Craig Tyson Adams

  The Los Angeles Angels are snake-bit. They are cursed. Somehow someway someone put a hex on them. Sure they won a world series once, but that was 20 years ago. It must’ve been because Disney got involved with them at the time. It was fantasyland for Angels fans. Maybe it was the baseball gods punishing the San Francisco Giants and Barry Bonds for crimes against baseball humanity. Bonds cheated to break the most hallowed records in the game. The Angels beating Bonds and the Giants was just a happy circumstance. But, I digress. Throughout the Angels history, they have had one misfortune after another plague them like the plague. Players have died. The team more than once snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They’ve had bus crashes and car accidents. I don’t know if it’s been more or less than other teams, but the Angels sure have had a lot. The latest is with the greatest player they have ever produced. The great Mike Trout was available for the club to draft because of a technic

  When Shohei Ohtani selected the Los Angeles Angels offer, it was like the baseball gods had finally smiled on the team. They finally won a championship in 2002 and they lucked into drafting the great Mike Trout in 2009, but signing Ohtani was a genuine gift. When he took off as a player last year they believed that he and Trout would form a nucleus that would send the Angels to the promised land. This season started out promisingly enough. But then there was a 14 game losing streak that cost manager Joe Maddon his job. Maddon was a coach for the Angels when they won the World Series. He was the manager of the Chicago Cubs when they ended a 108 year drought and became champions. The Angels went into a tailspin that they have shown no signs of coming out of. They were just swept by their cross-town rivals, the Dodgers. But to call it a rivalry is a misnomer. The Dodgers rudely treat the Angels like underlings. The Dodgers don’t know the rivalry exists. The time has come to face facts.