Naming Rights and Naming Wrongs

Cynics often point out the increasingly corporate nature of professional sports in general, jesting that players will soon sell uniform space to corporate advertisers to milk every last dollar out of the great American cash cow. Will Ferrell took on the subject pretty directly in the recent Talladega Nights, putting a graphic on the windshield of his car and selling advertisements during his family’s dinner prayer. My own greatest corporate pet peeve in the sports world is the way that college football bowl games have gone from having unique and quirky names to horribly meaningless ones: aesthetically speaking, the Citrus, Peach, and Copper Bowls are much more appealing than the GMAC, Capital One, and MPC Computers Bowls. A few extra scholarships? Pish posh. And while baseball maintains tradition better than most sports, owners frequently face criticism for selling the naming rights of stadiums. I have always questioned the soundness of an investment in stadium naming rights; I know Comerica, Ameriquest, and Safeco quite well as names without really knowing what any of these companies does. Something with money, I would guess. In the meantime, roughly half of baseball’s stadiums have remained unblemished by the corporation-y corporations doing all of their corporate business. Why have some of the stadiums sold out (in the less desirable sense) while others have stayed true to their original nomenclature? That is exactly what I am here to investigate, and I will do so by grouping the traditional names into a few categories.

The Traditionalists

Fenway Park- John Henry’s ownership group has done a fantastic job of preserving the Red Sox heritage, playing up the historical mysticism and renovating Fenway as much as possible while some called for a new structure to replace it. The Citgo sign is about as corporate as the stadium gets, and the team’s burgeoning nationwide fan base ensures that there will be plenty of revenue to support a swelling payroll. Thus, the stadium’s name will continue to reflect the old nickname of the neighborhood in which it was built: “The Fens.”

Yankee Stadium- Not much explanation needed for this one; Yankee stadium is another one that does not need a corporate name to make money. I sometimes wonder if the Yankees had an identity complex when they moved into the Stadium after sharing the Polo Grounds and not finding much success. The only open question is how the new stadium will be named when it opens in a few years. I would guess that Steinbrenner has a big enough ego, or enough sense of history, to go with something along the lines of New Yankee Stadium.

Wrigley Field- Wrigley is arguably more tradition-laden than either of the previous two parks, boasting the history of all of the day games, the seventh inning stretch, and the ivy. It is striking to notice that a team with such a long and memorable history has only had four players with retired numbers: Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo. The conspicuous lack of heroes could indicate high standards, but it also seems to hint at the team’s failure. As etched in stone as the name may seem, Wrigely Field started out as Weeghman Park before being sold to William Wrigley and renamed in 1926.

Dodger Stadium- The Dodgers played in another Wrigley Field immediately after moving to the west coast. The origin of the name is easy to guess, and it is an appropriately proud and classy name for a classy franchise in their SoCal oasis.

The Memorials

Jacobs Field- It took the Jacobs brothers six years after buying the team to get public funding for a new stadium in 1990, helping to set the stage for future publicly funded stadiums. They get the distinction of having their names on the park forever. Unfortunately, it replaces one of the great stadium nicknames in the game: “the Mistake by the Lake,” for old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, which also won bonus points for playing itself in the movie Major League.

Kauffman Stadium- Ewing Kauffman owned the expansion Royals and got the naming rights that may have belonged to Charlie Finley if he did not mimic the California gold rush with his A’s, for whom the stadium was originally approved. Kauffman persists as a great park because it has always been a baseball stadium, bucking the trend of multi-purpose stadiums through the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Shea Stadium- While most stadiums named after an important person take their owners’ names, Shea took the name of the lawyer who helped bring NL baseball back to New York. Like Yankee Stadium, it will be interesting to see if the name is honored in any capacity once the new stadium comes to town.

Turner Field- Yup, Ted Turner, Turner Field. Not much distinction here, other than the fact that the stadium hosted the Olympics, and that it is the only park named after an apocalyptic nut paranoid about nuclear proliferation.

The Defiant Few

Oriole Park at Camden Yards- Camden does not refer to an owner or an important person in Baltimore history. Instead, Camden is the train station near the stadium and the name of the neighborhood surrounding the sports complex, which fits the stadium, since it is as open and closely related to the area as any stadium I have seen other than Wrigley.

Angel Stadium- In one of the biggest gifts to his fans an owner has given in recent memory that had nothing to do with on-field performance, Arte Moreno chose not to extend the naming rights of Edison International Field after the deal expired following the 2003 season. As far as I can find, Angel Stadium is the only park to go from a corporate to a non-corporate name.

The Undesirables

Dolphins Stadium- The Marlins play second fiddle to the Dolphins in south Florida, and nothing makes that reality more apparent than the stadium situation. If you have not seen the bleachers, they are all orange, the only color the Dolphins wear that they do not share with the Marlins’ color scheme. The team does not want to play in that stadium, and they have not tried to make the best of the situation; it will probably only get worse.

H.H.H. Metrodome- I suppose the Triple-H part could be considered a memorial name, but nobody uses that part anyway, defaulting to the more space-age Metrodome. I never really understood why Carl Pohlad or someone else did not try to sell naming rights to the stadium when money was never in abundance. I doubt the dual-sport nature of the facility plays into the scheme, since the San Diego teams agreed to indulge Qualcomm, and Candlestick became 3-Com while the Giants and 49ers still shared the facility. More interesting is the speculation about the name of the new stadium. I doubt anyone in the state would consent to letting Pohlad put his name on the edifice, the current name could never carry over, and there is no obvious champion in the legislative process who deserves the honor. It sounds like an ideal situation for corporate naming, maybe from a Minnesota-based company like Best Buy or 3M. I’m not giving up hope for a Jesse Ventura Field.

RFK Stadium- The Nationals came to town long after RFK had been named, and even after it had seemingly seen its usefulness pass by. The name comes from the sentimentality over the fall of Camelot around the time of the construction and has become something of an historical oddity. No other pro-sports stadium is named for a person with so little to do with the franchise.

Notes:

-There is hardly a common thread running through these examples, although I will venture to guess that the traditionalists are the most likely to remain unchanged. I also suspect that there will always be some stadiums named after owners or influential people in the franchise, but the particular teams with that distinction could change over the decades.

-In all of sports, my least favorite name has to be the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Quicken Loans Arena, which inspired forced nicknames dealing with the letter Q that were neither catchy nor intimidating. At the other end of the spectrum, my very favorite stadium name is Michigan’s “The Big House,” even though it is not the official title. I believe its ubiquity compensates for its lack of authenticity, and it meets every conceivably legitimate criterion for a cool stadium name.

-Some teams try to blend together a traditional name with a sponsor name, but the half-way business is less than the sum of its parts. McAfee Coliseum? What a hoax. On the other hand, a few sponsorships seem so natural and inoffensive that they actually appeal to me more than some non-corporate names. Examples: Miller Park, Coors Field. I swear it is not a brewery thing, but I would consider Busch Stadium, too.

-Finally, if there was any lack of clarity, the Rogers Centre in Toronto is not named for a kind benefactor, nor for Fred Rogers, but for Rogers Communications, who actually bought the whole stadium for 1/3 of what Ameriquest paid for 30 years of naming the Ballpark in Arlington ($75 mil-$25 mil). Also, the patriotically themed Great American Ballpark is not a send up to heroic fire-fighters or soldiers dying in war, but the name of an insurance company who plays on those same nationalistic feelings. Very tricky.