This is the place (for baseball)

News broke last week that Salt Lake City’s west side may soon be home to a Major League Baseball team.

This would be huge for those of us who like hot dogs, peanuts, sports that don’t require all that much of our attention, sitting outside and singing Neil Diamond songs loudly off-key.

Going to a baseball game is one of the very best things one can do on a summer evening. The sport itself is one of my favorites. People often complain about baseball’s glacial pace. But the overall relaxed and goofy vibe is exactly what I like about it and why I believe a major league game is superior to all professional sporting events. I personally could not be more thrilled to have the chance to attend many MLB games within a short driving distance from my home.

I’m even pro-smokestacks.

But as prematurely jazzed as I am, I have some questions. Namely, if the plan works out and we get a team, what are we calling them? And perhaps more importantly, what song will we sing in the seventh-inning stretch?

The name of our prospective team will depend largely on whether or not it’s a team relocating (like the Jazz, the NBA team we inherited from New Orleans in 1979) or a brand new baby expansion team. It’s possible we could inherit the Tampa Bay Rays, and sure, the name Utah Rays does not make a ton of sense, but it’s about as logical as a whale statue prominently placed in the capital of a landlocked state.

And it makes way more sense than the Utah Jazz.

But if it’s an expansion team, we can expect to have a Utah-adjacent name. I don’t know if we, the normies, will have any say in naming the franchise. And if we learned anything from Boaty McBoatface, asking the public for input isn’t always productive.

But I think we should at least have the chance to make some suggestions, and I have some ideas.

The obvious option would be something like the Pioneers or the Saints, a nod to our state’s early settlers. This option is very boring, and I believe we are capable of far greater creativity.

For instance, perhaps our team name could be a nod to some of our prominent wildlife, like, as a few Twitter users suggest, the Daybreak Dung Beatles or the Salt Lake California Gulls.

But I’m personally more partial to embracing some of our weirder landmarks. Like the mysterious Fun Time Kidz Kare center that is remarkable both for its aesthetics — lime green siding with a purple door and hauntingly small asymmetrical windows filled with odds and ends — and the online theories surrounding it, suggesting it’s a money laundering operation or CIA drop site.

I think it would be fun if the jerseys were green and purple and each screen-printed with a different window.

Or we could name the team “Spawn of the Claw” in honor of the Draper aquarium’s giant art installation whose vibe suggests it’s just waiting for a supervillain in his secret lair to push the button that activates it to destroy the entire county.

Look. We can try and be clever. We can try and be cool. We can Google every song that mentions Salt Lake City and cultivate a list of applicable tunes from The Beach Boys and Band of Horses, but there is only one real option for the song we will stand and sing during the seventh-inning stretch: “Utah, This Is The Place.”

The peak of my existence so far was an evening in 1997. The elementary school auditorium was packed with parents and small children and the stage crowded with fourth graders, singing in celebration of Utah’s sesquicentennial. We wore red, white and blue and sang a song that listed Utah’s 29 counties, pronouncing Duchesne perfectly, and then another song that I think was about railroads. Or something. But it was the concluding number, written specifically for Utah’s 150th anniversary, that really blew the socks off everyone. “Utah! People working together!” we sang loudly. Proudly. “Utah! What a great place to be!”

We grew more patriotic as the lines went on, and by the time we reached the first bridge, there was nary a goosebump-free arm in the building. “Utah! Utah! Utah! THIS IS THE PLACE!” we concluded, and the crowd rose to its feet. Just as we all will, every time the outfielders and infielders switch after the top of the seventh inning.

We’ll rise and we’ll sing, “New technology’s here! Growing faster each year!” and we’ll celebrate the majesty of this great state. Together. Over some peanuts and hot dogs, while the Salt Lake Brine Shrimp or Utah Whales play, smokestacks gleaming on the horizon.

This is the place. For Major League Baseball.