Safeco Field name change is an opportunity for Mariners

The Mariners announced this week that their ballpark naming-rights agreement with Safeco Insurance will not be extended past the 2018 season. (Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times)There’s something about a classic, old ballpark name that still thrills the senses.

Lambeau Field. The Polo Grounds. Dodger Stadium. Boston Garden. Wrigley Field. They roll off the tongue and have a mystique, a magic, a purity to them.

And they are disappearing like phone booths and video stores. Boston Garden became the Shawmut Center more than 20 years ago, then Fleet Center, then TD Banknorth Garden, and now TD Garden, named after TD Bank, a subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Has a real poetry, doesn’t it? But…