A Season in Homer Heaven: The Birth of the Los Angeles Angels

“I don’t give a damn about O’Malley.”

Hank Greenberg was furious. The 6-foot-4 Hall of Famer towered over Commissioner Ford Frick, who had just told him what he did not want to hear: Before Greenberg could put an American League expansion team in Los Angeles, he would have to pay tribute to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley. Tribute in the form of cash.

“I don’t give a damn about O’Malley,” Greenberg roared.

“I don’t give a damn about O’Malley, either,” the commissioner replied. “And I don’t give a damn about Hank Greenberg or anybody else. But I do give a damn about what is proper. This thing that you propose to do is not fair, not right, not decent!”1

Greenberg had won the American League owners’ private blessing to acquire the Los Angeles franchise as part of an expansion plan that would send the Washington Senators to Minnesota and create a replacement team in the nation’s capital in 1961. The former slugger, who had been a part-owner of the Indians and White Sox, had lined up investors and traveled to California to negotiate a stadium lease and radio-TV contracts.

Frick had previously declared Los Angeles and New York “open territory.” This gave expansion teams a green light to move into those cities without interference from the Dodgers or Yankees.2 But after O’Malley threw his considerable weight around, Frick was persuaded to see the error of his ways. Now the commissioner said O’Malley deserved compensation for the expenses he had incurred to bring the first major-league club to Los Angeles.

“This was a complete about-face,” Greenberg said.3 He wouldn’t stand for it. He walked away, leaving the AL’s expansion plan in “frightful chaos,” as one writer put it.4 The league had already awarded a franchise to Washington. It needed a 10th team to balance the schedule. The National League rejected interleague play with nine-team circuits.

With Opening Day only four months away, AL owners were facing ridicule over their bungled expansion when they met in St. Louis on December 5. Just as in the movies, the hero in the white hat came riding to the rescue. Gene Autry, the Hollywood singing cowboy who had built a fortune through investments in oil wells, real estate, and radio stations, put in a bid for the Los Angeles franchise. The league welcomed a famous, popular – and rich – man who wanted to own a ballclub.

The oft-told story is that Autry went to the AL meeting hoping to secure radio rights for the new franchise, and instead came away owning it. In fact, published reports identified him as a bidder for the team before the meeting, and he said he decided to pursue it as soon as Greenberg dropped out: “I thought it was all Greenberg. When it appeared it wasn’t, the thought occurred to me that I’d like that franchise.”5 Autry had already chosen his general manager, who was at his side at the meetings in St. Louis: Fred Haney, a Los Angeles resident who had managed the Milwaukee Braves to NL pennants in 1957 and 1958. The cowboy and his partner in the radio business, former Stanford football All-American Bob Reynolds, were majority owners of the new team.6

But O’Malley would not accept competition in the market unless it was on his terms. At the least, he wanted another year of exclusivity in Los Angeles. Then he would move into his new ballpark at Chavez Ravine and the AL expansion team could be his rent-paying tenant. O’Malley also wanted an effective veto over the American League owners. One of Greenberg’s partners was C. Arnholt Smith, who with his brother John owned the San Diego club in the Pacific Coast League and had bankrolled the opposition to the Dodgers’ ballpark plans. Another prospective bidder was Kenyon Brown, whose Los Angeles television station had editorialized against the Dodgers’ deal to acquire land from the city.

 

 

At a meeting that lasted until 3:00 AM on December 7, O’Malley exacted a stiff price to allow the American League club to begin play in 1961. Autry had to pay the Dodgers $350,000 for a ticket of admission to enter Los Angeles, partial reimbursement for O’Malley’s payment to the Pacific Coast League for invading its territory. Instead of sharing the 90,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with the Dodgers, the AL team would play its first season at Wrigley Field, the city’s minor-league ballpark, with a capacity of about 23,000, counting standing room, and few parking spaces. Beginning in 1962, the upstart franchise would move into the new Dodger Stadium, paying a minimum $200,000 in rent, or 7.5 percent of gate receipts. O’Malley would keep all parking revenue and some of the take from concessions.7

The deal was worth around $750,000 a year to the Dodgers, but that didn’t faze Autry. “For me, it’s the realization of a lifetime dream,” he said.8 He had played semipro ball in his youth and claimed to have been invited to a Cardinals tryout camp. While filming his movies, he had organized pickup games during breaks, and had once owned a share of the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars.

