I HADN’T BEEN THIS CONFLICTED BETWEEN MY HOMETOWN AND
adopted region since October 2005, when the Chicago White Sox played the Angels for the American League championship.
I split the loyalty difference then by wearing an early ’70s-style White Sox cap to Angel Stadium. The cap,bright red as opposed to the team’s current black motif,enabled me to blend in with the sea of Angel partisans while bearing the logo of my childhood heroes.
In the finals for the U.S. 2016 Olympics bid, I again felt strongly both ways.
Los Angeles, whose bid included several OC sports venues, was the cool, accomplished host of two famous Olympics; Chicago was the earnest, almost overly eager upstart vying for its first shot at Olympic glory. (Not that Chicago was inexperienced in putting on big shows. Los Angeles still was a hick town when Chicago hosted one of the first international expos, the World’s Columbian Exposition, way back in 1893.)
As in the baseball playoffs of 2005, or as in the Tribune Co. sale earlier this month, Chicago again beat out the SoCal team. The Windy City now advances to the international Olympic competition, where its chances of prevailing are reportedly good.
There’s been much speculation about why Chicago won the U.S. Olympic nod,its fresh enthusiasm; its plan to concentrate activities and athlete housing at its picturesque downtown lakefront, as opposed to L.A.’s scattered locales; L.A. representing a “been there, done that” option.
All of those factors probably contributed. But looking at things from the Southern California vantage point, there’s still reason for regional pride. For one thing, L.A did make it to the finals, and on the strength of its existing assets, eschewing the massive public subsidy that the Chicago bid entails.
For all of this region’s division and dysfunction, it has an underlying infrastructure,in this case, of public facilities and business and athletic talent,to achieve almost anything.
But here’s a suggestion for L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A.-centric organizers of this Olympic bid: Next time you try to pull off this sort of thing, treat Orange County and the rest of the region more like a partner and less like an afterthought.
When I began following the Olympic bid a few months back, the top OC political and business leaders I spoke with knew almost nothing about it. From what I could tell, L.A. limited OC’s involvement to signing up the sports venues and involving a few Olympic greats who live in OC. (I took the initiative to have gold medalists Janet Evans and Peter Vidmar on my TV show in February to discuss the L.A. bid).
I recognized the names of only five OC residents,all former Olympians,among the sports, business and civic leaders on the 60-plus-member Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games. Maybe a little more involvement from the “outlying provinces” could have generated enough additional energy to swing a close vote L.A.’s way.
After all, if there is a downside to the scattered venues that would mark another Los Angeles Olympics, there is also the upside of presenting Southern California in all of its splendor, from the mountains to the OC coast.
And while there is plenty of executive talent in L.A., Orange County could have enhanced the brain trust. (Exhibit A is Newport Beach businessman Peter Ueberroth, mastermind of L.A.’s famously successful 1984 Olympics. Unfortunately, Ueberroth is so high in the pecking order, he was neutralized from assisting with the latest L.A. effort: As chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, he wound up announcing Chicago as the winner.)
Sure, there’s rivalry and often animosity between OC and L.A. Many OCers and Angelinos alike resent that Anaheim’s baseball team has been renamed “Los Angeles” by the team’s Arizona-based owner.
But there are times when we’re all in it together. This was one of those times when the guys and gals in Tinseltown should have realized it was in their self-interest to get buy-in from the neighbors.
,RickReiff
