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Friday, September 29
Forget corporate America, call parks what you want



Milwaukee loses a precious bit of its baseball heritage Thursday that is nearly as old as Bob Uecker's "I Must Be in the Front Rooooowww" routine.

No one writes lyrical essays about County Stadium. Ken Burns will never film a nine-night history of Bernie Brewer. Doris Kearns Goodwin will never write a loving memoir about the Chicken Dance and the Sausage Race. County Stadium's charms are as difficult to define as the secret ingredients to its bratwurst sauce.

But if you ever watched a game there, if you ever saw Warren Spahn pitch from its mound or your best friend from college hurl in the parking lot after challenging the stadium bratwurst and beer record, you know that it is a special place.

Sausage race
The County Stadium sausage race was a ritual during Brewers' games.

It's where Hank Aaron hit 155 home runs in his career and where Willie Mays hit four in one day. Where Harvey Haddix pitched a perfect game and lost, and where Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn pitched imperfectly and won. It's where everyone from the Milwaukee Braves to the Green Bay Packers to the Happy Days All-Stars called home.

But after Thursday's game, the wrecking ball will do what Harvey's Wallbangers could not: knock down the fences and reduce the stadium to rubble. The Brewers move into another one of those retro-park behemoths next year, a stadium designed for corporate executives and funded by taxpayers.

It's a shame. Although it was the first publicly-funded stadium built to steal a baseball team from another city (doing so twice), County Stadium always remained a very human ballpark, one much more connected to its citizens than to the corporate executives who will fill the luxury suites at the new place.

Bernie Brewer may be moving to the new stadium, but he will be as out of place there as a salad on David Wells' plate.

And with County Stadium's departure, along with Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, we lose two more parks with names that were meant to identify the location rather than advertise a corporation.

True, advertising has been a part of baseball almost as long as Jesse Orosco. Wrigley Field, after all, carries the name of a chewing gum company. Busch Stadium carries the name of a brewery company. Tiger Stadium used to be Briggs Stadium, when the automobile parts people owned the team.

What is different now, however, is our unthinking acceptance of this corporate sponsorship. A multi-national comglomeration with far too much money pays a team millions of dollars to slap its name on a wall and we question it less than a manager's decision to play the infield in. Rename Jack Murphy Stadium for a computer company? Go ahead. Call Riverfront Stadium for an electricity company? Whatever you say. Just tell us how much higher our utility rates will be.

And it doesn't end there, either. Everything from individual innings (the Snapper Mow 'Em Down inning) to entire seasons (Sycuan Presents the 2000 San Diego Padres) are purchased, labeled and shoveled down the throats of fans like so many "iron supplements" going into C.J. Hunter's gullet.

Which is fine. If a team can con some company into tossing away its money, more power to them, as long as the money goes to signing a free agent for the home team. But that doesn't mean fans need to go along with the name change.

Upset that an electric company owns the naming rights to Cincinnati's stadium? Don't be. Just refer to it as Riverfront Stadium, same as you used to do. Concerned that Milwaukee's new stadium will be named for a beer company? Just call it Milwaukee County Stadium, same as now. Feel the name of Seattle's stadium doesn't begin to reflect the region? Call it whatever you want. Rainier Field. Cascade Park. Or, given the lingering construction costs, Debits Field.

Don't be sheep. Don't give in to corporate demands. Remember. You paid for the stadiums. Call them what you want.

The above paragraphs were brought to you by Arthur Meadows Richman, a wholly owned subsidiary of a multi-national conglomerate dedicated to increasing market share and stockholder profits.

Jim Caple is the national baseball writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has a website at www.seattle-pi.com.
 



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So long to blue-collar County Stadium