The Bernstein Brief: Why Wouldn't Guaranteed Rate Play Ball With White Sox?
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) The entire marriage between the White Sox and their new ballpark naming sponsor has been bizarre from the outset, with an announcement they hurried out to be met with all kinds of blowback requiring continued damage control.
Guaranteed Rate Field is an awkward title with even worse optics, a massive downward-pointing arrow that's supposed to represent interest rates that can also be perceived easily as negative when it comes to a sports team. And despite attempts to minimize that issue, the White Sox were unhappy enough about it to try to fix it.
We know this because the CEO of the lender said so, with Victor Ciardelli telling the Tribune the White Sox "asked us if we'd change it." He refused, however, saying, "We've had it for 16 years, and we're not going to change it."
The team made the perfectly reasonable and creative suggestion to remove the barbs of the arrow to leave the shape of home plate, but the company wouldn't budge, Crain's Chicago Business reported. That would have seemed to be a fair compromise, considering an image of home would work nicely for both baseball and home loans, but it didn't happen, and the partnership is off to a publicly uneasy start.
Why Ciardelli would want this information out there is puzzling, because it airs behind-the-scenes disagreement on the very day the name change takes effect and again calls presumably unwanted attention to a logo that's less than a good fit for a franchise struggling for direction.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
