Los Angeles Angels | Notable Players, History, & Facts (2024)

Los Angeles Angels, American professional baseball team based in Anaheim, California, that plays in the American League (AL). The Angels won a World Series title in 2002, their first appearance in the “Fall Classic.”

The Angels began play in 1961 as one of two expansion teams (with the Washington Senators) awarded by Major League Baseball that season—baseball’s first additions to either of the two major leagues in 60 years. The Angels were originally based in Los Angeles and were owned by “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry. The team was renamed the California Angels in 1965. In 1966, after five seasons in Los Angeles—which included a winning year in just their second season of play—they relocated to nearby Anaheim.

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Before the 1972 season, the Angels traded six-time All-Star shortstop Jim Fregosi for future Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, who went on to throw four of his record seven career no-hitters in an Angels uniform and contributed to the team’s first playoff berth in 1979 (on a team managed by Fregosi). The Angels made the playoffs again in 1982 and 1986, but the team failed to advance to the World Series each season after losing series leads of two games to none and three games to one, respectively. The Angels endured another notable collapse in 1995, squandering a record 111/2-game divisional lead over the Seattle Mariners with six weeks left in the season.

In 2002 the team, then known as the Anaheim Angels, won their first playoff series as they advanced to the World Series: led by sluggers Garret Anderson, Tim Salmon, and Troy Glaus, the Angels won a dramatic seven-game series over the San Francisco Giants that featured four contests that were decided by one run. With the addition of perennial all-star Vladimir Guerrero in 2004, along with the continued development of young pitchers such as Francisco Rodriguez, the Angels became a yearly playoff contender—winning division titles in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009—and one of baseball’s best teams through the end of the first decade of the 21st century, but they did not match the postseason success of the 2002 Angels squad in those seasons. In 2005 the team changed its name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The Angels made one of the biggest free-agent additions in baseball history prior to the 2012 season when they signed three-time Most Valuable Player Albert Pujols to a 10-year contract. Pujols was joined by early-season call-up Mike Trout, who went on to produce one of the greatest rookie campaigns in baseball history, but, despite the added offensive firepower, the Angels failed to qualify for the postseason in 2012. That loaded Angels team broke through in 2014, winning a major-league-best 98 games during the regular season, but the team was surprisingly swept by the Kansas City Royals in its AL Division Series. In 2015 the Angels missed out on a second consecutive postseason by one game but fell off to a fourth-place finish the following year. During this time the team also dropped “of Anaheim” from its name. After the 2016 season the Angels entered into an extended period of losing seasons.