Lots of sports fans have that random team that they have no personal connection with and no real reason to support, but they find themselves nursing a soft spot for. Mine, as a girl who grew up in New York and is deeply devoted to the Mets, is the Los Angeles Angels.

I can’t quite explain this fascination. What I can explain, and often think about, is that this franchise is its own special kind of comical. You would think a team that once featured Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, two surefire Hall of Famers with three Most Valuable Player awards each and two of the great players of their generation, in the same lineup, would be able to at least pull together a winning season in recent years. You’d think wrong. It’s been 10 years since the Angels had a winning record, and 11 since they made the playoffs. It’s the longest drought in Major League Baseball, and the third-longest in major North American sports, behind only the lowly New York Jets and Buffalo Sabres.

In that last, unremarkable playoff appearance, the first and thus far only of Trout’s illustrious career, the Angels were swept by the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 American League (AL) Division Series, and the Royals would go on to clinch the AL pennant. Their last playoff win? Oct. 22, 2009, in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series with the New York Yankees. I was two months away from turning five. I’m now a junior in college. The Yankees, of course, would go on to win the pennant and the World Series.

I think the best way I can explain this fascination is that the Angels are pretty easy to root for. The players are lovable. I don’t know of any baseball fan that hates Trout. Some might hate Ohtani these days, especially after he traded in Anaheim for Chavez Ravine, signed that massive contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers and promptly won the World Series in 2024, but he’s so good at what he does that it’s tough to hate him too. They’ve had many other great players in their history: Nolan Ryan, Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols and others. There is seemingly always someone to watch with the Angels, even while they fail year after year to make any noise. Once upon a time that was Anthony Rendon, who signed a seven-year, $245 million contract with the team in 2019 … and has since played a mere 257 lackluster games for the team. Many fans bemoan the fact that Trout remained loyal to the Angels, signing a 12-year, $426.5 million contract extension in 2019, and has still only seen one postseason appearance since his 2011 debut.

There’s even more heartbreak if you go back in time a bit. There have been several collapses. If you’re into baseball history, you might be familiar with the 1995 one, as it’s up there with the most disastrous collapses in the sport’s history. I’ll try to summarize it for you. In mid-August, the Angels had a 10.5-game lead for the AL West. From Aug. 25 to Sept. 3, they lost nine games in a row while the Seattle Mariners began to surge, but they still had a six-game lead. Then they lost nine more in a row from Sept. 13 to 23, and all of a sudden their first place lead was gone and the Mariners had a three-game lead. They held on to force a one-game playoff with the Mariners, but lost and their season was over. I don’t know if it’s possible to encapsulate how bad that is, but think of the pain you would feel if that happened to your team.

Surprisingly enough, the Angels do have some whimsy and positivity to them. The franchise is the only one in MLB to have never lost 100 games in a season. During their one World Series title run in 2002, their unofficial mascot, the Rally Monkey, came back into the spotlight after a 2000 debut. Fans deemed the primate a good-luck charm as the monkey would appear on the jumbotron late in games where the team was behind or tied. When this happened, the team went 24-16. Game 6 of the World Series was the monkey’s peak, as it appeared in the seventh inning when the Angels were down 5-0 to the San Francisco Giants, and they came back to win 6-5 and clinch the title the following game. There were signs in the stands for this monkey. This season, the team had a home run fire helmet, placing it on the head of players who hit home runs in celebration and as a tribute to Los Angeles-area firefighters. In 2018, Guerrero became the first player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame with an Angels hat on his plaque, a big deal at the time since he spent more of his career with the Montreal Expos.

I realize this article might make you want to continue ignoring the Angels as many do these days, but there are, as there have been throughout their history, reasons to keep watching. The 2025 squad seems tight-knit. There’s content of them at Disneyland. There’s some feel-good stories. Outfielder Jo Adell is having himself a great bounceback year after several lackluster seasons, having hit 36 home runs at the time of this writing. Taylor Ward is having himself a 30+ home run season too. Zach Neto is perhaps one of the most underrated shortstops around. Reliever Ben Joyce only played a month this season before needing season-ending shoulder surgery, but he can throw 105.5 miles per hour, something we don’t see every day. There’s some great Immaculate Grid picks if you comb through the history of their players. Part of the reason I love baseball so much is that something new can happen every day, giving the community more and more to talk about. You can never be bored. The Angels encapsulate that, in both the good and bad ways. This is only a small summary of the insanity that’s gone on over in Orange County, but maybe it will give a look into why I appreciate the ups and downs of this far-away ball club.