L.A.'s the name, but opener's not the same

It slipped into our consciousness like a college student showing up late and easing into the back row of a packed lecture hall.

Friday night was the Angels' home opener.

Who knew?

Los Angeles is the sports market from hell, especially this time of year. Want attention? Want a big splurge for your big deal, such as opening day of a major league baseball season?

Get in line behind the Lakers and the Dodgers and UCLA basketball. Maybe the Clippers too, if they weren't more of a hospital ward than a basketball team. How about USC and UCLA spring football? Got to have those quarterback controversies.

And then, on the day before your opener, golly gee, Beckham scores a goal. Let's all be aquiver. For another $250 million, maybe he'll even score another one.

But if you are Arte Moreno, who owns the Angels and who positioned his team right in the middle of the Los Angeles market by naming it the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, you don't look for big splurges as much as increasing pieces of the L.A. sports pie.

"Rome wasn't built in a day," he says.

He also says, as if to justify a branding strategy that flew somewhat in the face of traditional Orange County local worship, "There are 300,000 people in Anaheim, 3 million in Orange County and 18 million in the metroplex."

To many in Orange County, the metroplex means that big, crowded, smoggy place to the north and east.

It is hard to get the attention of the metroplex for something happening down there somewhere off the 5 freeway.

After all, it is the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers' moving to L.A. To celebrate that, we had a game attended by the population of a decent-sized Midwest city. Then, two days later, we had legends walking out of all corners of Dodger Stadium. There they were. Duke and Sandy. Cue the tears and goose bumps.

We had a legend in the dugout to learn more about too, and if Joe Torre isn't worth a bigger piece of the pie for the Dodgers, then who is? We also learned, at great length again, that Jeff Kent was really a teddy bear under that curmudgeon shirt.

Indeed, the old saying is wrong. April showers bring Dodgers public relations flowers.

Thursday, on the same day that Beckham booted it home -- be still my heart -- Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt were honored at a luncheon of the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles, middle of the metroplex. They were given the Heart of the City award, and the press release said that without the McCourts, "the downtown Los Angeles we treasure today would not exist."