Friday, April 28, 2006

stadiums that get it

Back in my ol' La Salle days, me and my radio co-host (ah, Monkey Knife Fighting, the sport of kings and Furious George) Mr. Danno Somatic Somavilla loved to make ourselves sick by going through the list of awkward stadium names caused by corporate naming rights. I know that this is a capitalist nation (for now... feudalism is the new black, if you haven't noticed) and that naming rights were at least SUPPOSED to keep teams from using taxpayer money for new digs. That didn't work, and now teams are stuck in fancy stadiums that have ugly and ever-changing names as companies merge. Can't we settle on classics so that we don't get confused?

In the tradition of that, I proudly present the list of the teams that have not sold out... completely. Actually, baseball is still doing okay at this - they're much better off than the other leagues with nearly half their teams not having a ridculous corporate name . I mean, the NBA has just a few left - less than five, I'd say, and hockey, which shars many of those buildings, can't be much better. Here are teams that get it and some that almost get it.

Partial Credit

St. Louis Cardinals : Busch Stadium (Annhesier-Busch owns the team and is based in St. Louis, so I can't really fault them)
* by the way, this is a new stadium, but they kept the old name, which should give them some points

Colorado Rockies : Coors Field (see Cardinals, same situation)

Atlanta Braves : (see Cardinals again) (and Ted shows up sometimes)

Milwaukee Brewers : (see Cardinals again... though I don't know if Miller actually owns them)

Washington Nationals : RFK Stadium (temporary, their new park will almost certainly have one)

Los Angeles Southern California Orange County Angels of Anaheim/ Fullerton / Orange / Brea / Garden Grove : Angel Stadium (it used to be Edison Field, after one of those corrupt Cali energy companies, but right now it doesn't have any sponsor... but how long can that last?)

The REAL Old-timers

New York Yankees : Yankee Stadium

New York Mets : Shea Stadium

Boston Red Sox : Fenway Park

Chicago Cubs : Wrigley Field

Los Angeles Dodgers : Dodger Stadium

Kansas City Royals : Kauffman Stadium

Baltimore Orioles : Camden Yards

Cleveland Indians : Jacobs Field

Minnesota Twins : Metrodome (the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, to be precise)

Cinncinatti Reds: Great American Ballpark (but what the hell does that mean? it still sounds lame)

1 comment:

Werd said...

There was actually a group in D.C. last year that was lobbying quite hard to get the new stadium to be called "Taxation Without Representation Park." Ai yuh, try getting Tim McCarver to say that ever.