American Family Field, Milwaukee (MLB #19 - What's in a Stadium Name?)
We’re attending games at American Family Field in Milwaukee this week. The name doesn’t mean that they’re trying hard to cater to American families, it means that American Family Insurance Company owns the “naming rights” to the stadium. In Milwaukee, you can still hear the stadium referred to as “Miller Park,” which was its name for the first 20 years of its existence. With 124 teams across North America in the “big four” leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL), and another 52 in the MLS, CFL and WNBA, there are lots of opportunities for naming rights. The vast majority of the facilities in all those leagues have the name of a corporate sponsor. In MLB, it’s 22 of 30, although the ones that don’t include arguably the most famous names, Yankee and Dodgers Stadiums, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park. But there are interesting stories in naming rights.
In 1950, none of the MLB parks have a corporate sponsor’s name on them. In fact, in 1953, when August Busch Jr. bought the Cardinals and what was then known as Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, baseball Commissioner Ford Frick vetoed Augie’s idea of renaming the stadium “Budweiser,” after his Anheuser-Busch stadium’s top-selling product. However, there was a long tradition of owners naming stadiums after themselves (more on that in a minute), so Frick couldn’t really object to the stadium being renamed “Busch Stadium.” Soon, Anheuser-Busch launched the “Busch” beer, and Augie had backdoored his way into having his stadium named after a product, a first.
In the mid-20th Century, there were several stadiums named after the owners who built the stadium, including Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Comiskey Park in Chicago, and Shibe Park in Philadelphia (which was renamed Connie Mack Stadium, my first memory of it, in honor of a later owner of the Athletics). My favorite example of that is Charles Weeghman, who built a stadium in Chicago for his team in the short-lived Federal League in 1915, and named it “Weeghman Field.” When the Federal League folded, Weeghman put together a group to buy the National League team, the Cubs, and moved them into Weeghman Stadium. A couple of years later, one of Weeghman’s partners, William Wrigley Jr., bought out the controlling interest in the team and stadium, and in the late 1920s, renamed the place “Wrigley Field,” the name it goes by today, even though the Wrigleys haven’t owned the team since 1981.
Back to Milwaukee
Although it was a corporate naming scheme, Miller Park seemed like a fantastic name for the home field of a team named the Brewers, since Miller is a brewery. But when the original 20-year contract for stadium naming rights expired, American Family Insurance outbid Miller, and the name changed in 2021. If you’re wondering what a name’s worth, American Family is paying the team $4 million per year for 15 years, compared to the $2 million per year Miller was paying.
Beer-making is part of Milwaukee’s image, still represented well by the Brewers. The team mascot is Bernie the Brewer, and after a home run, while they’re shooting off fireworks, he slides down a slide into what I believe was designed to look like a foaming beer. I like consistent marketing.
So I still like the Miller Park name. And I stand by that, even though the brewery hasn’t been owned locally since 1966, a time when the Braves were still playing in Milwaukee, and the Brewers didn’t even exist.
The downside of corporate naming rights
Although I understand the financial reasons for corporate naming rights, the system does lead to some problems.
The most noticeable is that one of the things that teams value, and financially need, is fan loyalty, and since going to “XXX” is a part of the experience, when you change the name to “YYY”, there will inevitably be unhappy people. As I mentioned, although this stadium became “American Family Field” five years ago, a lot of locals still refer to it as “Miller Park.”
Toronto’s “SkyDome” opened in 1989, but became the “Rogers Centre” in 2005. When we were in Toronto this year, the first group we talked to at the stadium explained that they still call it the SkyDome, despite the (not-so-recent) name change.
We’re going to see the Savannah Bananas in late September (there will be a blog about that) at Daikin Park in Houston. When my nephew offered us tickets, I jumped at the chance, but had to figure out where Daikin Park was. It turned out that it’s a stadium I’ve been to many times. For more than 20 years, it was Minute Maid Park (its name when we visited it on our tour last year), but Daikin bought naming rights this year. However, I’m old, so I still think of it as Enron Field, its name for the first two years it was open, before the corrupt energy corporation Enron went bankrupt, and the Astros paid $2.1 million to distance themselves from the public relations disaster.
We’re going to Progressive Field in Cleveland next year. It’s one of the first HOK “retro-classic” stadiums, reputed to be a great stadium even though it’s now more than 30 years old. However, to me it’s still “The Jake”, based on its name for its first decade-plus, Jacobs Field. In true retro-classic style, that name came from the team owners at the time of construction, although they apparently did buy naming rights.
Closest to my heart is the stadium where I’ve had season tickets for 20 years, Chase Field in Phoenix. When it opened in 1998, it was Bank One Ballpark, or “The BOB,” but that changed when Chase bought Bank One, in the mid-2000s. It took me years to stop referring to it as “The BOB,” but I no longer think of it that way. But the team mascot is still a bobcat, DBaxter. I think that DBaxter is one of the better team mascots around, although I’ll admit that I’m biased. But I’ve found that most fans don’t know why a team named after a snake (the Diamondbacks) would have a bobcat as a mascot. Like the diamondback, the bobcat is a desert animal (and I’m much happier when I encounter a bobcat than a rattlesnake), but when the mascot was announced, he was introduced as a BOBcat.
The truly annoying side of corporate naming rights
There’s a real attachment that grows to a name after the standard 15 or 20 years of corporate naming rights, or even after a couple of years of an innovative new stadium. Changing that is emotionally unsatisfying. But the really annoying side of corporate naming rights is when you get a strange company name, or, worse, when the name changes so often you don’t know what to call the place.
