OK, first off, I have to admit to a Mea Culpa - I accidently put some LA Angels cards as "Anaheim Angels" in some recent years. When I looked back at the sets I did this in, I noticed the 2 Angels listings and said to myself, "Self, what stupid thing did you just do? Fix it!"
So I set out to fix my errors. (Work still in progress.)
As I fixing my errors, I noticed I apparently wasn't the only one confused by the Angels' city desination throughout the years. Heading over to our other trusty resource, baseball reference, I see that the Angels have been the LA Angels since the 2005 season. They were the Anaheim Angels from 1997 to 2004, and the California Angels from 1965 through 1996. Ok, this is easy enough. Or so I thought.
The 2008 Upper Deck set (inserts) include past and current players who played when they were designated differently - for example, Rod Carew played there during the California days, meanwhile there is a card celebrating Vladimir Guerrero's 2004 season (when they were Anaheim).
(In addition to 2008 UD, 2008 Topps included it's All-Rookie Team 50th Anniversary and has at least 2 "Anaheim Angels" in it.)
Sorry for the long explanation to get to my question, but now the question is this:
How do we designate these past players so they are found by collectors the correct way? Since they are released as the team is known as "LA Angels" should we just make anything for that team during that year "LA", or should we look at the player and determine the team at the time? I know if the card depicted Carew with Minnesota, he would be with the Twins for that card. (Just like the Rose & Ryan Topps retrospectives in 1986 and 1990, respectively, would list the team(s) shown on the card, not necessarily the team they were with in 1986 (Rose) and 1990 (Ryan).)
HELP!
Thanks,
Dan
-- Dan --
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