ANAHEIM – More than 100,000 people waited in a parking lot just off State College Boulevard and East Katella Avenue to catch a glimpse and celebrate with friends.

More lined Main Street at Disneyland, soaking in the atmosphere as red-and-white paper drizzled down. On that day, the streets ran red with T-shirts, foam fingers and ThunderStix reading a simple message that would be borrowed for a presidential campaign – “Yes, we can.”

It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for fans of the franchise that Gene Autry and Bob Reynolds fought to acquire in 1960.

On Oct. 29, 2002, the Angels celebrated their first World Series championship with their supporters.

“I waited 10 years for something like this,” outfielder Tim Salmon told the crowd that day. “But I know you guys have been waiting a lot longer. This is yours.”

The franchise, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2011, has made its mark on Southern California and the baseball world, bringing people together in the wake of tragedy and, as on that day in 2002, together in triumph.

Tim Mead, the Angels vice president of communications, started working for the franchise as an intern in 1980, and in his 31 years with the team, he’s seen the Angels grow as Orange County’s premier team.

“Initially, everyone was very excited to have an American League franchise in Southern California, but the Angels, like our community, has grown since then. And we’ve done it together,” Mead said. “There is an environment and atmosphere of mutual respect and pride of how we have grown over the years in the community and in the organization.”

This is the story of that franchise. Like all things in sports, the Angels were born out of the idea that Southern California could support two teams and that the people who own the team could make money from it.

Reynolds and Autry teamed up to own the Angels, with the radio broadcasting rights as the crown jewel in the ownership’s crown. The Dodgers owner at the time, Walter O’Malley, abruptly switched his team’s broadcasts to KFI after not being able to hear Dodgers games on KMPC at his home in the San Gabriel Mountains. The switch surprised KMPC’s owner, who happened to be Autry.

Without the Dodgers on his station, Autry had a programming void to fill – and luckily for future Angels fans, he didn’t fill that void with smooth jazz. He planned on broadcasting the games of a new franchise, but after a few groups of prospective owners faded, he did what any rich person who needed to have baseball on his station would do – he bought a baseball team.

Acquiring the team, however, wasn’t an easy proposition.

In 1960, the American League and the National League were more like the Capulets and the Montagues, engaging in heated negotiations over the future of Major League Baseball.

To get the Angels, Autry had to make a number of concessions to O’Malley and the Dodgers: The Angels wouldn’t televise their games the first year. They would play games at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles for one season before beginning a three-year lease at the new Dodger Stadium. And the club would pay O’Malley $400,000.

The 1961 Angels finished 70-91, and early stars such as Leon “Daddy Wags” Wagner and Albie Pearson did their best to capture the fans’ attention while a new wave of young talent began to trickle in.

Players such as Jim Fregosi and Dean Chance arrived a year later and would become the stars as the team moved to its permanent home.

By 1964, plans were in place to bring the Angels to Anaheim, with a new stadium scheduled to be opened by 1966. Angel Stadium, then called Anaheim Stadium, cost $24 million to build on 144 acres of land. The stadium held more than 43,000 fans, had two escalators and employed 350 city workers. The highest point was in left field, where a “Big A” rose into the sky.

“This is a fine, fine ballpark,” American League President Joe Cronin said when the park hosted its first regular-season game on April 5, 1966. “This is the fastest-growing area in the nation, and the American League will grow with it.”

The California Angels lost their first game in their new stadium 3-1 to the Chicago White Sox. Losing was a part of a lot of the early years of the franchise, with the team finishing under .500 13 times in its first 17 seasons.

The team finally broke into the playoffs in 1979, with Nolan Ryan, Don Baylor, Rod Carew, Brian Downing and Bobby Grich leading the team, but the success wouldn’t last. The Angels made the playoffs just twice more before the millennium, and for the most part, the franchise resembled a pit stop for aging superstars on the way to retirement.

Individually, there were triumphs along the way. There were Ryan’s five 300-plus strikeout seasons and four no-hitters. Alex Johnson won the lone batting title in team history in 1970 (.329). Baylor won the MVP in 1979. Reggie Jackson helped lead the 1982 team to the playoffs with a league-best 39 homers in 1982.

