Drive about 30 miles down the 5 Freeway and you can visit two Major League Baseball teams.

One is building a dynasty.

The other is building resentment.

As of Sunday, the Los Angeles Dodgers are 82-55, leading the National League West and trying to win their third straight World Series. They won it all in 2024. Then they did it again in 2025.

The 52-85 Angels?

Their last postseason appearance was in 2014.

Barack Obama was president. The first Apple Watch wasn’t yet on sale. Ohtani was still playing in Japan.

It has been that long.

The standings only begin to explain how far apart these franchises have become.

Start with the Dodgers roster.

Shohei Ohtani. Mookie Betts. Freddie Freeman. Kyle Tucker. Will Smith. Teoscar Hernández. Max Muncy. Andy Pages. Tommy Edman.

Enough star power for almost anybody.

Not the Dodgers.

Their pitching staff features Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the reigning World Series MVP; two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell; Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki; and newly acquired two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal.

Listing Dodgers starts sounding less like a roster than the finalists for every major award in baseball.

And then there are the Angels.

They have Mike Trout.

That is not a knock on Trout. It is an indictment of the Angels.

They did not fail because they lacked a superstar. At his peak, Trout was the best player in baseball, one of the greatest of his generation. For six seasons, the Angels paired him with another generational player: Ohtani.

Two extraordinary talents. Zero postseason appearances together.

Then Ohtani left Anaheim, drove north and signed with the Dodgers.

He has won the World Series in both seasons since.

Sometimes the punchline writes itself.

Baseball is still a team sport. One superstar cannot make up for bad roster construction, weak pitching and years of organizational dysfunction.

The Dodgers get that.

They don’t ask Ohtani to carry the team. They surround him with Betts and Freeman. Then Tucker. Yamamoto. Snell. And when somebody notices Skubal is available, apparently the answer is: sure, let’s get him too.

That costs money. The Dodgers have plenty.

They are drawing more than 50,000 fans per home game, tops in Major League Baseball. The Angels are averaging about 32,000.

That isn’t terrible attendance. But Dodger Stadium feels like an event.

Angel Stadium frequently has enough empty seats that you wonder whether everyone is still stuck on the 57.

The difference extends to the dugout.

The Dodgers re-signed Dave Roberts through 2029. He has taken them to the postseason every year he has managed the club, and has three World Series championships to show for it.

Since Mike Scioscia left after 2018, the Angels have cycled through Brad Ausmus, Joe Maddon, Phil Nevin, Ron Washington and now Kurt Suzuki, on a one-year contract.

The Dodgers know Dave Roberts will be managing next year.

The Angels keep changing the name on the office door.

They fired their general manager in June and have an interim replacement.

Angels fans know whom they blame.

Arte Moreno.

Moreno bought the team in 2003, one year after the Angels won their only World Series. More than two decades later, fans have organized protests at Angel Stadium, chant “SELL THE TEAM” during games and show up with signs demanding Moreno leave.

They don’t merely think Moreno has failed. Increasingly, they think he is the obstacle to fixing what has failed.

And then there is the name.

Moreno famously turned the Anaheim Angels into the tortured “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” before eventually dropping Anaheim altogether.

Sacramento, naturally, has found something it can fix.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed the “Home Run for Anaheim Act.” If Anaheim receives a state Surplus Land Act exemption for a future sale or long-term lease involving Angel Stadium, transaction documents and related promotional materials would have to call the team the Anaheim Angels, unless the city and team strike a separate agreement.

The measure passed both houses of the Legislature without a single “no” vote.

It is difficult to imagine a more California solution.

The Dodgers are chasing a third consecutive World Series championship. The Angels haven’t played a postseason game in 12 years. They managed to employ Trout and Ohtani at the same time without ever reaching October. Their own fans want the owner gone.

California government surveyed all of that and sprang into action: Sacramento is working on the name.

Maybe this is the rare case where California’s progressive Legislature didn’t regulate aggressively enough.

They should have just required that a team owner actually try to build a winning franchise.

Oh, by the way — I live in Orange County.

Now you know why my season tickets are at Chavez Ravine.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics and a lifelong baseball fan, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.