Angels Owner Arte Moreno Booed at Home Opener, Removed From Video Montage
For years, the Los Angeles Angels have had a pregame tradition of playing a video montage to Train's hit song "Calling All Angels."
As the video played in front of the Angels' home-opener crowd, nostalgic images were shown and the fans cheered as they flashed by until one moment turned the crowd hostile. A video of owner Arte Moreno holding his jersey up at a press conference appeared and the fans in attendance let him know how unhappy they are. The boos were loud and he was in attendance to witness it all.
On Saturday night, Moreno's part in the montage disappeared and it didn't come back on Sunday either. However, the rest of the montage appeared untouched.
The team declined to comment when asked by The Athletic why and at whose direction the edit had been made.
Moreno's popularity with the Angels fan base has been on the steady decline but losing Shohei Ohtani to the Dodgers and not signing any of the big-name free agents like Blake Snell only fueled their fiery anger. According to FanGraphs, he slashed payroll by $41 million this offseason.
He doesn't love signing long-term deals and why would he? His track record isn't the greatest. He signed Albert Pujols toward the end of his career and Anthony Rendon has yet to play 60 games in his five seasons with the organization.
In February, The Athletic ran a fan survey and only three people, out of 1,956, rated his work as “excellent," while 91.1 percent of respondents rated him “below average” or “poor.”
“You always have a vocal minority that’s not going to be happy no matter what,” Moreno said.
The problem is, the minority has become the majority within the Angels fanbase. Despite only having one media scrum in the last five years, if this keeps going he will have to answer questions for more people than a handful of reporters.
