Better late than never? When it comes to a new name for RFK Stadium, that’s what some city officials seem to think. According to a WTOP report yesterday, D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission Chairman Matthew Cutts has floated the idea of re-naming RFK. Again.

When the Nats announced they’d take up residence in the four-decade-old stadium in 2005, city officials scrambled to find a corporate sponsor willing to shell out upwards of $2 million a year to slap their name on the team’s temporary home. No one took the bait, but a coalition of voting rights activists valiantly tried to raise money to buy the rights to name the stadium “Taxation without Representation Field at RFK Stadium.” They failed, and the stadium kept its old name.

But on Friday Cutts hinted that city officials might be looking to finally attach the city’s slogan to the stadium’s name — if they can get the legal go-ahead to do so. Congress has long banned the District from using funds to engage in voting rights lobbying, and various officials have debated whether Congress would forbid the attempt. Said Sports and Entertainment Commission Vice-Chair Bill Hall:

Congress forever has included a rider in D.C. legislation that prohibits D.C. agencies from engaging in grassroots lobbying…Is this grassroots lobbying? I don’t know. By the time this is all sorted out, the good news is we will probably have the D.C. voting rights legislation passed by Congress.

Well, at least we’d lilke to hope so. But our concern has less to do with the voting rights legislation currently before Congress and more to do with the timing. After all, this is the Nats’s last season at RFK, and it seems somewhat useless to change the name of a stadium that will soon be abandoned by both baseball and soccer.

Since the District has shelled out the $611 million for the new stadium, how about proposing that signs promoting voting rights be strategically placed throughout the new facility? Or that game-day announcers be forced to mention the city’s historic disenfranchisement once a game until it is fully remedied? Or that the teams wear patches recognizing the city’s second-class status?

Picture of RFK snapped by phi