what's-it's-name Park

I'm not necessarily opposed to all stadium naming deals. As long as the name isn't replacing a historically significant name and is on the stadium long enough to form a lasting recognition between the name of the stadium and the team which plays there, fair enough.

But there's a few problems with the current spate of brand-new ballparks with brand-new sponsor naming rights.

Stadiums in the first wave of the building boom have already moved on and changed from their initial name. I still think of the stadium in Houston as Enron Field, and I still refer to the Giants' park as PacBell.

The other problem is with so many new corporately-tagged stadiums, the names just blur together. I saw a game in Philadelphia just a couple weeks ago, and I had to look up the name of the stadium when I started to write this post.

The name (Citizen Bank Park) blurs away in my memory, and the park itself generally does the same. It has all the requisite new-retro styling. The concessions are varied and plentiful (and in a nice touch, a decent selection of microbrews are the same price as the big-name standards).

There are a few nice touches. The bullpens are both in centerfield, with the visitors' pen stacked a level above the home pen. When a visiting reliever is called into the game, he has to run down the stairs and past the Phillies bullpen staff to reach the field. Above the bullpens is a standing-room concourse, so fans can perch at the rails and look down at the pitchers warming up. It's like a balcony seat, with a pretty good view of the game as well.

There's also a few confusing touches. Television monitors are mounted above the back of the lower-level sections along the third-base line, so fans in the concourse or the further-back seats can see the action. There are no such monitors along the first-base side, even though the areas are otherwise symmetrical and I believe the price levels of the seats are the same.

I bought an upper-deck seat, but mostly stayed with the standing room crowd. I wandered the stadium, stopping to watch each inning behind the seats of a different section. (Ushers were stationed just about everywhere checking tickets, although I probably could have made it into a lower-level seat long before I actually did in the eighth inning).

The atmosphere reminded me of St. Louis. Same red-clad crowd, same general feeling of a baseball-savvy crowd. There was a surprising crowd of more than 42,000 for a Wednesday afternoon game. In a nice touch, the ushers prevented anyone moving from the concourse into their seating area during an at-bat.

The game was a good one, as well. Tied up late before the Phillies pushed past the White Sox for what was, in the end, an easy win.