Rams’ Gold Mine Still Just a Parking Lot

You cruise the perimeters of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot where, long before now, you expected to see glistening office buildings aspire into the sky.

You looked for a shopping mall, restaurants, theaters, banks and other jewels of today’s development, all appearing on artist sketches after Anaheim promised the Rams 90 acres for moving their team from Los Angeles to that hub of happiness in Orange County.

What you see on the parking lot’s fringes today is asphalt. A stake has yet to be driven into the ground, almost 13 years after the deal was signed.

It was signed, in fact, in 1978 by the late Carroll Rosenbloom on the birthday of his wife, Georgia.

Which birthday will not be revealed here. There are times when truth must yield to human decency.

Shortly after the deal is announced, Georgia confides to your venerable correspondent: “I asked Carroll, ‘What am I going to do in Anaheim?’ He answered: ‘If you don’t want to go to the games there, stay the hell home.’ ”

It would develop, ironically, that Georgia would go to the games there, but not Carroll, who drowned in 1979, a year before the Rams moved.

They moved entirely for the real estate heist they would make in the parking lot perimeters of Anaheim Stadium.

And what would the move trigger? It would inspire the Raiders to take the Rams’ place in Los Angeles, touching off an antitrust action with the NFL lingering in the courts eight years and costing all parties maybe $200 million.

It also would touch off an eminent domain action, matching Oakland against the Raiders, and countless satellite actions.

And when the dust settled and the lawyers were paid, Gene Autry, owner of the Angels, would file a suit fouling the real estate deal that led to the Rams’ move in the first place.

Choosing language that will live forever, Gene said to Anaheim: “You can’t sell the same horse twice,” meaning that after Anaheim gave his Angels priority in the parking lot, it couldn’t hand over that land to the Rams--at least until the Angels’ lease expired in 2001.

Autry filed his suit against Anaheim in 1985. In 1988, the judge rules in a way so unmistakably clear that both sides appeal.

Anaheim today is appealing the whole verdict; the Angels are appealing part of it.

While we visit Anaheim the other day, the lawyers on both sides are preparing briefs. Anaheim and Autry continue to talk in private, discussing ways to stop paying lawyers.

Why is the world so determined to stop paying lawyers? Why wouldn’t the Angels and Anaheim issue the joint announcement: “We have been in litigation for six years. Because of our profound love for the legal profession, we want to stretch it to 12”?

At Anaheim Stadium, meantime, the parking lot perimeters remain barren.

And Anaheim is visited by the terrifying thought that if it doesn’t prevail in its appeal, enabling it to make real estate available to the Rams, the Rams will sue the city for breach of contract.

Do you know what will happen then? Anaheim and the Rams will sit down to discuss ways to stop paying lawyers. And we call that a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Autry will turn 84 in September. Some say he tends to be forgetful, but he remembers clearly that he doesn’t want a real estate development on his parking lot.

To complicate the issue, the climate right now in Orange County, as well as most other areas, hardly is ripe for real estate investment that could run into hundreds of millions.

In office buildings already existing, space is available by the acre. In shopping malls, stores are busting out regularly. And you want money from the banks?

For collateral, they ask for your respiratory system.

Autry sees himself a helpful figure in the picture, preventing the Rams and those who would invest with them in the parking lot from losing their jerseys.

In pursuit of this good Samaritanism, Gene has spent $5 million--maybe more--on lawyers, not enamored with what Anaheim is trying to do.

You have to understand Gene. He comes from Tioga, Tex., where folks remind you, as he has reminded Anaheim: “You can’t sell the same horse twice.”