Arte Moreno's #Angels Have Become the Object of National Ridicule

A brutal commentary, form Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times, "Angels' Arte Moreno took Mike Scioscia's side, let Jerry Dipoto walk":

Call it the most expensive beer discount in baseball history.

On that fateful May afternoon in 2003 when Arte Moreno was introduced as the third owner in Angels history, he immediately won friends by reducing the price of his stadium's $8.50 bleacher beer.

"I can do that, can't I?" he charmingly asked at the time.

He can, and he did, and everyone loved him for it. Yet in the dozen years since then, Angels fans have paid a steep price for embracing the man whose tenure has been marked not by cheaper booze, but by chaos and dysfunction.

Moreno bought a team that had just won a World Series, yet he has not been to a World Series since, and has mostly made his mark with misguided decisions often based on impulsive emotions marked by anger.

Moreno enraged the Anaheim faithful by adding the name "Los Angeles" to the team name, even though Los Angeles still barely pays attention. He has attempted to bully the city of Anaheim into a better stadium deal at taxpayer expense. He signed Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $240-million contract that prevented the improvement of his roster in other areas and, even with Pujols' big numbers this year, will never be worth the money. He threw away $60 million to angrily dump Josh Hamilton, an admitted alcohol and drug addict, for briefly succumbing to his illness.

And now, in a move Wednesday that was stunning even for what has become The Not-so-Happiest Place on Earth, Moreno allowed a cultural rift between tradition-bound Manager Mike Scioscia and analytics-minded General Manager Jerry Dipoto to escalate into Dipoto's departure in the middle of a potential playoff season.

That's right, the baseball boss of a team that last season finished with the best record in baseball, and this season was 41-37 and only four games out of first place in the American League West, just packed up and bolted this week with three months left on the schedule and one month until the trading deadline.

And Moreno, who has long supported Scioscia, did nothing substantial to stop him.

Seriously? When is the last time this has happened in baseball? In a sport of old-school values and rituals in which warring front-office factions often hunker down for the good of the team, Dipoto's departure was stunning. But then again, this is how it happens with Moreno's Angels, an organization he runs with such impetuousness it has become the object of national ridicule...

Angels baseball is my main break from the national cultural insanity. It's a bummer that Arte Moreno has to constantly remind people that he's kinda insane himself.

I just want these guys to win. They've got so much talent and promise. They probably would've swept the Yankees had it not been for the controversy yesterday, which needless to say was a major distraction.

Continue reading, in any case.