A Sign Of...

... well, something, anyway.

If you've poked around MLB's website or any of the team websites, you know that the drop-down menu where you can link to any team, has for several years been listed by city. This was the case even during the transition time between the move of the Expos from Montreal to Washington -- there were listings for both Montreal and Washington until the Montreal link was finally removed -- though if you click here you can still find the Expos' old site, frozen in time as of last November or so, almost like an archaeological artifact.

But then came the curious case of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Mighty Ducks, or whatever they're calling them these days.

For a while, the drop-down list changed "Anaheim" to "Angels", but left the rest of the list alone. Now, going to MLB.com gets you a drop-down list with team names only.

This isn't a big deal, except if you were used to seeing the city names in alphabetical order, with "Washington" last.

Now it's in alphabetical order by team, so "Yankees" is last in the list. Takes some getting used to.

Eventually, this "Los Angeles" thing will work itself out, and I wonder how much MLB is going to have to pay to the current owners of losangelesangels.com, currently a site where you can buy retro baseball attire.

I suppose the court cases will eventually be settled in favor of MLB, as the NFL's Los Angeles Rams (yes, for you young'uns, there did actually used to be NFL football in Los Angeles) played in Anaheim for years, with no one particularly caring about the name.

The first evidence of change will be when the Angels are televised on ESPN. What will the scorebox say? "ANA"? "LA"? "LAAoA"? "LAA"? And if "LAA", will the Dodgers have to be identified as "LAD"?

Stay tuned for more madness.