If you were missing Gustavo Arellano’s unique style, making some people uncomfortable with references to our diversity, he is back. He recently wrote about the Dodgers becoming a club that in its core now represents Latinos (see here) .
“I’m sure the folks watching across the country—especially those who don’t speak Spanish—must be wondering why Dodgers fans can’t spell. That’s not the case; “Los Doyers” is a play on how “Dodgers” is pronounced in Spanish, a language that doesn’t have a “j” sound. In other words, it’s how our parents and uncles and aunts and immigrant cousins and even ourselves call the Los Angeles franchise—nothing but #respect, you know?
But “Los Doyers” also represents two of the greatest reappropriation stories in American sports: how Latinos learned to love a team that literally built their foundation on the bulldozed homes and dreams of Mexican-American families, and took a term originally used to deride Latinos and made it their own.”
While Gustavo describes the evolution of this baseball team, another journalist writes about the economics at play with baseball , and sports in general. He writes on the success of the team that beat the Dodgers (see here):
“They endured being the worst team in baseball so that they could collect high draft picks. They then selected well in those drafts, choosing the nucleus of a club that came to dominate the American League this past season. It’s a formula loosely used by last season’s World Champions the Chicago Cubs and 2015’s winners the Kansas City Royals. Even the team that nearly won this year’s World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers – who have baseball’s highest payroll – constructed a winner on homegrown players and bargain acquisitions they turned into stars.
A few years ago this was not the case. A few years ago the thinking in baseball was you had to load your team with the best players you could find, regardless of cost: spend big to win big. But the Astros have proven you can create a winner on your own. The old New York Yankees’ model of rounding up the best free agents and rolling them out for a trophy chase is over. Grabbing everyone else’s superstars might still work in European football (although Real Madrid aren’t having it all their own way) but it doesn’t anymore in baseball.”
That is one aspect of the business of sports. A fairly recent local experience of baseball and politics involved the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. You may remember that team owner Arte Moreno wanted to lease the stadium parking lots for $1 a year for 66 years. His lobbyists would then have the land developed under the pretext of helping pay for the stadium renovation.
One of the promoters of this sweet deal was a so-called baseball expert, who is the current county’s communications chair of a political party. As there seems to be new rules of discussion here, I won’t mention the person’s name; besides I don’t want to be called names again by this fellow. So I will be a good sport, and I won’t call it quits or take my pitcher gloves off. There is a lot of ins to be played.
Go Doyers…and Angelitos!
*Hey Gustavo, what about Chavez Ravine? Remember that one? Buzzy Bavasi? Jerry Doggett? Al Campanis? Hmmm. Arte is just slightly milking the cow……those Walter O’Malley boyz…..butchered that cow!
“a so-called baseball expert”
Correction: a self-styled expert who believes real estate expertise comes with watching a mediocre team play baseball a few times a year and paying too much for crappy stadium food; and who believes sportswriters are qualified financial reporters.
Will never live down his comment on what it costs to build a new stadium.
Ridiculous and precious at the same time!
Welcome to Organized Sports Entertainment! That’s how they pay the players the “Big Money”!
Notice that since the 2013 MOU more than four years have elapsed, including half of the FREE three-year extension Charles Black negotiated for the Angels, er, um, I mean negotiated for the City, is now gone. And the Angels remain right where they were and will be until 2027, at least. Meaning that all the PringleCorp® running dogs were all incompetent, ignorant, or just plain lying.
Yup.
And the worst part? After all that moaning and groaning about how unfair life is for the Angels, they STILL have the best lease in Major League Baseball and they STILL aren’t doing anything to solve the $150,000,000 worth of deferred maintenance that they’re responsible for paying.
*We have only one complaint about the Angels: We hate that rock garden in center field – ridiculous!. It should be a huge TARGET LOGO and when a ball hits the center – it sets off fireworks.
Gustavo was a first rate provocateur trapped in a second rate political consciousness. This is a recipe for irrelevance. His great hero, writing instructor and first editor of the OC Weekly, Wilhelm Schwaim, became a rich right wing shill living high in the hills of Turtle Rock. I hear Gus is the charming ethnic caterer at der Schwaims’ parties.
Political consciousness is in “eyes of the beholder”. What is disappointing for me is the inability or unwillingness of people like Gustavo to build alternatives. The article by Gabriel below, on Disney and the LA Times, nitpicking and downplaying the relevance and impact of the LAT article, is another example of being ineffectually “subversive”.
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/la-times-versus-disneyland-8562959