Re-Naming Wrigley Field: One Suggestion for Chicagoans

The Tribune Company is in the midst of trying to sell the Cubs, and will apparently be selling the stadium and the team separately, which has apparently confounded the process. The plan apparently consists of having the state acquire Wrigley and renovate it. Worse yet for Cubbies fans, Tribune Company CEO Sam Zell suggests that renaming the old park isn't off the table. For the baseball purists out there he had this shot: "Perhaps the Wrigley Co. will decide that, after getting it for free for so long, that it's time to pay for it."

That's right - "Wrigley" is a corporate name, and Mr. Zell did a fine job of reminding everyone and in so-doing labeling those who would oppose any sort of name change for the close to 100-year old park, "pseudo-purists."

The game of baseball went nearly a half century without a team relocating, and went almost 60 years without any expansion. The game of baseball is in some ways an anachronism - teams that came into existence more than 40 years ago are still called "expansion" teams. Meanwhile, you're not likely to find a person who would call the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL an "expansion" team. It is easy to get overly caught in the tradition and history without being able to look ahead: Is selling the naming rights to a baseball stadium that bad? We see it all the time in football, but the NFL despite it's close to 90 years of history has never had the painful time evolving that baseball has. However, Wrigley is in a unique situation - corporately named or not, the name has come to mean baseball.

Perhaps being a prisoner to its history is something the game will have to accept. Sadly for Mr. Zell, the name "Wrigley Field" conjures up not images of chewing gum, but of ivy covered walls. It has become part of the history and lure of the game. The time to have had the battle over the name was in the early-1980s when the Tribune Company bought the team, not now, when it's attempting its exit. More than a quarter century more has since passed, only cementing the name "Wrigley" on the façade of the building more deeply.

One suggestion the people of Chicago might consider, should the state acquire the old ball yard, would be to look to the west for some guidance with the issue of retaining the name of the beloved park: the people of San Francisco might have figured something out.

In 2004, San Francisco voters passed Proposition H which forbade the selling of Candlestick Park's (or any successor stadium built on Candlestick Point) naming rights after today's expiration of the deal that made the 45-year old ball yard "Monster Park." Let it be known that February 29 is not only a once every 4 year event, it could also be the start of a larger movement away from corporate naming rights - at least on publicly funded facilities.

As long as player salaries keep escalating - and league administrators continue to pay the insane prices - new areas of revenue will continue to be tapped. As long as there are areas to tap, players will demand their cut. One way to tell them this revenue source has dried up may well be a series of Proposition H's.