Can Angels Name Spat Have a Winner?

A courtroom is a good place to develop dark, foreboding thoughts. You realize that by trial’s end, someone is going to take a big fall for something that should never have happened in the first place. Sometimes, even the winners are left beaten up and with wounded psyches.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, that’s how things looked to me by the time attorneys for Anaheim and the Angels wrapped up their opening statements Friday in the city’s $100-million lawsuit against the team. A dispute that a year or so ago seemed goofy -- Arte Moreno’s decision to rename his baseball team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim -- has lost its humor content.

It’s now drama, fueled by pride and ego on both sides.

If Anaheim persuades the jury that Moreno violated his team’s lease with the city, it will have alienated an owner who in only three seasons already looks to be one of baseball’s best. If Moreno wins -- and I sense he’s the only one who really cares if he does -- we’re left with a team name that still clangs and provokes jokes.

The two attorneys, Andy Guilford and Todd Theodora for the city and team, respectively, previewed their cases in ways that showed why some legal experts thought this should have been settled without a trial. That is, both were convincing enough that neither side can feel confident of winning.

Theodora made the highly plausible argument that because the lease language required only that “Anaheim” be included in the team name, Moreno had wiggle room. If the city wanted “Anaheim Angels” without exception, Theodora argued, it should have held out for it in 1996 when it negotiated the 80-page lease with the Disney Co., then the team’s owner.

But it’s just as easy to see the Orange County jury deciding that, even with imprecise language, no one then or now would have imagined juggling a set of words and ever having them come out, “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.”

Evidence matters, but this case isn’t exactly like cracking the Da Vinci code. It’ll be decided on how literal the jury turns out to be.

What a ridiculous way to settle a dispute between a city that desperately wants a baseball team and a team owner who desperately wants to succeed.

I raised the question 14 months ago of whether it would be worth it to Anaheim to win the case and lose Moreno as an owner or have him move the team. I answered my own question: No.

It sounded wholly theoretical then, but much less so after watching the parties in court sniping at each other. Friday, Moreno repeated what he’d told The Times earlier: that he doesn’t want to leave Orange County but that he’d have to keep his options open if he lost. The team’s lease runs through 2016, but that doesn’t mean he can’t bolt sooner.

He obviously doesn’t want to, but he strikes me as a guy who doesn’t like being pushed around.

I take him at his word that he thinks he’s abiding by the lease. What continues to baffle me, however, is why he thinks adding “Los Angeles” takes the team to a better place. The team is doing great on and off the field (much to Anaheim’s benefit, by the way), but Moreno concedes he doesn’t know how much of that to attribute to the name change.

He cites a potential Angels fan from L.A. County who may not want to buy or wear a T shirt saying, “Anaheim.” Understood, but with his self-described three-pronged marketing strategy geared to the “Angels” name, its logo and the color red, what’s Los Angeles got to do with it?

Is there a baseball fan or advertiser out there who, as a marketing consideration, holds “Anaheim” against the team? Perhaps more on point, what proof is there that adding “Los Angeles” will do anything for Moreno? I don’t think even he knows that, so in going round and round in circles, I ask the same thing of Moreno that I do of Anaheim:

Is this really worth a bad outcome?

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Dana Parsons’ column

appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at [email protected]. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.