Should Have Named It Gil Hodges Memorial Park

In Saturday's NY Times, Richard Sandomir wrote an interesting article chronicling the losses Citigroup has had since inking a deal with Sterling Enterprises/NY Mets for naming rights for the new stadium scheduled to open in April 2009.

Citigroup has lost $17 billion in the last three quarters, while cutting 28,000 jobs since early 2007. The article goes on to report that Citigroup had $2.5 billion in losses on Friday, caused by $38 billion in credit losses and write-downs for bad mortgage investments.

The article does a nice job saying that Shea Stadium never had these issues, and while Citi Field will have Citigroups name on it, will it lead people to do their banking with Citigroup? That's doubtful.

I didn't want the Mets to sell out like so many professional teams have over the last decade. I wanted this new ball park to be named Gil Hodges Memorial Park. It would have had a link to the Mets past, and honor the first man to guide the Mets to the promised land.

For more on this, please read Richard Sandomir's article.