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          SweetSpot

          White Sox will play at Guaranteed Rate Field, so here's a list of bad ballpark names

          • David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior WriterAug 24, 2016, 09:24 PM ET
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            • Covers MLB for ESPN.com
            • Former deputy editor of Page 2
            • Been with ESPN.com since 1995
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          Sorry, but the Chicago White Sox kind of deserve to be made fun of for renaming their home park Guaranteed Rate Field, a company with an upside-down arrow as its logo. Yes, a major league team actually did this. Hey, you have to pay the salaries of mediocre relief pitchers somehow.

          Anyway, remember that as a fan, you aren't paid by Guaranteed Rate, so you can call it whatever you want -- such as, you know, Comiskey Park.

          Where does this rank on the list of worst ballpark names? My guess is that most of the bad ones would be those named after corporations. "Yay, our ballpark is named after a bank!"

          Here are some of the bad ones:

          Comiskey Park

          On second thought, do you want to name your ballpark after an owner who helped keep the color barrier intact and was such a miserly, old grouch that his players rebelled against him and threw the 1919 World Series?

          O.co Coliseum

          Apparently, the home of the Athletics is back to being called the Oakland Coliseum. But from 2011 to 2015, they played in a stadium named after ... a letter? A company? The A's payroll? The sound people made when the toilets backed up? I was never quite sure.

          Enron Field

          The Houston energy company and the Astros agreed to a 30-year, $100 million naming rights deal when the park opened in 2000. (Aside: Why do we call them ballparks? They're not parks. They're stadiums. A park has trees and maybe a pond and maybe some swings but certainly not a concession stand selling $16 nachos in a plastic helmet.) Anyway ... oops. In 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy, with its claimed revenues the result of systematic accounting fraud.

          Kingdome

          It was located in King County, and it was a dome, so I guess the name made sense. But it was so presumptuous and arrogant! King? King of what? Gray concrete monstrosities? A blight on the great city of Seattle. Also, my grandmother always called it the "Kingdom." Now that would have been a cool name.

          Sicks Stadium

          The Seattle Pilots played here in their one season of existence. Apparently, "Whooping Cough Stadium" and "Typhoid Fever Ballpark" were already taken. The stadium was actually named after Emil Sick, owner of the Pacific Coast League's Seattle Rainiers, but no apostrophe was used. So it was not Sick's Stadium but Sicks Stadium. Bad grammar. No wonder the Pilots left for Milwaukee.

          All stadiums named after banks/insurance companies/beer companies

          I'm OK with a stadium named after a juice company, even if sugary drinks aren't good for you.

          Baker Bowl

          Hailed as the finest ballpark in America when it was built in 1895, it was renamed when William Baker was part of the group that purchased the Phillies in 1913. Well, Baker proved to be one of the most incompetent owners in the game's history. The Phillies made the World Series in 1915 but then spiraled into a run of ineptitude. From 1918 to 1930, they finished under .500 every season, usually in last place. Baker was so cheap that he employed one scout and used a flock of sheep to trim the outfield grass. The right-field wall was 280 feet from home plate, and the power alley was just 300 feet away. As Red Smith once wrote, "If the right fielder had eaten onions at lunch, the second baseman knew it." Even worse, the wall was made of tin and rusted over the years, so when a ball struck it, rust showered down on the right fielder.

          But here's the thing: Even after Baker died in 1930, the name was kept. Maybe nobody wanted to take on the name of the majors' worst ballpark (nicknamed "The Dump on the Hump" because the Reading Railroad tunnel ran under center field and caused a slight rise in the field). The Phillies finally moved into Shibe Park in 1938, and, yes, I need to do a separate, 5,000-word post on Baker Bowl.

          By the way, the best ballpark name ever? Easy. The Palace of the Fans, home of the Cincinnati Reds from 1902 to 1911.