The LA Angels of Anaheim.

Talk about a team name that’s just oozing with insecurity. A team name that was more or less dreamt up by some marketing department to trick people into joining the Angels fan-base. Now, the ozone layer may be a little thinner out West, but I’m pretty sure that Dodgers fans were never going to start a mass Exodus to Anaheim Stadium just because someone stuck an “LA” in front of the word “Angels.”

Yet, in 2005, someone PR genius made it happen, and the Angels, who have changed the geographic location at the front of their name more than once to tap into media trends, became the LAnaheim Angels.

Basically, they’re like The Monkees of baseball. (Well, them and the Rays.)  I don’t truly believe that anyone abandoned the Dodgers to cheer for the Angels, but if you did, congratulations, you like The Monkees more than The Beatles.

But easy as it is to mock them, there’s one thing we can’t seem to do with them, and that’s beat them.

Here’s the thing, there’s no reason that I can see that we shouldn’t be beating them.

Game one: four-run lead. Twice.  Game two: four-run lead. Game three: one-run lead. In the third instance, nothing astronomical. But, still, the point remains that this was not a team we faced with a clear disadvantage.  This series shouldn’t have resulted in a sweep. We certainly shouldn’t lose game one or game two.

Ultimately, pitching — a combined effort from our starters and our bullpen – as well as a couple of costly errors on routine plays from Jeter and A-Rod were what did us in.  (I might also note that former Yank Bobby Abreu didn’t do us any favors — he went 6-13 and drove in 6 runs.)

And the paradigm remains intact: For whatever reason, the Angels are a team that the Yankees just can’t seem to beat.

Here’ the thing, I’m not feeling all gloom and doom about our season because of our series. I think we bounce back from this and likely go on to postseason.  However, in today’s Post, Mike Vaccaro raises a good point, which is that the Angels and the Chowdas are two teams that the Yankees are likely going to need to be able to beat in order to make it to the Big Dance. True, the fact that we’re currently 0-11 against these teams doesn’t necessarily preclude us from earning a spot in the DS.  However, if we intend to proceed beyond there, it would be reassuring to figure out a way to beat them during the regular season.

As an aside, for those of you familiar with my old blog, you know I take a particular interest in names. You also know that I think it is only practical that the pronunciation of a person’s name should match its spelling. For this reason, I’m somewhat baffled by the name Chone Figgins. Now, Figgins, that makes sense. Spelled Figgins, pronounced Figgins. Chone, on the other hand, sounds like it should rhyme with hone, right? (Like, “Chone should hone his skills at the plate so that he doesn’t accidentally knock into Posada and knock the mitt off his hand.”  Yes, this happened.)  But, not so.  It’s pronounced “Shawn.”

I suppose that makes s little bit of sense.  If we were using the Cyrillic alphabet.