It’s time for a new name.

Never liked the name, anyway. New stadiums are one thing, but I’m not much a fan of selling naming rights to stadiums that have already been in existence for like a century. It was Multnomah Stadium for decades and then the city bought it and turned it into the drab old, “Civic Stadium.”

So for a few bucks it’s got a new name. And what do we have to look forward to now? Burgerville Stadium? Do you want fry sauce with that?

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As you know by now, Roger Clemens is in some serious trouble. And it’s incredible to me how much the man’s ego has played into the fix he’s in. He went on 60 Minutes and asserted he’d never done steroids. He went before a House committee — VOLUNTARILY — and said the same thing.

It seems pretty clear that he was lying. And at some point, they’re going to nail him for it. And when you start talking about people being called into Federal Court to testify, they’re going to be telling the truth and nobody’s going to be covering for him. This guy is in way more trouble than Barry Bonds.

Clemens, I’ve always felt, is one strange guy. He’s been a bit of a psycho at times, and it’s going to be interesting to see how he reacts when it’s apparent to him that he’s going to go down.

My guess? And it’s strictly a guess — I think he’s going to be the guy who starts ratting out everyone else in sight. He’s going to sing like Lady GaGa. It’s going to be crazy.

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Bobby Thomson passed away yesterday… the man who hit “The shot heard ’round the world.” It was the home run that decided a three-game 1951 National League playoff between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, at the time the most fierce rivalry in sports.

But what has made the home run so special over the years — long after the legendary Polo Grounds were torn down — was the call by the Giants’ great broadcaster Russ Hodges. I believe this call signaled a change in the way play-by-play men did their job. Prior to this, they were very conservative and staid… they stayed out of the emotion of the game.

But Hodges’ joy — his unrestrained emotion over the turn of events — seemed to open the door for others. And as the call was played over and over throughout the 1950s and ’60s, I think young announcers saw its reception as permission to become more involved in the game — and the home team.

Watch and listen to perhaps the greatest call in the history of baseball (at least until Jack Buck’s call of Kirk Gibson’s home run).

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And it’s for a good reason, too – Tom Trebelhorn’s tenure as manager of the Class A team there.

The young kids playing there have no idea how lucky they are. The fact that he’s not still in the big leagues as a bench coach or even manager is ridiculous but in many ways “Treb” is as happy in the Northwest League as he was in the majors. The guy loves working with young kids.

The story itself is pretty solid, but the NYT has slipped a lot over the last few years. Man, there has to be enough editing so that silly errors in regard to “coach” and “manager” in baseball stories don’t happen.

More and more, I actually find media people who don’t understand that in professional baseball, the man running the team is not the coach, he’s the manager. And people helping him are his coaches, not his “assistant coaches.” Sorry, we all have our pet peeves and this is one of mine.

And the New York Times never used to make mistakes like that.

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When Portland lost the Beavers a couple of other times, I figured it wouldn’t be long before the city got another PCL team. But this time, I don’t expect Triple-A baseball back soon, or maybe ever.

But at least now it’s out in the open that this city is finished with this go-round in the Pacific Coast League. So if you’re nostalgic at all about the Beavers, you better find a game or two to attend in the next few weeks.

I can’t get too worked up about the team leaving this time, either. Man, PGE Park stinks to high heaven as a baseball facility and pretty much always has, especially so since the city chose the wrong plan for the latest renovation.

Latest rumor on the future of professional baseball in Portland: The University of Portland is making plans to move Joe Etzel Field from its current on-campus location next to the Chiles Center to a spot down the bluff near the Willamette River. The idea being floated around is that the city of Portland could share the cost of construction of that new ballpark, which would then be used in the summer as the home for a Class A, short-season, Northwest League team for Portland.

While the Mavericks and the Rockies both had successful runs in the NWL in previous times when the PCL was jerked out of Portland, I can’t say I’d be too excited by another Class A run. Been there and done that.

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What’s worse than losing the Beavers? Watching a little town of 137,000 people build a Triple-A ballpark while this city cannot get anything together for stadiums other than once again renovating an old barn for soccer.

This is from a recent Sports Business Daily:

An ownership group led by Padres Vice Chair & CEO Jeff Moorad is “close to signing a deal that calls for the team to move” the Triple-A Pacific Coast League Portland Beavers, a Padres affiliate, to a 9,000-seat ballpark in Escondido, Calif., to be built by the city for $45M, according to J. Harry Jones of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. If the memorandum of understanding is finalized, Escondido “would agree in principle to build the ballpark on city-owned property — mostly vacant land used partly as a public-works yard — just east of Interstate 15 and just south of state Route 78.” The city “would hand over to the Padres all money from concession sales and naming rights for the facility.” Jones notes negotiations “could hinge on how the ballpark is financed.” One proposal calls for Escondido to “sell bonds that would be repaid with property-tax revenues that the city’s redevelopment agency is expected to generate over the next 26 years.” Interest payments on the project “could push the final bill” to $90M. Moorad as part of the deal “would buy” the Beavers franchise (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 7/21). Moorad said, “We’re in the process of putting together a deal to acquire the Portland franchise. And we’ve had talks with several municipalities, including Escondido. But I need to clarify one thing. The Padres are not trying to purchase the Portland franchise. Jeff Moorad and his ownership group are. I know it sounds like the same thing, but it’s not.” Moorad added that the cost of the franchise is “expected to be from” $20-25M (NORTH COUNTY TIMES, 7/21).

