Why is Autry beloved but Moreno isn't?

[Torridd]

From the start I'll say that I'm a huge Autry fan and am disillusioned by Moreno. However, we didn't win much under Autry and none of his teams had playoff streaks like Moreno's. Why was Autry so loved?    

[Chuck]

[gurn67]

From what I remember, he hired capable baseball executives and let them do their jobs without interfering, or meddling. Sometimes to the detriment of the team like when he let his favorite player Nolan Ryan leave because Buzzie Bavasi thought he was done and could be replaced with two 8-7 pitchers. Arte has always hired beginners, and probably had the lowest paid GM's in the game. I think Arte thinks he knows how to build a baseball roster, I don't think Gene ever thought that.

[REDneck]

Because everybody loves a cowboy!

Edited July 30, 2023 by REDneck

[Stradling]

Different generation of fan. Autry didn’t have 24 hour news cycles or Social Media. 

[Stradling]

“Win one for the cowboy”

”Win in spite of Arte”

[AngelsLakersFan]

56 minutes ago, Torridd said:

From the start I'll say that I'm a huge Autry fan and am disillusioned by Moreno. However, we didn't win much under Autry and none of his teams had playoff streaks like Moreno's. Why was Autry so loved?    

Probably because that generation of Angels fans was… not so well informed I’ll say…

[AngelsFanSince86]

2 hours ago, Torridd said:

From the start I'll say that I'm a huge Autry fan and am disillusioned by Moreno. However, we didn't win much under Autry and none of his teams had playoff streaks like Moreno's. Why was Autry so loved?    

Arte inherited a WS team and rode the success and great farm system built by Stoneman. As soon as Arte had to fill the GM position it was a quick slide from yearly to contention yearly mediocrity.

Autry was the founding owner and didn't meddle like Arte. It's also much harder to build a winner as a young franchise, especially one being built in the shadow of the dodgers. 

Edited July 31, 2023 by AngelsFanSince86
Grammar

[Angels 1961]

Gene Autry let his baseball people run the team. 

[The Ghost of Bob Starr]

Let’s be honest it was warm and fuzzy to have him, but we blew several years with Ryan and Tanana, didn’t do enough in 79 or 82.  86 it just wasn’t meant to be. 

We had the pitching version of Trout in Ryan and we squandered it.  

[Warfarin]

I don't really know enough about Autry to comment on him in particular.  I just know why people don't like Moreno - he is not a baseball executive, and he is doing his organization a tremendous disservice by telling those who he has employed to run his operations which players to trade for, sign, when to reject a deal, etc.

Arte's role in this is to set the budget and tell his GM how much money he has to spend in various areas (MLB payroll, player devo, etc), and in turn let the GM he has hired make the personnel decisions.  The reason Arte is disliked is he has (apparently) overstepped that boundary in many instances, which has led to Rendon being signed, trades being nixed due to taking too long, etc.

[Slegnaac]

How many beloved Holiday songs has Moreno written and performed?

 

[Second Base]

Both were/have been reasonably decent owners. Better than what we've seen in places like Oakland, Miami, and Cincinnati.

[Erstad Grit]

Gene brought the team here.

Arte changed the name to LA and has publicly meddled. 

I actually liked Disney. Other than Eisner looking like a dope in the owners box with a Mickey Mouse shirt, they renovated the stadium and let Stoneman do his thing. 

[Warfarin]

1 minute ago, Erstad Grit said:

Gene brought the team here.

Arte changed the name to LA and has publicly meddled. 

I actually liked Disney. Other than Eisner looking like a dope in the owners box with a Mickey Mouse shirt, they renovated the stadium and let Stoneman do his thing. 

That's actually probably the bright side with corporations - they usually just let whoever they hire do the job they have been hired to do.  The Dodgers are owned by the Guggenheim group, but all we tend to hear about in terms of their management is Friedman, not whoever the figurehead of that group is.  

That's what makes the Mets' situation interesting as well.  They are owned by Cohen, not a corporation - will Cohen take a back seat and let Eppler (or whoever he hires) run the show, or will he start meddling more to try to accelerate winning (and thus, most likely, harm their chances)?

[T.G.]

Autry brought the Angels to OC.  That's a big part of it.