Autry, though, was probably the team’s biggest star.

“Gene was a superstar to me. He would come to the stadium, and he would always come in the clubhouse,” pitcher Clyde Wright said. “He knew everybody. He knew their wives’ names, their kids’ names. He knew everything about his players.

“He always remembered something about every player that ever played for him.”

But as the face of the franchise, Autry also had to deal with loss.

Relief pitcher Minnie Rojas was permanently paralyzed after a car accident in 1968, an accident that killed two of his children.

In 1972, infielder Chico Ruiz died in a car accident; in 1974, the Angels lost a promising prospect when pitcher Bruce Heinbechner was killed in a car wreck.

Four years later, Lyman Bostock, a promising young outfielder, was slain in Gary, Ind., with one week left in the season. Bostock was visiting relatives and went to see old friends. While sitting in the back seat of a vehicle with a woman he had just met, Bostock was shot to death by the woman’s husband, who suspected the two were having an affair.

Then in 1989, former closer Donnie Moore shot his wife, seriously wounding her, and then turned the gun on himself.

The losing and the deaths marred the franchise for an extended period.

In 1995, Disney bought 25 percent of the team and became its controlling partner, taking over the team after Autry’s death in 1998.

Disney funded a facelift for the stadium and hired Bill Stoneman as general manager, who eventually hired Mike Scioscia as the team’s manager.

Stoneman and Scioscia were the architects of the 2002 team – a squad that won because it was greater than the sum of its parts.

There were very good players, including Troy Glaus, Garret Anderson, Tim Salmon, Darin Erstad and Troy Percival. Young players such as John Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez had just arrived. Adam Kennedy, Scott Spiezio, David Eckstein, Brendan Donnelly and Ben Weber all had great years, maximizing their talents.

The victory resonated with the team’s fans and its former players, who never got to end the season as champions.

“When they won the World Series, that just capped it off for every guy who had played and suffered through all those long years,” Clyde Wright said. “It felt like we were a part of it.”

Even the inclusion of names such as Donnelly, Glaus, first baseman Wally Joyner and 13 other former Angels in the Mitchell Report on the illegal use of steroids and performing-enhancing substances did not damage the franchise’s momentum.

“Everybody moved past it,” Mead said. “People put it in perspective and put it on the shelf. Everyone’s learned from it and moved forward.”

The winning legacy has continued through the past decade, with the Angels becoming the class of the American League West.

The team changed ownership in 2003, with Arte Moreno buying the team – the first Hispanic to own a major professional sports franchise. He cut beer and ticket prices and dug into his pockets to sign star free agent Vladimir Guerrero.

Still, in his vision for branding the team, Moreno wanted to call the club the Los Angeles Angels. After a substantial backlash, Moreno changed the club’s name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Jan. 3, 2005. Anaheim only stayed in the club’s name to satisfy a provision in the lease with Angel Stadium, mandating that the team’s name “include the name Anaheim therein.”

Fans were upset, and city officials throughout Orange County and Los Angeles rallied to fight the name change. Anaheim and Moreno were ensnared in a three-plus-year legal battle, with the courts siding with Moreno in March 2006. Anaheim appealed the decision in 2007 and lost, deciding to not pursue more legal action against the franchise in 2009.

During the name-change dispute, the team did its part to distract naysayers by doing what it had been doing – winning the West in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

But despite the on-field success, heartbreak again found the franchise in 2009 when rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart was killed by a drunken driver after pitching his best game as a professional.

With the 50th anniversary celebration, however, the focus primarily will be on the good times – the stars who helped the Angels become a winning franchise and the team’s accomplishments on the field.

The team is bringing back its history to the field each time it plays this season. The Angels will wear a patch on their jerseys commemorating the anniversary. Former players will throw out the first pitch before each game, bringing them back to a place so many hold dear.

“Every time I go to the stadium, there’s a good chance I’m going to bump into someone who played for the Angels at some point during those 50 years,” Wright said. “There’s just something special about it.”

Contact the writer: dwoike@ocregister.com