Long ball delivered

On the occasion of the first rebranding of naming-rights for our ballpark, from Pac Bell to SBC in early 2004, I published the following letter in the (then-Hearst-owned) Examiner:

Editor — The Jake, the Bob, the Pink, the Maid.  Delete from those examples the Bell, the beloved shorthand Giants’ fans use to humanize corporatized ballpark signage.

3Com imploded here, as will SBC Park, despite our new phone company’s belief. But because the name change won’t finalize until March, why not give SBC one last chance to get to know us?

It’s simple: They add an “e” to “Bell,” and the stadium becomes SBC’s Pacific Belle Park.  The obvious association of the modified word with the uniqueness of ballpark and city alike should spur even the dullest corporate cognition.

Regardless, fans will keep the faith. We should insist news outlets use the Belle in their reportage. We can produce our own signage, with T-shirts and other products: “It’s the Belle for our ball!” (But you get the idea.) Proceeds could go to charity.

It’s consummate good neighbor policy for SBC. Their apology alone proffers unheralded P.R. value. Or will we instead look back and regret that there hadn’t been a comparable cinch since Bill Buckner stooped to conquer?

The Examiner Sports section, in short order (and purely coincidentally, I was later informed), proposed a name-change contest to the fans. As it happens, Giants’ management, at the no doubt subtlest of SBC suggestion, prevailed upon the Examiner and (full disclosure here) my old friend and former Ex colleague of 30 years earlier, sports editor Glenn Schwarz, to cancel the contest after two weeks.

The Belle name, I might add, led the voting when the contest was shut down. Coming at the heels of Candlestick reemerging as the inglorious 3Com Park, local fandom’s distaste for sports facilities as corporate billboards had become quite pronounced, if not vehement. As for me personally, we’ve all known people in our lives who’ve tried to play God, but who do you know who’s named a ballpark?

Certainly corporate signage hasn’t augured well for baseball. It’s fast approaching ludicrousness when no high point of on-field action can be described without prefacing and conjoining it with corporate sponsorship. But we’re faced with something far more ominous right about now.

Indeed, we find our local nine wallowing last in both leagues for home-field winning percentage. The reason should be obvious. The second rebranding of naming rights for the ballpark, in 2006, went to AT&T. Yep, that bunch that illegally assimilated billions of Americans’ phone calls, voicemails and e-mails from 2001 to 2006, made a mockery of the Fourth Amendment at the behest of a president who has intimated that he receives divine inspiration daily, are the same crew that was given immunity from private lawsuits last week with the passage by the House of the FISA Amendment Bill.

In a nutshell, that’s where the jinx lies, gang.

I mean, how could it be otherwise? The great social laboratory and legendary mecca for political inclusion which is the city of San Francisco is attempting to win baseball games in a facility named after handmaidens of domestic espionage who unquestioningly took their orders from a man whose last name ought rightfully to be rebranded C-e-a-u-s-e-s-c-u.  Perhaps I put too fine a point on it. Then again, I live here.

So how do we best proceed? A glib first thought might be a pertinent re-shaping of the Ballad of Joe Hill: “I dreamed I saw Zito w-i-n last night.” Hmm, maybe not so glib, at that. Zito has an acoustic guitar, he sings, the refrain could be a helpful pre-game mantra and perhaps induce a change in his woeful fortunes.

Surely we’re due for another fan name-change convocation. Not China Basin or Mays Field or the Belle, again, but something more appropriate, along the lines of, for instance, Data-mine Park, Eavesdrop Field, Surveillance Stadium. And, of course, we can consider multiple names. Assholes Through & Through could possibly be one of them. I invite your suggestions, and I’ll list them.

Given our particular ethos and proclivities, it seems we’re tasked with nothing less than rubbing the nose of AT&T into its own merde. T-shirts, sweatshirts, viral videos, our own infrastructure signage, on-site performance art, visible boat-mast banners, etc., serve us well.  We decidedly encapsulate a certain sensibility here, inclusive of the Yippie “mindfuck” lineage of 40 years ago.  It all could be as historically momentous as, for example, Wally Pipp taking the day off.

The possibilities are delicious, and foremost among them, I would think, should be repetitive real-time (as in, game-time) acknowledgment of the incalculable contribution of former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on the data-mining “secret room” Big Brother NSA had installed in the telecom‘s offices here, one of at least 15 similar sites around the country.

Time will reveal Klein deserving of Mt. Rushmore–equivalent placement, frankly, but I’m personally prepared to take my turn in draping his visage over, say, the Arcade wall next to Mel Ott’s number, or anywhere else in the yard where genuine Giants’ heroes and friends are displayed.

Overall, our complementary objective is to get our guys out of their home field slump. But given the context in which they’re enmeshed, the methodology of payback is in order. Think of it as that crucial 7th inning of the final day of the 1982 season against the Dodgers, with Joe Morgan at-bat. Except that now, Tom Paine is pinch-hitting for him.

As an advisory, it’s well to bear in mind that nothing in the new FISA bill precludes the great “Decider” from designating anything he wishes as threats to national security, and nothing that stops him from immediately siccing these immune telecoms onto his targets without need of a warrant. And as I upload this piece into the ether a few minutes from now, I’ll definitely have that in mind, as should anyone desirous of partaking of what I’ve laid out. Who knows how the tinky minds that have set loose the scumbaggery of usurping the Constitution these many years might react to a variety of nonviolent but necessarily caustic playfulness intent upon illumining the extremely serious straits in which this nation finds itself. To say nothing of the plight of the Giants.

The plate’s been dusted off. Let’s get under way.

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