Although bizarre examples abound, I don’t have to leave Phoenix for examples.
I think my all-time favorite worst name for a sports facility is jobing.com Arena, where the occasionally lamented Phoenix Coyotes of the NHL once played. jobing.com is an employment website, and may be a fine company, but can you imagine saying, “I’m going to go see a game at jobing.com?” Maybe the folks at jobing.com thought people would.
A block from Chase Field is an arena that is currently the home to the Phoenix Suns (NBA) and Mercury (WNBA) and an indoor football team, and which once hosted the Coyotes for awhile. It opened in 1992, but while Chase Field has had two names in 28 years the PHX Arena (current name) has had at least seven names in 36 years. Locals don’t know what to call it.
One summer evening, Kerry and I were walking home from a baseball game, when we saw a couple looking at their cell phone and looking very lost. Since we know our way around downtown Phoenix reasonably well, when we see that lost look, we ask if they need directions. They said they did, that they were looking for the Footprint Center. We were puzzled, because we’d never heard of it (nor had Google Maps, apparently). When we encountered another couple also looking for the Footprint Center the same evening, we got on the web and searched, and found out that the arena had been renamed a day or two earlier, with naming rights taking effect immediately. Incidentally, the name held for less than four years.
So maybe I’m a curmudgeon, but I like the idea of continuity, of going to Yankee Stadium or Busch Stadium (even if it is the second or third incarnation, respectively), of a stadium’s name being connected to a team as much as the stadium it is. Meanwhile, I do have to say that I enjoy Miller Park.
I mean American Family Field.
The stadium
With the roof open, I really like the look of the stadium from the outside. The retracted roof looks like wings. On the inside, although I enjoyed the crowd, the stadium feels a little old. Plus, I always say I like a stadium with a view, of the Arch (Busch), of sunset on the San Gabriels (Dodger) or Rockies (Coors), of San Francisco Bay (Oracle), of the bridges over the Ohio (Pittsburgh), or of a nice skyline (Petco). American Family Field has a view of the clouds…
The game: Milwaukee Brewers 9, Arizona Diamondbacks 8
The game ended in a walk-off, and even though the Diamondbacks lost, it was a fun evening. For one thing, our group of 50 or 60 people was very much into the game. We were sitting about 15 rows behind the Diamondback dugout, on the third-base side, so at the end of each inning the Diamondbacks played defense, one of the players would throw the ball to someone in our section. Plus, when the Diamondbacks did something good, like hit a home run, most of the 32,000+ people in the stadium got very quiet, and we got very loud.
After three innings, the Brewers had six runs, and the Diamondbacks not only didn’t have a run, they didn’t have a base hit. But by the eighth, the Dbacks tied the game. We got a runner to third in the 9th, but he didn’t score. In the bottom of the 9th, our rookie pitcher, Juan Morillo, gave up a hit to the first batter and walked the next two. The next rookie pitcher (between a losing record and many pitchers out with injuries, it often feels like it's audition time), Kyle Backhus, got two hitters out, but the second, Sal Frelick, hit a fly ball deep enough that the runner at 3rd could tag and score.
One of the things I appreciated about the game was the redemption for a couple of players.
On our first trip of the year, we saw the Gwinnett Stripers (the Braves’ AAA team) play twice. I commented on the number of major league veterans they had, all of whom were looking for one more shot at the bigs, whether for a few seasons or even a few games. The poster child was James McCann, who had logged 11 years in the majors, including an all-star game at one point. He’s now 34 years, and I commented about McCann and another long-time major-leaguer, Garrett Cooper, “I wish them well, but I fear these guys are all has-beens.”
McCann got a pinch-hit double for Arizona Diamondbacks tonight to start the game-tying rally in the 8th inning. He made it up to the bigs in the way I would have expected of a 34-year-old former everyday player – someone got hurt. In this case, it was the Dbacks starting catcher, Gabriel Moreno, who broke a finger in early June, an injury that clearly was going to take some time to heal (he ended up missing more than two months). Rather than calling up a catcher from their own farm system, the Diamondbacks made a deal to get McCann. It wasn’t clear whether he’d be the starter or the backup, but as time went on, he played better and better, and more and more. When Moreno came off the injured list last week, the Diamondbacks kept McCann as the backup, and DFA’d the other catcher, Jose Herrera. DFA, incidentally, means “Designate for Assignment,” which means any other team can pick him up for their major league roster. No one did, so Herrera went back to the Dbacks AAA team, Reno.
On a personal level, I’m delighted for McCann, but heartbroken for Herrera. Herrera signed his first professional contract with the Diamondbacks 2013, and played his first professional baseball with their Rookie League team as a 17-year-old. That means he has played in the Dbacks organization longer than any other player at present (and maybe ever). After eight minor league seasons, he got his MLB debut in 2022, and has played 40 or 50 games in the bigs each of the last four seasons. My guess is that he’ll bounce up and down a few more times, but will end up as a coach within a couple of years.
Another tale of redemption was Shelby Miller, a pitcher who was a bust for the Dbacks in the mid 2010s, then made his way back to the majors and was an effective pitcher for us this year. He was the losing pitcher the last time we saw the Diamondbacks lose a game on the road on a walk-off (in Toronto), but tonight he was the winning pitcher! We traded him to Milwaukee a few weeks ago since he was the kind of pitcher they need to play deep into the post-season, and we weren’t going anywhere, so he may finally get a chance to pitch in a World Series.
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