Mark's Long Pole

		Coffee Time
		by Carl Coffee

In this day and age in Major League Baseball and all pro sports, naming rights are the norm. Comiskey Park became US Cellular, Jacobs Field became Progressive Field, and the Skydome became the Rogers Centre. I have respect for the teams that turn down the money to stay true to their classic field name. In WSEM, we have 10 unique field names, so unique I even recently power ranked the names. Naming rights have yet to be attached to our fields, and that makes me a happy commish. With all of our fields already named, a new trend has started: naming objects at our fields.

The first team to name a part of their field are the Belgian Wiffles. Belgian moved from Wiff-Hill Grounds to the ‘Gian Joint and brought along their long left field foul pole. It is one of the best foul poles in the league. As the Belgian captain, I visited dozens of Southgate businesses to see if they were interested in having the foul pole named after them. I was outside Caesarland knocking on its door for 45 minutes before realizing it was closed forever. I went to MJR, Mallie’s, Chuck E. Cheese, and many other Southgate hotspots and everyone turned me down. They had zero interest in this excellent opportunity.

I was discouraged, but not defeated. I realized I was doing it wrong, and my focus on making money was bad for the team and the league. I then went to the Southgate Library and started studying the history of the city. The Belgian Wiffles were proud of their new home city, and we wanted to honor someone who was an important part of the city’s history. We thought about naming it after Richard S. Gate, the founder of the city. David Buhr ultimately turned it down, since Richard is considered a swear word in his vocabulary. We then looked at Jeff Jones, the Tigers current pitching coach and one of the most notable Southgate citizens. We found out the SGA high school baseball field was named after him, so this would have been overkill.

Finally after weeks of research, we discovered that Mark Phillips, the utility playing El Diablo father of Chandler Phillips has been a lifelong Southgater… Southgaton… Southgandian… Southgoon? We'll go with Southgoon. So, the left field foul pole has been named: Mark’s Long Pole. It's a proud moment for the team. No one's more deserving to have a long pole named after him than Mark.