With new revelations of projected cost overruns on the Mariners' stadium, the team must have been in a big hurry to sell naming rights; certainly they were on the lookout for a corporation with a steady income and high profit margins that wouldn't default on its payments. Safeco was a natural choice for them: a large, scandalously profitable insurance company that could easily afford the $1.8 million per year for 20 years--an amount that is supposed to cover the Mariners' share of construction costs (but not their share of cost overruns).

What the team didn't bargain for was the disgust among fans. After paying for the bulk of the $417 million plus construction cost with taxpayer dollars, who can be surprised that one Public Facilities District board member wanted the name to reflect the public's contribution to the project? Other members of the PFD, which is supposed to oversee the project, were warming to the idea and eventually may have considered "Facility for Blood Sucking Leeches on the Body Politic" emblazoned in neon lights over the stadium entranceway. But the best they could come up with was "Safeco Park at something..." The PFD board lawyer and Bellevue developer, Bob Wallace, called the proposal "populist crap" and whined about a potential lawsuit from Safeco and the Mariners; the board finally caved in and voted for the unimaginative "Safeco Field."

Fortunately, that's not the end of it. Two uppity women fans, Karen Fredericks and Kay Trepanier, are upset over the lack of public input into the naming process. They're pushing to change the name to "Safeco Citizens Field" or "Safeco People's Park," which must have both Safeco executives and public space activists (who have long followed the struggle over public control of People's Park in San Francisco) fuming. Bob Wallace responded: "it sounds like something that belongs in communist Russia." To be strictly correct, Bob, it was "communist USSR" or "the communist Soviet Union"--and they would have dropped the "Safeco" part of the name after nationalizing the company. But we'll give Wallace, et. al. a break--after all, what's in a name except the truth about who really owns and controls the named object?