First of all, I can hardly believe there are still people, still working to annoy others with the obvious fact that Angel Stadium isn't in the city of L.A. proper. Wow, evidently the first major sports franchise that it's EVER supposed to matter about. Yeesh! Hey, I love L.A. too, just as I did before 1961 and will continue to do so regardless of what anyone may do with the geographic tag on the name of my team.
Breaking news, people: "Los Ángeles" always has and always will translate directly into English as simply, "The Angels." So anyone complaining incessantly about the mailing address but not the name, "The Angels" is being approximately a half-ignorant coward, and really ought to sprout the requisite nads to bang his/her noisy tin pot in a campaign to change the name to something besides The Angels, too – which, coincidence of coincidences, also happens to translate directly into the city's original Spanish as "Los Ángeles" – or just finally shut up, fergadsake-uh-in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I was at the Friday game and noticed again two things that have remained consistent over many years now, but that on Friday, due to the way the scoring unfolded, I was able to observe both in the same evening.
One is that, not all, of course, but an awful lot of Dodgers fans have no manners, period. The nation knows this by now, but I digress. And some have even worse manners when they're getting their way. (One of these days I expect dictionaries will feature an image of a Dodgers cap next to a definition and the entry for, "Sore Winner.") When the Dodgers were up five-nothing after two on Friday – in other words, finished scoring for the day – some Dodgers fans around us were just plain obnoxious, yelling crudities about the Angels, the Angels' name, about Angels fans and the ballpark. Some guy a few rows behind us kept shrieking something mostly unintelligible involving the phrase, “in your house, baby!!!” Incidentally, he must have received an emergency call or something, because by the middle of the game I think he was gone. At least we never heard another sound from him. ;-)
The other thing I observed was that, unlike when the Dodgers prevail, whether at Dodger Stadium or at “our house,” fans of the losing team were able to enjoy the post game fireworks show and or make their ways to their cars largely unmolested – in fact, completely so, as usual, in my experience. But I won’t presume to speak for the entire park and crowd. In reverse circumstances some Dodgers fans always fail to find within themselves the necessary good sense and ability to successfully shut the huck up. I’ve even seen and heard some in the Dodgers home crowd, when their team was losing in the bottom of the 9th, chanting that the visiting team “zucks” (only they don’t say “zucks”).