Los Angeles’s new team adopted an old name, the Angels, after the Coast League club. When the franchise was awarded on Tuesday, December 6, Haney had only six days to prepare for the player draft that would stock the roster.

It was a frantic week. Back in Los Angeles on Thursday, Haney was introduced to the media as general manager. The first question from reporters: Would the Angels hire Casey Stengel, recently fired by the Yankees? Autry acknowledged that the 70-year-old Stengel was his first choice as manager.9 But on Monday, the club named Bill Rigney, who had managed the Giants for 4½ years. Autry said Stengel had turned down the job because he had sold his life story to a magazine on the condition that he would not manage in 1961.

Instead, Stengel served as the Angels’ first scout. Haney had been managing in the National League, so Stengel spent hours giving a rundown on the players who were available in the draft. The Dodgers and Giants also shared their scouting reports.

AL President Joe Cronin hosted the draft at his office in Boston on Wednesday, December 14, after a snowstorm forced a delay. That didn’t make the eligible players look any better. Each of the existing teams made available seven players from its 25-man roster and eight minor leaguers from the 40-man. They were derided as castoffs, rejects, and retreads, but they would cost the expansion clubs $75,000 apiece.

The Angels and the new Washington Senators picked players by position: pitchers, then catchers, infielders, and outfielders. Haney won the first coin toss and tapped Eli Grba, a right-hander who had achieved little success with the Yankees but was recommended by Stengel. Leaving the mighty Yankees for a certain loser, Grba remembered, “I was kind of disappointed and pissed. But then you get calls from writers and congratulations from people. … [Y]ou felt that you were really wanted.”10

The Angels chose several former All-Stars: pitcher Ned Garver; the “Walking Man,” Eddie Yost; and sluggers Ted Kluszewski and Bob Cerv – all past their 34th birthdays. The well-known names gave a sheen of respectability to the roster. “We felt we needed names to combat the Dodgers,” Autry said.11 He tried to sign Gil McDougald, the Yankees’ sterling jack of all infield trades, but not even a $50,000 contract offer, plus a free home in Los Angeles, could shake McDougald’s decision to retire.12

A pair of teenage unknowns proved to be the Angels’ prizes. Jim Fregosi, an 18-year-old shortstop in the Red Sox farm system, had played only one season in Class D. Rigney had spotted him in winter ball in the San Francisco area. Fregosi developed into a six-time All-Star, but is best known as the man who was traded for Nolan Ryan.

Because of a mixup in the draft, Cronin ordered the two teams to swap several players.13 That’s how the Angels got 19-year-old right-hander Dean Chance, who was originally chosen by Washington out of the Orioles organization. Chance won the Cy Young Award in 1964.

 

 

In the minor-league portion of the draft, Haney picked up Albie Pearson, the 1958 AL Rookie of the Year, who had been demoted, and first baseman Steve Bilko. They were quite the odd couple: Pearson, 5-feet-5 and 140 pounds, and Bilko, who squashed the scales at more than 250.

Bilko was a local favorite, one of the most popular players in the history of the Pacific Coast League Angels. He had won three consecutive Most Valuable Player Awards from 1955 through 1957 while twice hitting more than 50 homers, but his strikeouts kept him from holding a major-league job. “This could be my last chance,” Bilko wrote to Haney when he sent in his signed contract. “I couldn’t think of a better place to make a last stand than Wrigley Field.”14

Haney knew the exquisite little ballpark well – he had played there decades earlier – and he shaped his roster for its contours by acquiring big boppers Bilko, Kluszewski, and Cerv. Most recently the site of the television show Home Run Derby, Wrigley was homer heaven with power alleys in right- and left-center just 345 feet from the plate. A two-story house across 41st Street beyond the left-field wall was peppered with so many flying baseballs that Los Angeles Times columnist Ned Cronin wrote, “No one would think of sitting down to dinner without wearing a fielder’s glove.”15

The Angels and Senators each paid $2.1 million for 28 players, and the Angels laid out another $100,000 for Bilko and Pearson. Rigney said, “I think the players we picked will give us the nucleus of a decent ball club.”16 Optimism was part of his job description as he tried to stoke fan interest.

