Yet they are being ripped from our lives, and the reason is that corporations are seizing the names of our beloved parks and stadiums, and replacing these with their own. It was a sad, sad day when Boston's Garden became the Fleet Center, and San Francisco's Candlestick became 3Com Park. This change represents a flattening of our culture, the emotional equivalent of a Soviet marriage. It uproots sports from local culture and tradition, and wraps them in the pecuniary legalism of commerce instead. It is yet another instance of the chilling and Orwellian corporate takeover of our civic and cultural life.
Sports writers are our last line of defense.
You are the keepers of the language of sports. You have the power to name, which is the power to define. There is no law that says that you have to call a sports venue what a big corporation wants you to call it. There is no reason. How many of us can keep straight the corporate names that have no grounding in place in our minds.