David Sweet • E-mail

Imagine the conversation between a 40-something couple and their baseball-loving boy in Newport Beach recently:

DAD: The California Angels made the playoffs!

MOM: You're wrong. And send that Bobby Grich shirt to Goodwill. Anaheim made the playoffs.

KID: (wearing an Angels hat while listening to Randy Newman on an iPod): I love L.A.! We're in the playoffs!

As the baseball postseason is set to begin, the big question remains: is Los Angeles in or out? Not the Dodgers — the bizarre and controversial new name of the baseball team known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who just captured the American League West crown.

The old folks who recall endless acres of orange groves say it used to be so easy. The Singin’ Cowboy, Gene Autry, owned the franchise from day one (when, believe it or not, it was known as the Los Angeles Angels and played at Dodger Stadium). He died without a World Series ring, after moving the franchise to Orange County. The Angels were always second banana in the Los Angeles region to the Dodgers and didn’t mind a bit — after all, when things got depressing, Disneyland was steps away.

But once the Walt Disney Co. wanted to own not just Disneyland but the Angels as well — and, while we’re at it, why don’t we rock Walt’s ghost by buying an NHL expansion team and naming it after a Disney movie — the franchise got a little strange.

All of a sudden, charmless Anaheim Stadium was fitted with a fake rock garden in center field. And — do you believe in miracles? — the Angels won their first World Series in 2002, where the insidious craze of knocking blown-up sticks against each other to make noise gained respectability.

Arte Moreno bought the franchise soon after and, within about 18 months, found the Anaheim label to be as marketable as baseball players on steroids. He wants better for his franchise, for which he paid $183 million, and who can blame him? The man made his millions in billboards; his life is all about promotion.

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Their nickname — Angels — is already halfway to Los Angeles. It’s like the New York Yorks, or the Tampa Bay Bays. If the Jets and Giants can play in New Jersey for decades and still market themselves as New York, is it so bad for the Halos to join the Los Angeles bandwagon? Even the Los Angeles Rams rejected the Anaheim label all those years they played in the stadium formerly known as the Big A. And the Angels’ franchise, after all, expects to be profitable in its first year under the new designation (after losing millions under Moreno’s reign), and fans have bought 3.4 million tickets this season, a record — though it's less than the Dodgers, who drew 3.6 million and finished with 24 fewer wins.

Still, some are not amused. When Major League Baseball started selling "Los Angeles Angels" T-shirts on its Web site after the team clinched the AL West title, leaving out the two little words "of Anaheim", protests ensued, and MLB promised to remove the merchandise. The California State Assembly jumped in during the season, passing a bill saying that tickets sold needed to provide a disclaimer that the Angels played their home games in Anaheim.

Slide show   ALCS images A visual tour of the playoff series between the Angels and White Sox

And the mayor of Anaheim isn’t showing up come hell or World Series. Curt Pringle has personally boycotted the team’s games since the Angels announced their desire to slap Los Angeles before their nickname early this year. Pringle told the Los Angeles Times (which was never known as the Anaheim Times), "It’s a challenge to be there when you’re suing the team." The long-awaited trial between the Angels and the city of Anaheim is slated for January.

Whatever the outcome, there’s a baseball team that may win its second World Series in four seasons, while the Dodgers haven’t captured one since before the first George Bush became President. The Angels are the toast of the town. Just have to figure out what town.

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