But the pitching staff shaped up as a potential disaster area. Grba’s six victories for the Yankees in 1960, primarily in relief, were the most by any of the new Angels. None of the pitchers had been a regular starter. Their combined record was 26-41.

As Haney scrambled to create an organization, everything was makeshift. The team’s first office was upstairs over a bar. Farm and scouting director Roland Hemond, whom Haney had recruited from the Milwaukee Braves, recalled an electric massage chair downstairs that shook the floor, and cowboy pickers and singers rehearsing next door. Haney used his California contacts to hire some experienced scouts, and Hemond brought in several he had known with the Braves. Hemond began scrounging for unaffiliated minor-league teams to patch together a farm system.17

The Angels established their spring-training headquarters at Autry’s Melody Ranch Hotel in Palm Springs, California, and the owner saddled up on a bicycle to lead a parade of players to the ballpark. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the first intrasquad game. Stengel later visited from his home in Glendale, California, to look the team over.

Most prognosticators thought the expansion clubs would struggle to win 50 games. One prominent writer, Dick Young, said 40 was more realistic.18 Sports Illustrated predicted that the Angels would show some power in their miniature ballpark, but “almost everything else looks weak.”19

The history of the Los Angeles Angels began in Baltimore on April 11 with a bang. Two bangs, actually. Kluszewski and Cerv hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning. Grba limited the Orioles to six hits as the Angels won, 7-2. “I’ve seen a lot of things to remember in my day,” Autry said, “but I’ll never forget that afternoon as long as I live.”20 The castoffs, rejects, and retreads were undefeated with 161 games to go.

They lost their next eight. The schedule makers had done the Angels no favors. They were set to open with 13 road games, but eight of them were rained out. The season was more than two weeks old on April 27 when the club finally came home to Wrigley Field for the first time.

Ticket holders walked a red carpet into the park, but only 11,931 turned out on a Thursday afternoon. “This is the life,” one fan exulted. “A beer in my hand, a roof over my head and a seat near the diamond.” Dodgers games at the Coliseum offered none of those amenities.21 Rigney put both of his mammoths in the lineup, Kluszewski at first base and Bilko making the first appearance of his life in right field. Bilko delivered a fine lumbering catch, but neither managed an extra-base hit. The Angels dropped their eighth straight, losing to Minnesota, 4-2.

Oh, it was bad. The club sank to last place and stayed there for most of the first half. Haney turned over every rock in search of players; 46 men wore the cap with the halo on top in 1961.

Two early trades added power. On April 13, Haney acquired Leon Wagner, one of the Giants’ surplus outfielders, who had slipped down to the minors. Getting his first opportunity to play regularly, Wagner led the Angels with 28 homers. On May 8, Bob Cerv was swapped back to the Yankees with pitcher Tex Clevenger for pitchers Ryne Duren and Johnny James and rookie outfielder Lee Thomas. Thomas shuttled between first base and right field, hitting 24 homers with an .844 OPS.

In Duren and Art Fowler, the Angels had a pair of hard-drinking veteran right-handers, so Rigney made them roommates. “We got along fine,” Duren said later, “except the night he got drunk and was going to stick me with a knife over some gal or something.” Fowler filed for divorce: “I went to Rigney and told him Duren was too much. He didn’t drink too much, but it took only three drinks and he was drunk.”22

Haney’s deals turned the club around in the second half. From June 27 until the end of the season, the Angels played one game over .500. The strategy of building the lineup for Wrigley Field worked; the club went 46-36 at home. But Wrigley punished pitchers. The home team and its visitors combined for a major-league record 248 home runs in the fiendish confines.

