Naming Rights

[Matthew Trueblood]

When I started here at Brewer Fanatic, I gave two foundational takes. Both were about what to call things. Today, I want to revisit one of those takes, in particular, because I think it needs amendment—for all kinds of reasons.

Image courtesy of © Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

You can go re-read that introductory post, if you'd like, but I'll quickly recap the essentials from the bottom thereof. I made two forceful claims centered on Brewers nomenclature:

1. The team's home is Miller Park, not American Family Field. 
2. Devin Williams's signature pitch is a screwball, not a changeup.

I still believe the second one, for reasons I have expounded upon plenty. It relies on spin. It moves unlike any other changeup. It's a reverse breaking ball, and we call those screwballs. I feel a little badly about resisting Williams's own preference for calling it a changeup, but since I'm a person with eyes and a reasoning brain, I have a responsibility to use them. 

However, I want to issue a call for a new spin on the first take. I still fervently believe that we should resist calling the park American Family Field, or AmFam. That gigantic insurance company is paying the Brewers millions of dollars for the right to have the Brewers officially name a building after them, but neither I nor you are receiving any of that money. We are free to call the thing whatever we want. It might be the legal property of the Brewers, or of the government bodies created to build and maintain it, but when we interact with it, we do so unofficially. We can call the park whatever we want.

For that very reason, though, I don't think I want to call it Miller Park anymore, either. That did feel a little truer to the brand, a little more lived-in and earned, but it was still a corporate name bought and paid for by a company to which few of us owe any fealty. When we buy into the idea by calling the park either of its corporate names, we not only give those companies a bit of our own independence, but relinquish our right to call it by some name that more pleasantly reflects the way we think about the place and what happens there.

I'm serious about this: let's call the place Uecker Field, or The Ueck. Bob Uecker is already everywhere you turn, there, and God willing, he always will be. Why not call the very ground on which the Brewers play by the name of the most important person in the history of the franchise? Isn't that a last and most lasting tribute to Uecker, one befitting the way his enthusiasm and humor helped make baseball viable in Milwaukee for the long haul?

The names of things matter, but parties at least one level removed from real encounter with or investment in those things have no legitimate right to decide upon those names. That right belongs to the people and communities to whom those things truly belong, in a sense much larger than having a deed or a lease. Baseball teams are public goods, and while the Attanasio family might own this one in a certain sense, fans in Milwaukee (and throughout Wisconsin) own them in a much more real and important sense. Fans don't have the right to put up signage or spraypaint any particular name on the grass alongside the baselines, but they have a right—every right, a much more substantial right than any corporation or billionaire family—to give the place where they gather to give their team the support that is essential to its survival whatever name they like best.

Uecker's memory will not fade anytime soon, even if we don't elect to informally rename the place where he came to work for the last quarter-century of his life. Still, I think we should do it. It would be a neat way to assert a measure of resistance against the growing tendency to make decisions like these at a level that shuts out the most intimate and engaged stakeholders in a choice like this. It would subvert the farce and meaninglessness that comes with so many such naming decisions, made by people too far from the thing they're renaming to understand it. It would also bring a small smile to many fans' faces, every time they told a friend their plan for the evening. "I'm going down to The Ueck, to see a ball game."

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[ARobsBrewCrew]

Bob Uecker Field at Miller Park a la Rickey Henderson Field at the Oakland Coliseum.  It’ll always be Miller Park in my eyes, but I like the idea of finding a way to include Ueck.  He was Milwaukee through and through.

[Sugarrayray]

Beautiful Matt. 
 

And your sentiment does NOT have the bad breath of priests.

[jay87shot]

I like the idea of naming something important after Uke, however wouldn't it be more on brand to name a bunch of silly stuff after Uke. Maybe make every each vendor (food, clothing) something with Uke or name the parking lot after him. Maybe just name all the food after his famous lines and stories. Maybe change Bernie the Brewer to Bob the Brewer, expand the Chalet by the mug and slide into a Bob Uecker musuem and call the whole thing Bob's clubhouse.

I love the idea of naming the whole stadium or field after him but really his influence was everywhere else.

 

 

[Brian]

I would be all for it but naming rights are all about $$$$$. 

[hawing]

I'm all the way on board with referring to the Brewers' home ballpark as The Ueck. 

[Frisbee Slider]

Genuinely, we should want the naming rights to be as valuable as possible for the Milwaukee Brewers, and should not want to undermine the corporate name.

[Hambone]

I think that's a great idea. Let's give the fans an online vote... Yes/no and see what happens. I love "The Ueck" or "Uecker Field" at whatever... Probably should've been done long ago eh? A great gesture. I mean the guy had his own elevator, his own seat at the bar at Jackson's Supper Club on Bluemound long ago. His own entrance and exit at every establishment. The only thing he doesn't have is his own field. All around town all of the Brewers/Braves have fields and such named after them. I'm all for it. 👍

[keephopealive]

I absolutely love the idea for the name and the sentiment and argument behind it.  

[Harold Hutchison]

Uecker Stadium at American Family Field.

American Family Insurance keeps the AFF part, but the stadium itself stays named for Uecker.