Exclusive | Inside the shirtless revolution taking over Angels games: Sell the f team
ANAHEIM — The loudest thing inside Angel Stadium on Monday night wasn’t a home run.It wasn’t an inning-ending strikeout.
It wasn’t even the game at all. It was a sea of shirtless fans in the right-field upper deck, spinning their t-shirts over their heads beneath the backdrop of a cotton-candy sunset, while chanting the three words that have now become the rallying cry of a very frustrated fanbase:“Sell the team!” The revolution will not be televised.Angels broadcasts intentionally avoid the fans, but inside the stadium they are impossible to ignore. By first pitch the 500 sections at the Big A are completely empty.
By the fifth inning a few fans have arrived and begin to take their shirts off.By the sixth inning, the transformation has begun. With the smell of funnel cake and popcorn wafting through the concourse, hundreds of fans staged something far more compelling than the battle between the Angels and the Astros on the field. It was a protest.
It was a party.It was impossible to ignore. The right-field upper deck was alive.
It was bouncing, singing, screaming.Shirts twirled overhead like helicopter blades.
New arrivals were greeted with chants of “Take it off!” until they surrendered to the movement and joined the crowd. It was a sharp contrast compared to the plethora of dark green empty seats stretched across large portions of the stadium like abandoned farmland. For a franchise that has spent more than a decade drifting through mediocrity, this was the most authentic display of passion Angel Stadium has seen in a decade.And that’s what makes this moment in their history so significant and more than just another social media trend.This is a demand for change. The “Tarps Off” movement started off innocently on March 18 as the Angels were being no-hit by the Athletics.A few kids in the outfield bleachers removed their shirts to try and make it on the Jumbotron.
But a few innings later those kids were joined by hundreds of fa...