The Angels were good at hitting homers, but not much else. Only two teams allowed more runs and none made more errors. The infield was a revolving door. And the club could not win on the road, losing 55 of 79 decisions.

They lost their final game to finish eighth with a 70-91 record, ahead of the Senators and Kansas City Athletics. No first-year team has ever done better. Steve Bilko gave Wrigley a fitting farewell. With two out in the ninth, he pinch-hit and hammered a 400-foot home run over the left-field wall. Bilko’s .940 OPS in part-time play led the team.

A winning home record didn’t fill the seats. Even the Yankees’ first visit failed to draw as many as 20,000 for any of the three games. The season attendance, 603,510, was ninth in the league, better than only the expansion Senators.

No fan enjoyed it more than Gene Autry. With his movie and television career behind him, he seized on the ballclub as his new passion. After nearly every road game, he called the clubhouse to congratulate the winning pitcher or commiserate with Rigney when the Angels lost. “[H]e rarely missed a game,” Rigney said. “I’ve been in baseball almost 25 years and I can’t remember any other owner who showed such interest in his players.”23

Rigney acknowledged the club’s poor pitching and leaky defense, but he was encouraged by the late-season performances of rookie shortstop Jim Fregosi, switch-hitting catcher Bob “Buck” Rodgers, and third baseman Tom Satriano, a bonus baby who came straight from the University of Southern California’s NCAA champions.

With high hopes for the youngsters and confidence in the players he had already acquired, Haney made few significant moves in the offseason. The Opening Day roster in 1962 included only eight holdovers from the team that had begun the previous season. Rodgers took over as the regular catcher and finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting. Dean Chance was right behind him in the balloting and became the club’s ace pitcher. By August Fregosi had claimed the shortstop job. A Rule 5 draft pickup, Bo Belinsky, spun a no-hitter on May 5 while exasperating Rigney with his after-hours pursuit of Hollywood starlets. And the mix-and-match roster climbed into the pennant race.

On July 4 the Angels took over sole possession of first place. That lasted only one day, but they hung in close behind the Yankees until the final two weeks of the season. An 86-76 record was good for third place. The Sporting News named Haney the Major League Executive of the Year and Rigney Manager of the Year.

Although attendance nearly doubled in the Angels’ first year in Dodger Stadium, Autry was never happy as O’Malley’s tenant. He said the Dodgers owner was “a difficult landlord” who treated the Angels like a stepchild.24 In 1966 the renamed California Angels moved into their own home, a gift from the city of Anaheim, but their attendance still lagged far behind the Dodgers’.

The early success on the field didn’t last. The club fell back to the bottom half of the standings for most of the 1960s and 1970s. The Angels didn’t reach postseason play until 1979, after free agency arrived and Autry became one of the biggest spenders.

WARREN CORBETT, a winner of the 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award, is the author of The Wizard of Waxahachie and a contributor to SABR’s BioProject.

 

Additional Sources

Parts of this story are adapted from the author’s SABR BioProject biography of Gene Autry.

 

Notes

1 Dick Young, “Frick Threatens to Veto A.L. Move Here,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1960: IV-1. This is Frick’s account of the meeting in his office on November 9.

2 Associated Press, “Ford Frick Believes L.A. Should Be Open Territory,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1960: IV-3.

3 United Press International, “New L.A. Club ‘Impossible,’” Pasadena (California) Independent, December 2, 1960: 22.

4 Frank Finch, “Rumors Have AL Expanding,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1960: H5.

5 Jeanne Hoffman, “Autry Set to Build Angels in 120 Days,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1960: IV-5.

6 Minority owners of the Golden West Baseball Club were Kenyon Brown, former owner of Los Angeles TV station KCOP; Paul O’Bryan, a Washington, DC, lawyer; and Joseph A. Thomas, a banker in New York and Florida. All three had previously owned shares of the Detroit Tigers. Brown soon dropped out, possibly because of O’Malley’s antipathy, and was replaced on the board of directors by Leonard Firestone of the tire family.

7 Finch, “It’s Official! Angels to Play in 1961,” Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1960: IV-1; Andy McCue, Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, & Baseball’s Westward Expansion (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 292-293.

