Team colors: Angels

There is one unmistakable truth about this major league baseball season:

The Dodgers are a bad team.

I'm OK with that. I expected it going into the season, although maybe not on this level. But it's OK. My focus is on seeing a brand new owner in the executive offices as soon as they can get McCourt to slither out of his gold-encrusted hole.

What I'm not OK with is an unmistakable truth that has gone on for the last 15 years.

The Dodgers cannot beat the Angels.

Interleague play is bad enough without the Dodgers getting a six-game lesson in failure every year. How am I supposed to work up any enthusiasm for Selig's pointless gift to the fans when my team goes in the tank every June because they have a mental block over the Angels?

The Dodgers just completed another futile series in Anaheim, scrambling to come back in the 9th inning to salvage one game of the three. They'll face the Angels again this weekend and we'll see what sub-.500 record they arrive at when the series ends.

So far, they are 1-2 against the Rally Monkeys. That brings the Dodgers' record against the Angels since interleague play began to 35-48. They have managed above .500 records against the Angels in only 1997, 1999 and 2006.

As your typical Dodger fan, who considers the Angels an "underling" team, this is particularly painful. But I suppose that's what the Dodgers get for not hiring Mike Scioscia as manager. Big Mike's never going to let his foot of our neck for that, is he?

For the first part of my rooting life, the Angels were a sad team with two really great pitchers (Ryan and Tanana), who chased around free agents. They got good in the late '70s and into the '80s, and I rooted for them most of the time. But now they are the team with the ridiculous name that the Dodgers can't beat. I don't like them anymore.

As for the Angels' team colors, I'm sure that the final tally will show that Topps considers the Angels' team colors as red and blue, mostly because Topps woke up to the proper colors to attribute to teams around the late '80s.

But when I was a kid, I associated the color pink with the Angels, because that's the color that Topps used often with Angels cards in the '70s. Pink was not a cool color in the '70s.

Anyway, let's see the breakdown for the years in which Topps used certain colors based on the team that was featured:

1964: green
1965: light blue, yellow and red
1966: lavender
1967: light green
1968: lavender
1969: lavender
1971: light blue and orange
1972: orange, light green and blue
1974: pink
1976: pink and gold
1977: pink, yellow and green
1978: pink and green
1979: yellow, red and green
1980: blue, pink and red
1981: green, blue and red
1982: blue and brown
1983: red and purple
1984: red and yellow
1985: yellow, light blue and red
1986: red
1987: red
1988: red, blue and light blue
1989: pink, purple and yellow
1991: red and blue
1992: red, blue and yellow
1993: yellow, blue and red
1994: blue
1998: red
2000: light blue
2002: red and blue
2003: red and blue
2004: red and blue
2005: red and blue
2006: red and blue
2007: red and blue
2008: red and blue
2009: red
2010: red (except for the Howie Kendrick card, which features blue)
2011: red

Angels team colors: red and blue.
What Topps thinks are the Angels team colors: red and blue.

There sure are a lot of those red-and-blue teams, aren't there?

Go easy on us this weekend, Mike.

(The tally: Red-24, Blue-16, Yellow-8, Green-5, Light Blue-5, Pink-5, Lavender-3, Light Green-2, Orange-2, Purple-2, Brown-1, Gold-1)