Property Settlement for Messy Divorce

It is always important to make a good last impression, so the Rams are spending their final week in Orange County attempting to rip the locker stalls out of Anaheim Stadium and handing out termination notices, instead of the customary gold watches (how mundane), to employees with 20, 30 and 40 years’ service in the organization.

If nothing else, the Rams of Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw are obsessively consistent.

They are leaving us as we have known them--petty, money-grubbing and callous to the bitter end, with one eye cast toward St. Louis and the other fixed on the bottom line. Which, come to think, should make the drive to Missouri some adventure.

They are picking up and packing up everything that isn’t nailed down--and a few things that are. The locker stalls at Anaheim Stadium. How low do you want to go? How cheap can you get?

How about those wads of used adhesive tape balled up in the corner? You want those, too? Pull them apart, recycle them in time for training camp?

How about the nozzles in the shower stalls? They’re detachable. Just give them a sharp screw to the left. You know the procedure.

What else do you want? The carpet on the dressing room floor? The deodorant bars in the urinals? The porcelain sink where Ram players used to stop for a postgame shave? Take it all. Why not? Take everything.

Up to and including the Kinchen sink.

Actually, no, a few items are sacred here. They stay right where they are.

Such as the Anaheim Stadium scoreboard. It stays. What do the Rams need with it? They haven’t used it in five years.

The goalposts. They stay, too. You never know, there could be another football game played at Anaheim Stadium any year now.

The Melonheads. They stay. They have families, friends and mortgages here. But the melon rinds, they’re all yours. Like the team, they were starting to smell.

The confiscated “Georgia [Expletive]s” banners. The untold thousands. We want them back. You’ve no doubt heard about the poetry readings scheduled at Anaheim Stadium on NFL Sundays this fall. We want to hear the classics.

The Arch. In St. Louis, it’s a civic landmark; in Anaheim, it’s a wall graph charting the Rams’ victory totals from 1982 to 1995. Take ours. Now you have two arches. Now you can emulate a truly successful franchise. McDonald’s.

Chuck Knox’s shoes. The ones he wore during the glory seasons, 1973 through 1977. You better take those. They were too big to fill this last time.

Jim Everett’s duck-and-cover manual. Take it.

Wayne Gandy’s seat cushion. Take it.

Chris Miller’s ice pack, head compress, knee brace, neck brace, ankle support, shoulder sling and elbow wrap. Better take those, too.

Tommy Maddox’s potential. Hmm, it was around here somewhere. We’ll send it just as soon as we find it.

Todd Kinchen’s hands. Can’t find those, either. Who knows, they could have gone last year ahead of the team.

That videotape of Georgia hugging John Robinson after the 1989 NFC semifinals and calling him “the best coach in the world” 23 months before she fired him. Get that out of here.

John Shaw’s executive set of brass thumb screws, candle wax and bamboo slivers to drive under the fingernails of players during contract negotiations. Send those ahead. He’ll be needing them soon.

Henry Ellard, Flipper Anderson, Kevin Greene, Duval Love, Gerald Perry, Pat Carter, Marquez Pope. . . . oh, sorry, they’re gone already.

Mary Olson-Kromolowski, Ram “executive director of administration,” grumpy “move coordinator” and “The Terminator,” as she is now known around Rams Park. Have pink slip, will travel. Would travel anywhere, on one-way plane fare, if certain Ram employees had their way.

Sean LaChappelle. Wasn’t that him loading boxes Tuesday?

Cleveland Gary. That better not be him loading boxes. Especially the team crystal.

Tom Mack. OK. He can finally move.

Darryl Henley. Well, I guess he stays.

Steve Ortmayer. He’s said to be plotting the direction of the team now. So plan ahead, St. Louis. Have someone there to greet the moving vans in Des Moines.

A desk. The new Rams Park in St. Louis will need it. For the one newspaper that plans to cover the Rams.

Footballs thrown by every quarterback who started for the Rams during the Anaheim era, including Everett, Miller, T.J. Rubley, Steve Dils, Steve Bartkowski, Dan Pastorini, Jeff Kemp and Dieter Brock. Take them. They’re dented.

The Big A. The Rams may have been a pain in the Big A, but it’s still our Big A. It stays.

The Ram band. It didn’t march, it just sat there and played dirges. Pack it up.

The Rams’ first-down playbook. One hundred and 20 pages, and a diagram of Jerome Bettis plunging up the middle on every one. We’ve read it cover to cover. Take it.

The Rams’ Super Bowl trophies. Take those, too. Each and every one of them.