NB: if you haven’t read the site’s programming note, please do.
While we all knew that the ballpark where we spend money on garlic fries and crab sandwiches would have a new name for the 2019 season, there was a deadly finality to the images last week of the letters being peeled off Safeco Field, one by one, suspended in the air a moment before being deposited on the ground. In an off-season that’s so far been marked by change and upheaval, it seems tonally correct, if jarring. I would not have been surprised at all to learn that Mike Zunino used to kip in the O at night in order to make sure he was at the ballpark bright and early the next morning.