Gene Autry went to baseball`s expansion meeting in December, 1960, looking for the broadcast rights to the American League`s proposed team in Los Angeles. He wound up with the team.
He didn`t have any bats, balls or uniforms. He didn`t have a manager or a general manager. He didn`t even have a player.
But he had a love for the game and a desire to excel, which had been fulfilled in his previous business ventures, from the 50 million records he sold during his singing career to the fortune he made as a radio and television station owner.
Twenty-six years later, though, the telegrapher-turned-box-office-idol, is still in search of excellence, still trying to figure out how to come up with a golden World Series trophy to go with the gold records.
”People told me it would take seven or eight years to build an expansion team into a contender,” Autry said. ”It took a little longer.”
It wasn`t until 1979 that Autry`s ambitions came close to being fulfilled. His Angels won the American League West for the first time. But they couldn`t get past the playoffs. And they didn`t get out of the playoffs in 1982, either, the second time they won the division, although they had a 2-0 lead against Milwaukee in their best-of-five series.
Now comes the third time. Will it be the charm? Autry`s Angels are tuning up for the AL playoffs that will open in Boston on Tuesday.
And then the World Series? Autry and the people around him hope so. Autry turned 79 last Monday. Each time the Angels have made it to the playoffs, they have carried a motto of ”Win one for the Cowboy.” This time is no different. Autry has paid more than the price of admission–a $2.1 million price tag for gaining an expansion team 26 years ago. His team consistently carries one of the highest payrolls in baseball, but so far there has been no jackpot.
But Autry keeps plugging away. He turns to his baseball people and his friends for advice–not always the best–and he does what they tell him it will take to be a winner. There have been disappointments.
He still kicks himself for letting general manager Buzzie Bavasi convince him not to re-sign pitcher Nolan Ryan after the 1979 season. ”That is one of my great regrets,” Autry has said many times since. ”He never should have left, but Buzzie had problems with Nolan`s agent. I`m sorry we lost him.”
And he let Bavasi and Co. convince him after the 1982 season to let Don Baylor depart through free agency, losing the player who was the heart and soul of a veteran clubhouse.
Baylor`s presence was missing the last two years when the Angels had their opportunities to win the AL West but couldn`t take advantage of them.
Success has never been so difficult for Autry to attain. He`s also been an independent cuss. But he also has proven his way to be right.
Back in his younger days, he turned down big bucks, refusing to endorse tobacco on his radio show. He`d kiss his horse but never his girl.
He was discovered by Will Rogers, strumming his guitar and singing songs while killing time on his job as a late-night telegrapher on the railroad, a job he took so it would not interfere with his real love–playing semipro baseball. His career quickly took off.
From 1935-41, Autry was voted the top box office draw in the United States. U.S. Postal authorities said Autry got more mail–12,000 letters a week–than any other man in the nation.
By 1951, he was a millionaire who still had a love affair with baseball. It dates back to his youthful term as a semipro player, as a bridge partner with Dizzy Dean, and as a regular at the games of the White Sox and Cubs during the days when he did a regular radio show for the Wrigley Chewing Gum Co. in Chicago.
Autry thought he had it all when the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, and Autry`s radio station bought the broadcast rights. But in 1960, another station bought the rights away.
Autry, however, didn`t give up. He went to the winter meetings that year in St. Louis and came back with a baseball team.
