The latest on the Glendale naming game

In the last blog entry I posted before going on vacation, I took the Dodgers/White Sox to task for trying to claim credit for coming up with the name Camelback Ranch, which they jointly announced would be the name of their new spring-training complex in Glendale, my rationale being that the name already existed and was sort of a blanket name for the entire area of Glendale/Phoenix (the area falls on either side of the boundary between the two cities, which is Camelback Road) in which the complex is being built. Well, today, I picked up a copy of West Valley View, a small weekly (I think) that shows up in my driveway every few days. On Page 4 of an issue dated today, there is a story stating that the Dodgers/White Sox might have jumped the gun on the announcement.

It includes the following quote from Julie Frisoni, the PR chief for the city of Glendale, whom you have seen quoted in many of my own articles over the past couple of years:

“Basically, we have said it was probably a little premature to announce that. In our agreement with the teams, the city has appproval of naming rights. We are having good conversations and are working on this. We need to ensure Glendale’s name is on that facility. The teams have been very amenable to that.”

That is to say, they were amenable right up to the point in which they announced a name for the facility that DIDN’T have Glendale in it. I do know that at least one Dodgers executive had lunch with Frisoni and her staff somewhere in the Phoenix area today, but to say the meeting had anything to do with this naming issue would be pure speculation on my part. Trying to run that down now.