So how would you like to have been Bob Bennett a week ago last Wednesday, or Richard Winwood, or Hyrum Smith, or Arlen Crouch? One day they're giving $200,000 to Salt Lake's new baseball stadium. Each. The next day people are complaining about it. Apparently, no one stopped payment on his check, but it's a wonder why.
These men and the company they either work for or used to work for - Franklin Quest - chipped in a total of $1.4 million to the construction of the 12,000-seat arena that will be situated on the site where the old Derks Field used to be. In return, the city named the stadium Franklin Quest Field.But no sooner was the new name announced than any number of criticisms rang out. Derks did not go quietly. People wondered if the city had a soul. If Franklin Quest had a soul. How could they wipe out a 53-year-old namesake? What was next, the Franklin Quest Salt Flats? The Golden Arches National Park? The Tastes Great, Less Filling Salt Lake?
People conjured up the memory of John C. Derks, for whom the old Community Ballpark was renamed in 1940, wondering how he would feel if he were alive. I admit, I was one of them. For a few moments, I could relate to how the baseball fans in Brooklyn must have felt when the Dodgers left and they tore down Ebbetts Field. As they say, everything should have its mourning time.
But nostalgia is one thing. Vilifying progress is another. By the next day I was sorry I'd joined the choir at all. The fallout was a case study in turning a positive into a negative. The mayor's office was bombarded with disgruntlement. One man, a sports historian, called it "the grossest kind of commercial exploitation. It goes to show that there is no end to which people will prostitute themselves." Another man, a sports writer, lamented that if the stadium had to be renamed, why couldn't it be renamed for another sports writer.
(Personally, I don't feel they should name stadiums after sports writers until they name truck stops after truckers and the moon after astronauts. The rule of thumb should be this: If it's your job to go in there, and they give you free Cokes and coffee while you're there, what's the big deal? Besides, Grantland Rice never had a park named after him).
(Also personally, if I could have picked a name for the stadium, cost not being a factor, it would have been named Art Teece Field, in tribute to a man who knew baseball when baseball wasn't cool).
The part that took me by surprise was the groundswell of negative energy when there didn't seem to be much of a precedent for such behavior. Two years ago, no one said anything negative about the Delta Center being named after an airline instead of Salt Palace II, after its predecessor, whose only remaining assignment would be to hold the annual boat show.
Before that, there were no outrages for Einar Nielsen or George Albert Smith when the fieldhouses that bore their respective names were replaced at the University of Utah and BYU by the Special Events Center and the Marriott Center, respectively. Nor was there criticism of philanthropist J. Willard Marriott getting his last name on BYU's new arena, or, later on, of Jon Huntsman getting his first and last names on the Special Events Center.
When Robert L. Rice paid for the AstroTurf at the U. of U. football stadium, no one begrudged them renaming it Robert L. Rice Stadium.
The days of naming arenas, stadiums, fields and parks after people who didn't contribute money ended long ago. Romney Stadium in Logan, named after longtime Utah State football coach E. L. "Dick" Romney, is the only sizeable arena in the state of Utah bearing the name of someone who never hired a C.P.A. to do his taxes.
It's the way it is in the era of the Weiser Lock Copper Bowl, the Thrifty Car Rental Holiday Bowl and the Great Western Forum. If Mario Andretti can hire out his fire suit and utility infielders can sell their autographs for $15 a name, why can't a stadium hire out its marquee? Especially when the alternatives are A) More taxpayer money required to build the park and/or B) Higher ticket prices.
What Bennett, Winwood, Smith, Crouch and Franklin Quest did was in no way less significant because they named the park after their company. They put their money where their interest was. The only real complaints should come from somebody else who paid $200,000. Not from a bunch of malcontents who couldn't pick John C. Derks out of a lineup. Give these guys a break. They committed no injustice. Except for the Jazz - a name that deserves banishment - and maybe the RollerBees, Utah's sports names make a lot of common sense, especially Franklin Quest Field.