Over at Baseball Think Factory -- and at his own website -- a longtime web acquaintance of mine has announced a fun little campaign to informally rename all 30 big league ballparks.
The idea: just because some company called “Guaranteed Rate” paid the White Sox a lot of money to give them naming rights doesn’t mean that we’re bound to call the park in which they play that silly name. Same with Chase and the Diamondbacks or any other corporate entity. Sure, if we identify them in a legal document we’re obligated to use the legal name, but there is nothing obligating us to give these businesses free advertising via our daily conversation about baseball.
So he’s asking for nominations for alternative, non-corporate names:Both here, and at my primary home for online baseball activity, Baseball Think Factory, we’re going to establish new names, or at least validate the old ones, for all 30 ballparks. If you think Houston can do better than Minute Maid Park (and who doesn’t?), then let’s find a better name for the joint. Or, if you think the park at Clark and Addison can be known as nothing but Wrigley, that’s cool too.
I’ll introduce a new team, and solicit suggestions for a new name for the team’s ballpark. Perhaps the park is located adjacent to an interesting geographic feature of its host city, or near the site of an important event in history. Maybe there’s an interesting baseball connection, either with the home team or a ballplayer from the past. A significant local industry might have called that area of the city home at one point in time. I’m looking for the kind of name that will be unique to its home city, and one that can stand the test of time.
Some parks -- Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Fenway and Wrigley -- could never be anything else, of course, even if the origin of the name was commercial. It’s also worth allowing that some corporate names are better than others. If the park -- like Citi Field or Sun Trust Park -- had never existed without a different name, sure, it has as good a claim as anything else. But can we not agree that Shea Stadium II or Henry Aaron Park would be better?
It’s a fun thought exercise if nothing else. If you feel like exercising your thoughts along these lines, go submit some nominations. They’ll eventually be narrowed down and voted upon.
