Tuesday, November 25, 2008

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.

Last week, I mentioned in a rant that given the current state of Citibank, That Place The Mets Are Going To Play Next Year might be seeing some renaming down the line.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks that way:

• NY Times City Room Blog:Call It Citi/Taxpayer Field, Two Councilmen Say
• Slate: Ills de la Citi: Should the troubled bank cancel its $400 million sponsorship of the new Mets stadium?
• ABC News: Citi, AIG Won’t Drop Big Sports Sponsorships
• Church of Baseball: Just A Thought
• Loge 13: U.S. Treasury Field?

Citibank is in trouble. They have laid off over 20k employees. Keeping the name the way it is now has the potential to snowball into a PR nightmare for both C and the Mets. Why not call it “X Field sponsored by Citibank,” Or something like that? Personally, I am in some kind of basic agreement with the Slate article above which offers the opinion that Citibank shouldn’t stop spending money on everything, but there might need to be a thought of some kind of toning down given the company’s current financial situation and the fact that the U.S. government is bailing them out - not once, but TWICE. It’s not a minor thing, it’s not a trivial thing, and it’s not something that will just go away.

The Mets, of course, have no comment.