NAME AREAL SHAME
‘ ZERO INTEREST PARK’ IS MUCH MORE FITTING FOR SOX
The dust has settled a bit on the bomb the White Sox dropped last week, the news that the corporately named U. S. Cellular Field would be called the horribly generic Guaranteed Rate Field starting in November.
It stirred up all sorts of emotions in Sox fans, with homicidal anger defeating can’t- get- out- of- bed depression 58 percent to 42 percent in final polling.
Clearly, few people are going to call the ballpark Guaranteed Rate Field for any of the next 13 years, which is how long Guaranteed Rate, a mortgage company, will have naming rights to the stadium. It’s a clumsy, lumbering name that would be all thumbs if it were a hand. It’s a ballpark name that honors Fred, the loan processor, a lot more than it does Frank, the magnificent hitter.
So what to call it? Many of you have suggested nicknames, and the one that keeps coming up is The Grate, not to be confused in any way with The Great. A grate, readers pointed out, is pretty much a drain, which is what the flailing Sox have been going down for a while.
Guaranteed Rate’s logo is an arrow pointing down, so that would fit the theme. What says ‘‘ We’re going places!’’ more than an arrow directing you to the earth’s core? A grate also holds wood in a fireplace, so anything having to do with ashes works here, too.
It’s a good nickname. I would have no problem calling it that in print. My concern is that, as time goes by, we’ll lose sight of why we’re referring to it as The Grate. It will lose some of its punitive nastiness. True, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. No reason to punish yourself over and over again by reliving the horror of the unveiling of the name Guaranteed Rate Field.
But are we going to let the Sox get away with foisting this atrocity upon an already bruised and battered fan base? There has to be some sort of reckoning. As one reader wrote of the name change last week: ‘‘ Seriously? Do the Sox walk around saying, ‘ Everybody
else is crazy’?’’ Mountains of evidence suggest the answer is yes.
I’ve received lots of wonderful name suggestions for the park from Sox fans. Space prevents me from including all of them, but here’s a sampling:
‘‘ M- in- M Park, after general manager Rick Hahn’s declaration before the trade deadline that the Sox were ‘ mired in mediocrity.’ ’’
‘‘ Gar- Field because Garfield is a world- renowned comic fat cat.’’
‘‘ The Rate— not that I like it or anything. Fourth- Place Field must have already been taken.’’
‘‘ Guaranteed Fourth- Place Field.’’
‘‘ Cut Rate . . . Low Rate . . . Screw it, it’s still Comiskey.’’
‘‘ The affectionate fan name for Guaranteed Rate Field could be the first five letters, Guara, which is Spanish for a pile or a heap.’’
‘‘ Jerry Reinsdorf Park has a certain appeal, but [ the Sox’ chairman] would have to pay for it himself, and we know Jerry is always looking for somebody else to foot his bill.’’
‘‘ How about Greed Field?’’
‘‘ How about One and Done Field?’’
Good stuff, all of it. But the best suggestion came from reader Mike, who wrote: ‘‘ They could call the stadium 0% Interest because that’s what the fan base is becoming.’’
Zero Interest Field. A name that ties in both the mortgage industry and the dull product the Sox continue to impose on increasingly uninterested fans. Brilliant.
Better yet, as a friend suggested, Zero Interest Park— The ZIP, for short.
I know the likelihood of fans calling the park The ZIP are, well, zero. The name is too far removed from Guaranteed Rate Field, and it would be torturous to explain to people how we got from there to here. But isn’t that the perfect nickname for the ballpark of this moribund franchise?
When the Sox signed over naming rights to U. S. Cellular in 2003, plenty of traditionalists ignored the news and continued calling the place Comiskey Park. The change to Guaranteed Rate Field certainly won’t make those fans go soft on their loyalty to
Comiskey now.
I don’t know what I’m going to call the ballpark, but I know what I won’t be calling it. If a newspaper column were a threelane road, the inclusion of clunky Guaranteed Rate Field in it would be a stalled car, hood up, slowing traffic.
For now, I’m going with Zero Interest Park. The arrow is pointing up on that name.