“A commitment to branding is why the signs going up this week around the 25-year-old stadium look virtually the same as the company’s logo, except for the word ‘field’ at the end.

Ciardelli said the design was a joint effort between the company’s in-house creative team and the Sox, who suggested replacing the arrow with an image of home plate. ‘But I told the White Sox that it’s our company logo, and they were respectful of the decision’ to keep the arrow after all, Ciardelli said.”

Given the dominance sports teams have enjoyed in stadium deal negotiations with municipalities in the past few decades, and that this sponsorship agreement will solely benefit the previously neglected state-run Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, there might be some karmic pleasure in seeing the White Sox swatted aside in a situation where they have no leverage. They made a deal with a company that has no interest in the arrangement beyond their own promotion, and are now reaping the reward. But then there’s still the part where we’re all stuck looking at this silly logo.

A common defense to having a large downward arrow stamped to the side of the stadium into the next decade is that it would not matter if the team was winning. If the Sox had made the playoffs for the last eight years in a row, rather than missing them, we would care less about the seemingly negative logo, the clunky name and the previously anonymous local company. This is true, just as if they had taken Frank Firke’s idea and named it Minnie Minoso Field, it would not suddenly wash away the angst of the Sox lack of recent success and clear direction. This is because the name of the baseball team’s stadium matters much less than the quality team playing in it, and this incredibly obvious observation does not prevent bad things from being acknowledged as bad.

But it’s wise to remember that U.S. Cellular Field was also a bad and clunky name, and that we were once desperate enough to float “The Joan” as a nickname due to omnipresent Joan Cusack advertisements before the forces of familiarity and yes, the Sox winning games, pushed its badness to the back of our minds. Corporate sponsor names have been with us for decades, and nothing could be worse than the .com boom, so the stink of this name will die out of the news cycle in a day or two, and resurface at the start of the season, and any time the Sox actually find themselves on national television in the form of pithy jokes. Of course, we’ll probably quip about it on here a couple times per week.

As has been noted elsewhere, the length of the naming rights deal (through 2029), and the expiration of the agreement on competitive upgrades in 2026, make this likely the last name the stadium bear while the White Sox are its primary tenant. While it’s impossible to look 10 or 13 years into the future and know where the White Sox will play given the changes that could take place in ownership in that time, this deal at least leaves open some possibility for the Guaranteed Rate arrow poking out from the vines and wreckage of a post-apocalyptic society centuries from now. For example:

Now that’s a legacy worth paying for.

Lead Image Credit: Guaranteed Rate’s Twitter Account

Getting the practical side of things out of the way: with the White Sox not disclosing the terms of the deal, we’re forced to guess at the exact magnitude, but the number getting kicked around was $88 million, or which would be a bit less than $7 million per year. That’s about twice what they were getting from U.S. Cellular, though the opacity of the deals (what the actual yearly rate on the current deal was, what sort of buy-out was involved, what the switching costs are) means there’s some uncertainty.

If that $3 million in marginal gain or so goes to baseball ops, it’s neither hugely substantial nor a drop in the bucket. It’s filling a roster spot with a minor contributor like Alex Avila or Zach Duke, or it’s a few new front office personnel and a couple extra bonuses to international free agents. Of course, the White Sox have still never given out a $70 million contract and have refused to spend either on free agency or player development, so it’s hard to justify expecting them to get much out of this money, but at least it shouldn’t reduce their spending. The only unambiguous upside to this deal is that some of it will go to the state to replace the rent the White Sox don’t pay, slightly reducing the ongoing sting of seeing taxpayer money spent on a profitable private enterprise–and this enterprise in particular.

The downside manifests in less tangible ways. With the tacky name and unfortunately apropos logo, the White Sox are the butt of national jokes for the third time this year, following L’affaires LaRoche et Sale. Adding insult to insult, Guaranteed Rate joins fellow mortgage company stadium sponsors Quicken Loans and Ameriquest in having compliance problems in its past. The jokes won’t last 13 years, and people will figure out a nice nickname (there’s always Comiskey Park), but proper names matter—that’s why we fight about terminology regardless the subject. It’ll be a small blow every time I hear Jason Benetti read off “Guaranteed Rate Field” on the air, and a slightly larger one every time it slips into a conversation among fans. It’s especially grating when two of the other major Chicago franchises play in stadia that haven’t changed names in 90 years and the other two play in maybe the least-obtrusively sponsored stadium in sports courtesy of United’s very generic name.

It’s not a causal relationship, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the franchises that don’t have proper corporate sponsorship on the stadium—the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, even the Cubs—have stronger national profiles and greater prestige than nearly all the teams that have ceded some dignity for annual seven-figure payments. Not all traditions are worth preserving, but the ones that don’t involve corporate defacing usually are. Names that have been around decades give the franchise a touch of gravitas that the White Sox are sorely lacking.

What makes this so disappointing is that the White Sox have foregone an obvious opportunity to inexpensively stand on principle and start a new tradition. Comiskey has the history, but given the many black marks on his record, he shouldn’t be the first choice to go back on the marquee. Why would he, when the White Sox could honor someone with an even longer association with the franchise, who made a more unambiguously positive impact on the game, who’s been largely underappreciated on a national level? One whose name wouldn’t represent either corporate greed nor an owner’s egotism, but instead a recognition that the players are the reason the game means anything to anyone? Sadly, it seems like a pipe dream to think that at some point in my life I’ll go back to Chicago and get to see a game at Minnie Minoso Stadium.

Lead Image Credit: David Banks // USA Today Sports Images