Rangerfans.com

This had better not be true.
Scott Rolen as a Texas Ranger? Wow, if there ever was a player to bring IN to the team that would get me to NOT want to be a fan, that would be it.
If you want to know why I feel that way, just remember where I grew up (Philly). Fuck Scott Rolen. I’d rather be a Braves fan, leading the “chop”. I’d rather be a Yankees fan than have Scott Rolen on my team.
The fact that we’d have to trade Hank Blalock away would make it even worse.

Something that’s been on my mind lately has been corporate sponsorships. The majority of parks these days have them. The owners and the reps from said companies make these grandiose statements about how it’s “great for the community”, or “our partnership will bring such and such” to the fans, and all that. But we all know what it’s really for. Lining the pockets of the owners with some more money.

OK, OK, it’s probably not all for the owner’s personal jet fuel bill, or the wife’s shoe budget, I’m sure some of it goes back to the team in some capacity (extra management salary, perhaps? – yes that last bit was sarcasm, Dave), but I’ve yet to run into a fan that honestly thinks these things are a GREAT idea. Most every one of these parks that has a corporate name almost invariably has it’s nickname ignored by the people who matter the most. The fans.

This is a Rangers fan site, so I’m most familiar with our own corporate shill name (which is now fortunately gone), “Ameriquest Field in Arlington”. You ask any fan of the Rangers, and did they call it “Ameriquest Field”? Heck no, they still called it “The Ballpark”, after it’s original name “The Ballpark in Arlington”. I admit I was one of those people who was not at first a fan of the park’s original name. I wanted Vandergriff Field, or perhaps something to do with Nolan Ryan, but over the years, “The Ballpark” really grew on me. I like that name a lot. It’s simple. It works. These corporate names are frequently not simple, and they almost never work – the majority of them are fingernails on a chalkboard. Very few truly blend in – off the top of my head, the only one that does is the name of the Reds’ current home – “The Great American Ballpark”. For two years after it opened, I didn’t even know it was a corporate name, I just thought it was a really cool name. Oh well. That’s one against my argument, but it is very much the exception.

Lately I’ve been thinking of all the parks, and it made me wonder how many of them do not have any sort of corporate sponsorship at all. So I decided to run down the lot of them, and come up with some more information about their names, their former names, nicknames, etc… I’m organizing them by age, from their original opening to the newest parks. I’m also adding a few thoughts of my own unrelated to the corporate sponsorship issue I raised here. I realized once I got started that I have a few thoughts on these places, even though I’ve not personally visited the huge majority of them.

The stadiums I’ve been near, but not been to games at are Fenway, RFK, Tropicana, & Turner. (My wife has been to Skydome, but not for a game). The stadiums I’ve actually seen games at are: Oriole Park, Ballpark in Arlington, Minute Maid, PNC Park, Citizens Bank. Stadiums that aren’t around anymore that I’ve seen games at were: Veterans Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, The Astrodome, Mile High Stadium (Rockies 1st season).

So sit back and prepare to bask in my opinions on corporate sponsorship deals around Major League Baseball, as well as my thoughts on the various ballparks that make up the major leagues. If you are reading this on an RSS reader somewhere, you will have to visit my site to get the whole article. It was too large (at 18,100 words or so) to stick in the rss feed. :)

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