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Love how baseball continues to sell us on the idea that the All-Star Game matters, when the managers continue to treat it as some sort of Little League game, where everyone has to play.

So for the last several seasons, the games have ended just like last night, with the worst players on each team settling the outcome in the late innings as each manager makes sure just about every warm body gets to play. Man, a whole lot of guys who will never play in another all-star game always get to decide the game.

Baloney. For decades the game actually was played with some degree of desire to win and the real stars played just about the entire game, particularly if it was a tight game. And thus you didn’t have situations like last night when Joe Girardi had nobody on his bench to use as a pinch-runner for David Ortiz in the ninth inning and the big slug got forced at second base on what should have been a single to right field.

That turned the whole game around, of course. But the shill announcers didn’t bother to mention how crazy it was that the American League was out of players, except for A-Rod, who Girardi kept saving for some sort of game-winning situation that never came. Alex should have been used for Adrian Beltre earlier in the inning, by the way.

Anyway, nice that Brian McCann was the hero because it gave a whole lot of people the opportunity to call him unknown or obscure. Even though he’s a five-time all-star.

I guess that’s how unknown and obscure my favorite sport has become.

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He’s an idiot. No, this is not a scoop. He is an idiot. And he’s slowly killing baseball.

Once more, with somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the public wanting him to reverse Jim Joyce’s call, Selig not only refused to do the right thing, he didn’t even comment on his reasons for not doing it.

The sport is gradually distancing itself from America, in case you haven’t noticed. Ignoring its fans has something to do with it and so does a failure to do the right thing — in the same week that the NBA reversed a technical foul call one of its officials whistled against a Boston Celtic during the conference finals.

Man, if Selig would have stepped in and changed that call into an out and turned that into a perfect game, it would have brought a few grumbles from traditionalists — which at this point, is stupid to worry about because those people will never leave the game, anyway — but it would have made people smile and feel good about baseball from coast to coast.

Damn, what a missed opportunity!

But Bud Selig is at the center of baseball’s continued resistance to change. It’s as if the guy lives in 1955. I don’t think he’s even noticed that the NFL has pushed his sport out of the spotlight — even in the middle of summer when football training camps open.

It’s too bad because I love baseball and I hate to see what’s happened to it over the last decade or so. It’s become irrelevant to so much of our country. There’s a generation growing up without understanding or caring about it.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again — overall, baseball’s big problem in America, where life is changing so rapidly that a lot of people even refuse to try to keep up, baseball is no longer cool. It’s lost that to football and maybe even soccer.

And it used to be. It’s still the same game, too. Maybe that’s part of the problem. But even at that, the perceptions of all of baseball’s problems are much worse than the problems themselves. But the sport does nothing to fight those perceptions.

And that’s not an easy problem to fix. And I can’t think of anyone less prepared to deal with problems of “cool” than Bud Selig. Is he a guy who can make ANYTHING fresh? Or hip? Can he reach a younger generation? Can he reach even MY generation?

No. No. No. No.

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Upon further review (and my traditionalist friends will hate me for this), here’s what I would do if I were baseball commissioner Bud Selig (heaven forbid):

First, I’d call Jim Joyce and talk to him about the call. If it’s OK with him, and I think it would be, I would step in with this statement:

“Folks, this is a unique situation. It was the final out of the game. And after the call — which even the umpire agrees was the wrong call — nothing happened to change the outcome of the game.

“A perfect game is a unique event. And I’m going to make a unique ruling. With Jim Joyce’s blessing, I’m going to reverse his call. I’m going to say the out was made at first base. Forever after, that was a perfect game. Do not expect that this is setting a precedent, either. As I said, the unique circumstances of this event prompted a unique ruling — but I don’t expect to ever make a similar one.

“I will not ever reverse the outcome of a game. I don’t think I did in this case. I merely set the record straight.”

I’m not expecting this to happen, by the way — even if Selig has the power to do it. Baseball’s too stodgy for such a progressive decision.

And that’s a shame. The sport’s inability to change with the times is starting to hurt it. He should also immediately explore expanded use of instant replay — just because every other sport is using it. To ignore replay is to ignore progress — which baseball is becoming known for.

And the sport wonders why it isn’t perceived in all quarters as “cool” anymore.

Let me mention one other thing about the play that cost Galarraga the perfect game — watch the replay and please notice how badly the first baseman poached that ground ball from his second baseman. He had no business wandering over there to field that ball. It was the second baseman’s ball and a lot easier play for him. But nobody has said a word about that.

It’s so much easier in this case to criticize the umpire.

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A whole bunch of people are suddenly aware of Jim Joyce, since he made the call at first base last night that cost Armando Galarraga a no-hitter in Detroit.

A whole lot of us in Portland have known him for years. And I can tell you that nobody works harder and cares more about his job than Jim, who has lived in Beaverton for decades now. On top of that, he’s a great guy. I feel terrible for him, because I know how much this hurts him.

But he’s long been considered one of the best umpires in baseball and he’ll overcome it. And there’s even now a way for the official scorer of the game to restore this to at least a no-hitter, which he should probably do.

This is a great lesson for people who don’t really pay a lot of attention to sports. Officials — even the best of them — miss calls. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people or that they’re fixing games. They’re just human. And sometimes — very, very rarely — they’re not as perfect as the guy pitching.

Hang in there, Jim.

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