The in-your-face apparel rebellion is the latest salvo by Anaheim fans to protest the January name change. The T-shirts’ creator hopes the campaign will strike a chord because stands peppered with them are harder to ignore than letters to the editor, e-mails or messages on the team’s website.

Moreno has noticed the shirts, which show an “L” hooking the team’s trademark halo around a broken “A.” Before a game last week, Moreno unwittingly approached the man who created and promotes the shirts, longtime Angel fan David Skonezny of Santa Ana.

“When I asked him what he thought of the shirts, he said, ‘Oh, they’re nice,’ ” Skonezny said. “And then he told me and my wife, ‘I’m just glad you’re here at the stadium, going to the games.’ ”

Skonezny said he wasn’t about to stop attending Angel games; he loves the team too much. But as a 20-year marketing industry veteran who started his own company in Tustin two months ago, Skonezny questions Moreno’s marketing strategies -- even though the team owner amassed nearly $1 billion by buying and selling an outdoor advertising empire in Arizona.

“The name change is a misguided, misdirected marketing effort,” said Skonezny, whose background is in product positioning and branding. “Arte could have accomplished his goal through an integrated marketing effort, absent of changing the name. He’s from Arizona, and the last thing you want to do is go into a new market and rebrand your product, especially when it’s a known commodity and it has a tradition and a history, like the Anaheim Angels.”

In six weeks, Skonezny has hawked about 2,000 T-shirts, at about $15 a pop, and 1,800 stickers with the same message for $2 each at a swap meet and on his website, DropLa.com. The other day he added hats to his portfolio. The sales numbers aren’t stunning, but Skonezny believes his approach is worth trying.

“We’re hoping to reach Arte Moreno in a way that petitions and e-mails don’t,” he said. “We’re hoping the backlash by the public is great enough that he’ll reconsider his decision.”

With two initial court victories allowing the name change and a franchise record 27,000 season tickets sold, Moreno doesn’t appear under any pressure to reconsider anything.

Angel officials said they noticed the T-shirts at the team’s spring training venue in Tempe, Ariz., and at the Anaheim stadium.

“We respect everyone’s right to their opinion,” said team spokesman Tim Mead. “In the end, they’re all baseball fans.”

Skonezny, whose brother Paul funded the barely-break-even T-shirt venture, said the campaign would continue as long as the public bought into it.

On Sunday, the public was buying. Hats and T-shirts flew off the tables at the “Drop L.A.” booth near the entrance to the Orange County Fairgrounds’ swap meet in Costa Mesa. By midday, the booth took on the look of a small demonstration as people gathered to rant about the name change.

“Ridiculous,” “pathetic” and “offensive” were some of the more polite expressions. Passersby called out, “Good work!” with thumbs-up and a grin.

“It’s like a kick in the stomach to do it after we win the World Series,” said Barbara Trnka, 43, a FedEx driver who lives in Tustin. “I don’t know why there’s a stigma attached to Anaheim.”

As Trnka walked away with a sloganized baseball cap, Sue Griffith of Laguna Hills, wearing a “We Are Not L.A.” T-shirt, delivered her daughter and two sisters to buy more.

An Angel fan since she moved to Orange County at 16, Griffith said the new name just didn’t make sense. “I’ve been against this name change from the beginning,” she said.

Kelsey Kraft, a seventh-grader whose aunt picked up shirts for the family, agreed.

“It’s dumb,” she said. “It’s either Anaheim or Los Angeles. It can’t be both.”

Times staff writer Claire Luna contributed to this report.