Shea Stadium is being demolished as we speak. A new stadium is ready to go for the New York Mets, with Citibank having bought the naming rights for 20 years for $20 million per year.
The new stadium’s name, Citi Field, could be worse, of course, but that isn’t the reason for this brief post. It seems two NYC councilmen don’t think Citibank ought to have their name on a field given the Citi bailout and the fact that this naming nonsense is now being paid for with our tax dollars. And Citibank has no plans on pulling out of the deal.
Their councilmens’ solution? Call it Citi/Taxpayer Field, which is of course a dumb name but makes a good point.
My own suggestion for a name — since I don’t really want my tax dollars to go for promoting Citibank by wasting it on a baseball field, and big corporations aren’t likely to be stepping up to the plate with piles of money for naming rights any time soon — is to name it for the one man who wore the uniforms of all four big league teams to play in New York: The immortal Casey Stengel. (“Good pitching will always stop good hitting, and vice versa.”)
Citi Field should be out and Stengel Field should be in.
Unless, of course, someone out there has a better name?