The Billiken's Bluff

Last month, in an effort to attract additional advertising revenue, the Anaheim Angels changed their name to The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In addition to being a mouthful, the name suffers from being doubly redundant. When translated from Spanish it becomes... The The Angels Angels of Anaheim. As I type this up in Microsoft Word, the grammar check function of the computer is kicking into action, highlighting in red the obviousness of this error. The only thing that could have made this name change more preposterous was if Anaheim was German for Angel.

Anaheim is more than 30 miles outside the city limits of Los Angeles, but that was no matter to Angels’ owner Arte Moreno. Moreno hoped to attract advertisers who wanted to reach the Los Angeles market. Understandably the city of Anaheim, who owns the Angels stadium, filed motions in court to stop the name change. And today, the city of Los Angeles decided they wanted no part of this word jumble either.