Los Angeles Angels
baseball team and Major League Baseball franchise in Anaheim, California, United States
The Los Angeles Angels are an American professional baseball team based in Anaheim, California, within the Greater Los Angeles area. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West Division. Since 1966, the team has played its home games at Angel Stadium.
The franchise was founded in Los Angeles in 1961 by Gene Autry as one of MLB's first two expansion teams and the first to originate in California. Deriving its name from an earlier Los Angeles Angels franchise that played in the Pacific Coast League (PCL), the team was based in Los Angeles until moving to Anaheim in 1966. Due to the move, the franchise was known as the California Angels from 1965 to 1996 and the Anaheim Angels from 1997 to 2004. "Los Angeles" was added back to the name in 2005, but because of a lease agreement with Anaheim that required the city to also be in the name, the franchise was known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until 2015. The current Los Angeles Angels name came into use the following season.
Throughout their first four decades of existence the Angels were a middling franchise, but did win three division titles during that span. Notable stars to have played for the Angels during that time include Hall of Fame players Nolan Ryan (1972-1979), who threw four of his seven no-hitters with California, Rod Carew (1979-1985), who collected his 3,000th hit with the team, and Reggie Jackson (1982-1986), who hit his 500th career home run with the team.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Los Angeles Angels” as baseball team and Major League Baseball franchise in Anaheim, California, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as baseball team and Major League Baseball franchise in Anaheim, California, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q743309. VIAF identifies the subject as 136257120. The Library of Congress control number is n2006069468. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1961, 1965 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Los Angeles Angels” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.