Like none of you, I was shocked to see "angels.com" on the fence behind the plate last night in Anaheim. Sure enough, it is indeed the Angels' web site. Why the eff was I shocked? In May of 2008 I told you about the eight MLB teams who don't have the rights to [theirname].com. I noted that the "coolest" example was the Angels, because angels.com had been taken by a random person who had kept that site for a long time. It was just one page, with some gibberish about angels, and about how the site was under construction. I periodically checked the site, and it was always the same.

After last night, I checked the news to see what went down between the last time I checked angels.com and now, and I found a story about how the old owner refused to sell the domain name to MLB for $300,000. And that now (August of last year) it was up for sale in a live auction. Obviously, MLB won this auction and angels.com will be theirs until the end of time. (Another story from a few days after that one here--looks like they got it for 200 grand.)

As for the other seven teams, only the Cardinals have since gotten their own name. (The same site linked above did basically the exact post I did, only they were two years AFTER me.) And the only one that changed to something new was rangers.com, which now belongs to FMA.

Here's more about the original case of the Angels vs. Some Guy.