I recently went to see the Washington Nationals, our local baseball team, play in their newly completed park. It's actually quite a good stadium, although I remain skeptical as to whether it was worth the $611 million of public money the District of Columbia paid for it. Do we put up office buildings for other companies that want to locate in DC? I don't think so.
Anyway, having got their new stadium, what the team needs now is a new name. The "Nationals" is not a terrible name, but it's obviously pretty bland and banal. There have been a lot of suggestions, mostly of a comic variety.
My girlfriend and I put our minds to this question and ran through a few more serious possibilities, including bringing back the old Senators (too backward-looking), the Monuments (not suggestive of action), and the Representatives (too long, but could be shortened to the Reps).
But here is the name that we really like and offer to the team:
The Public.
This name captures the idealism of Washington, picks up a key thing that Washington is, or at least should be, about, and identifies the team with its legions of fans. Plus it's one of those cool singular names like the Magic or the Heat.
The more I think about it the more I like it. I'm thinking of the Nationals as the Public from now on.
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