Happy Birthday, that'll be 22 million bucks kid.Another topic that we missed while I was sitting around doing nothing (I did finish Bioshock in a marathon two days, though…yeah never mind) was the word that new Tribune Company owner Sam Zell not only wants to sell Wrigley Field to the state, but also that it might be time to sell the naming rights.

I love all of the hand-wringing this caused from ‘traditionalist’ jerkoff Cubs fans who didn’t want a corporate name associated with the baseball field the teams plays in.

It’s Wrigley Field, isn’t it? It’s named after gum that loses its taste in 17.4 seconds and you can’t blow bubbles with. How is that not corporate?

Oh, no, they explain, it’s named after the family not the gum. It’s tradition. It’s been Wrigley Field forever.


First off, those dopes are wrong. It hasn’t been Wrigley Field forever. Wrigley is the third name the park has had. It was built in 1914 and named Weeghman Park in honor of Lucky Charlie Weeghman, the guy who paid to have the park built and who owned the Federal League’s Chicago Chifeds (how original) who would eventually become the horseshit baseball we currently root for.

Weeghman’s motives for naming the park after himself weren’t so pure anyway. He owned a bunch of lunch counters that bore his name. It was advertising. In 1914 it was advertising, just like it would be in 2008.

Weeghman renamed the Chifeds and in 1915 they were the Whales, after his portly wife Wendy. After the 1915 season Weeghman bought the National League’s Cubs and merged them with the Whales. In 1916 he became the first owner to let fans keep the foul balls that they caught. Largely, he did this because Wendy chewed on them in the dugout after games otherwise.

After the 1919 season, William Wrigley bought up enough shares of the Cubs to take control of the team. Weeghman claimed to have many more shares than Wrigley and called a press conference to prove it, only to find that Wendy had been wrapping hot dogs in the shares and eating them for years.

From then on, Wrigley was running the show, and Weeghman Park had become Cubs Park. In 1927, the Wrigley’s finally got around to putting up a sign that announced it was now Wrigley Field. I’m sure the fact that the gum company shared the same name was purely a coincidence.

They were not alone, however. At the time, several parks around the big leagues were named after family owned corporations, including Crosley Bail Bonds in Cincinnati, Fenway Douche in Boston, Ebbetts Magic Boner Pills of Brooklyn and most famously Forbes Gynecology in Pissburgh.

So, from 1927 until today, the Wrigley Family has had a big-assed red sign hanging off the park advertising their gum. That nonsense has to change.

If I bought the Cubs from crazy Sam, the first call I’d make would be to the Wrigley Chewing Gum Company, and if they want to keep their ad on the outside of the park, that’s fine. It’ll also be $50 million to be payable over the next ten years. $75 million if they’d like to commit to 20 years.

See, that was easy. If they think it’s too much, well screw them. I’m sure Alpo or Sony or Nokia or some other good, American company will pay up.

Heck, if that failed, I’d just name the park myself.

Who are these guys?  Just random douches.

If anybody’s going to get an ad they don’t pay for, it’s going to be me.

I guess I just don’t understand why anybody really cares what the park is called. The ivy will still be there, Ron Santo will still call it Wrigley, the team will still suck. Everything you’ve come to know about the park will stay the same. What is the big deal?

Do you think Sox fans really cared that when their team finally perpetrated a hoax to pretend the 2005 World Series wasn’t canceled for lack of interest (like we know it was) and acted like they’d won it playing in US Cellular Field instead of Comiskey? Hell, Charlie Comiskey, was, by all accounts a scumbag. Screw him. And screw the Wrigley Corporation.

When William Wrigley died in 1932 so did most of the Cubs success. They still had enough good players to play in the World Series in 1935 and 1938, but with the closeted PK Wrigley in charge they were never the same. If not for the fact they had the best players unfit for armed service in 1945 the pathetic pennant-less streak would be even longer. Until they sold the team to the Tribune Company in 1982, the Cubs, as run by the Wrigleys, were gawdawful. So screw them, too.

Nobody’s jumping up and down to name the park after the Tribune Company, and they were probably just a tad bit less incompetent than the last 40 years of the Wrigley ownership.

Leave it to Cubs fans to obsess about something as ultimately pointless as what the name of the ballpark is.

Now, about the annoying celebrity seventh inning stretch singers…