8 Hoffman, “Autry Set to Build.”

9 “Bob Kelley Says,” Long Beach (California) Independent, December 9, 1960: 53.

10 Fran Zimniuch, Baseball’s New Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 47.

11 J.G. Taylor Spink, “Looping the Loops,” The Sporting News, May 3, 1961: 6.

12 Associated Press, “Declined Job,” Tampa Times, March 10, 1961: 14. The Yankees allowed the Angels to talk to McDougald, who had retired when he learned he was exposed to the expansion draft. He didn’t want to leave his janitorial business in New York.

13 Under the rules, each expansion team was limited to choosing four players from any one existing club. When league officials tallied the results of the draft, they found several violations of that limit and had to shuffle some players. Andy McCue and Eric Thompson, “Mis-Management 101: The American League Expansion for 1961,” The National Pastime (SABR, 2011), sabr.org/research/mis-management-101-american-league-expansion-1961, accessed February 6, 2018.

14 Gaylon H. White, The Bilko Athletic Club (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 36.

15 Ned Cronin, “Cronin’s Corner,” Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1956: 15.

16 Al Larson, “Angels Shortchanged on Mound,” Long Beach (California) Independent, December 15, 1960: 30.

17 Roland Hemond, with Jean Hastings Ardell, “A Whole New Franchise: Creating the 1961 Los Angeles Angels in 120 Days,” The National Pastime (SABR, 2011), sabr.org/research/whole-new-franchise-creating-1961-los-angeles-angels-120-days, accessed February 6, 2018.

18 Bob Burnes, “Writers Size Up Expansion Outlook,” The Sporting News, December 28, 1960: 2.

19 “Los Angeles Angels,” Sports Illustrated, April 10, 1961, si.com/vault/1961/04/10/624833/los-angeles-angels, accessed December 29, 2017.

20 Braven Dyer, “Autry – Players’ Pal and Rootin’, Tootin’ Fan,” The Sporting News, April 4, 1962: 27.

21 Al Wolf, “Wrigley Like Good Old Days,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1961: IV-2.

22 Danny Peary, ed., We Played the Game (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1994), 515.

23 Dyer, “Autry.”

24 Al Carr, “When and Will Angels Move?” Los Angeles Times, February 9, 1964: 14.

LOS ANGELES ANGELS EXPANSION DRAFT
PICK	PLAYER	POSITION	FORMER TEAM
REGULAR PHASE
1	Eli Grba	p	New York Yankees
2	Duke Maas	p	New York Yankees
3	Jerry Casale	p	Boston Red Sox
4	Tex Clevenger	p	Minnesota Twins
5	Bob Sprout	p	Detroit Tigers
6	Aubrey Gatewood	p	Detroit Tigers
7	Ken McBride	p	Chicago White Sox
8	Ned Garver	p	Kansas City A’s
9	Ted Bowsfield	p	Boston Red Sox
10	Ron Moeller	p	Baltimore Orioles
11	Ed Sadowski	c	Boston Red Sox
12	Buck Rodgers	c	Detroit Tigers
13	Eddie Yost	3b	Detroit Tigers
14	Coot Veal	ss	Detroit Tigers
15	Bud Zipfel	1b	New York Yankees
16	Jim Mahoney	ss	Boston Red Sox
17	Gene Leek	2b	Cleveland Indians
18	Jim Fregosi	ss	Boston Red Sox
19	Bob Cerv	of	New York Yankees
20	Ken Hunt	of	New York Yankees
21	Joe Hicks	of	Chicago White Sox
22	Neil Chrisley	of	Detroit Tigers
23	Earl Averill	of	Chicago White Sox
ADDITIONAL PHASE
24	Fred Newman	p	Boston Red Sox
25	Jim McEnany	of	Chicago White Sox
26	Ted Kluszewski	1b	Chicago White Sox
27	Don Ross	ss	Baltimore Orioles
28	Julio Becquer	1b	Minnesota Twins
MINOR LEAGUE PHASE
29	Steve Bilko	1b	Detroit Tigers
30	Albie Pearson	of	Baltimore Orioles