KMPC – Promo for the 1957 Season for the Los Angeles Angels – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Ironically, this radio promotion for advertisers spoke glowingly about the 1957 season for the Los Angeles Angels, not knowing the Angels would soon be sold and heading off to Spokane Washington to become the Washington Indians.
From 1903 through 1957, the Los Angeles Angels, a PCL team, were one of the mainstays of the Pacific Coast League, winning the PCL pennant 12 times. The Angels, along with the Portland Beavers, Oakland Oaks, Sacramento Solons, San Francisco Seals, and Seattle Indians were charter members of the Pacific Coast League which was founded in 1903.
In 1921, the team was purchased by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., the owner of the Chicago Cubs of the National League. When Wrigley could not get the city of Los Angeles to make the improvements to Washington Park he requested, he began construction of his own 21,000-seat stadium, appropriately named Wrigley Field, at 42nd Place and Avalon Boulevard in what is now known as South Central Los Angeles. The Angels began play at Wrigley in 1926, and responded by winning their eighth PCL pennant, 10½ games ahead of the second-place Oakland Oaks. The stadium was best known as the venue for the 1960 TV show Home Run Derby, filmed in December 1959.
Early in 1957, Philip Wrigley, who had inherited the team from his father, sold the Angels and Wrigley Field to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley for the then-astronomical sum of $3,000,000 ($28,944,300 today) and ownership of the Fort Worth Panthers of the Texas League. O’Malley assured the PCL owners that he intended to operate the Angels as a PCL team as had the Wrigleys. He kept his promise – for only one season. The ownership of the minor league team also gave O’Malley exclusive rights to major league baseball in Los Angeles and he used this to relocate the Dodgers.
After the 1957 season the Angels and the Stars were relocated when the Dodgers confirmed their long-rumored move to Los Angeles for the 1958 season. The Angels became the Spokane Indians in 1958. The Stars, in a sense, “returned” to Salt Lake City (whence the original Stars had moved in 1926), becoming the Salt Lake City Bees once more.
The new Los Angeles Dodgers would adopt the interlocking “LA” cap logo of the Angels, with a color change to Dodger Blue and white.
So now you know – but in case you forgot, here is a reminder via another long-gone landmark of Los Angeles culture, KMPC – who ran the L.A. Angels games since 1947.
And the rest is history.
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