[The Ghost of Bob Starr]

1 hour ago, Slegnaac said:

How many beloved Holiday songs has Moreno written and performed?

 

By now, has Arte claimed some type of copyright on Buttercup?

[arch stanton]

Under Autry the amateur scouting and drafting was atrocious. He trusted the wrong people. Once free agency was a thing he opened the wallet and had good teams 

[Dollar Bill]

Gene Autry was one of the most beloved Americans of his era. To the first generations of Angels fans, and the parents of the next generations, he was one of our foremost entertainers, not the owner of a middling baseball team. I think he's still the only person with five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And, toward the end of the Autry ownership, Gene got older and his wife basically took over, so she was the one that was blamed.

Arte never had the reservoir of goodwill Gene had. No one knew who he was when he bought the team.

[Ray McKigney]

Right, and then one of the first moves Arte made, as mentioned previously in the thread by Erstad Grit, was that he changed the name to LA, which still pisses people off.

[ten ocho recon scout]

 

 

The people who still are upset about the name change are silly. 

Moreno has given you plenty to yell about. "Of Anaheim" was (is) stupid. Los Angeles is not.

 

Autry is loved more than Arte because he took an expansion team to MLB, and really tried to win against the odds. Which made the team somewhat of an underdog, especially against the team up the road.

Moreno is blamed because Angel fans finally got a ring before him, and we're pissed we haven't gotten one since.

Take the teams that don't have a whole lot of history, and see how much they adore old guys who really weren't that huge of a deal.

Then look teams with a lot of history, who ignore some really good guys in their past, because they never won a ring.

 

And Disney gets far too much credit for that. Disney won by accident. 

Some people remember 02, but forget 01. And 03.

 

And 2000.... 99.... etc etc

[notherhalo]

When people age the hate for them dissipates 

That's what Floyd Mayweather was saying about Muhammad Ali.   He was widely unliked initially but when he was all old a shaky everyone thought he was alright.

 

Hmm but Moreno is already old 

I guess if he actually sold the team and we saw him 10 years later we wouldn't hate

[ScottT]

8 hours ago, AngelsFanSince86 said:

Arte inherited a WS team and rode the success and great farm system built by Stoneman. As soon as Arte had to fill the GM position it was a quick slide from yearly to contention yearly mediocrity.

Autry was the founding owner and didn't meddle like Arte. It's also much harder to build a winner as a young franchise, especially one being built in the shadow of the dodgers. 

 

Eh.  WS team?   Nm.  Im going to bed.  With myself. 

[AngelsFanSince86]

1 hour ago, ScottT said:

 

Eh.  WS team?   Nm.  Im going to bed.  With myself. 

Yes. Angels won the world series in 2002. Arte bought the team in 2003. The team came with the roster that won the WS and a top tier farm. Once Stoneman (hired by Disney) retired, it was a quick downfall. But for the first 6 years the Angels continued to make the playoffs due partially to the original roster Arte inherited and also due to the farm (which he also inherited).

[Angelsjunky]

There are a few factors.

One is nostalgic hindsight. We are emotional beings that are prone to re-configure reality to suit a certain narrative. Older fans remember the old Cowboy being wheeled out to games and a certain collective affection for him ("win one for the cowboy").

Another is Arte as meddler extraordinaire. Related to that is a third: Arte enabled Bill Stoneman to build a perennial contender then essentially dismantled it once he was gone. 

So it isn't just that under his tenure the Angels had a great run, it is that his active involvement destroyed that and sent the franchise on a tail-spin that they haven't recovered from.

It isn't all bad. But I'm not sure if any of the good things can be directly attributed to Moreno. Sure, Trout was drafted during his ownership, but it isn't like he was prodding Tony Reagins and saying, "I want the chunky kid from New Jersey." He paid for Ohtani's first contract, but it isn't like he had to back the truck up and really that was all Billy Eppler.

In hindsight, Arte should have probably done his best to keep Stoneman. I don't remember why he left, but that's when the current troubles started. Stoneman left in 2007 and the Angels had another couple good seasons, and were still reasonably solid through 2015, but keeping Stoneman and then asking him to build up a system for the future would have helped. But instead he brought in Reagins who is probably overly-maligned as much of the bad stuff that happened, starting with Vernon Wells, was due to Arte's meddling.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Angelsjunky