Discussion of a name change to Lansing's Oldsmobile Park has us wondering what product the stadium will advertise next.

Soon enough, Lansing residents may be referring to the 8-year-old stadium - home of the Lansing Lugnuts baseball team - as something else. We only hope it isn't something that, when said, makes us feel more like a billboard than we already do.

The influence of corporate names during sponsored events, movies, television shows and sports games have grown almost ridiculously obvious.

OK, Keanu Reeves only trusts Cadillacs to withstand Mr. Smith's bullets in "The Matrix," and we all know Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell's favorite drink is Coca-Cola, but must brand names overtake the name of the Lansing stadium as well?

We realize that General Motors Corp. has paid $1.5 million for the nameing rights to Oldsmobile Park. It also is obvious that part of the incentive to own the naming rights of a stadium is to advertise as well.

The current name of the stadium is, of course, a corporate one, but it also pays homage to a man - Ransom Olds - and product that helped shape the city of Lansing.

But now that GM has stopped manufacturing the Oldsmobile line of automobiles, we hope whatever name they choose embodies the symbolic richness of baseball and Lansing's history as a car-city.

Or how about concentrating on heavy advertising inside the stadium instead of advertising the company in the name?

The Detroit Tigers now play at Comerica park, obviously owned and sponsored by Comerica Bank. Before 1996 though, they used to play at Tigers Stadium - a name that holds more aesthetic value than the name of a Bank.

As much as we'd like to go back to the days when stadiums had their own identities, we're realists, too, and we know stadium names are big sources of income for team owners and the cities that host them.

Still, we hope R.E. Olds' name can continue to grace the stadium in some manner, and that when the powers that be sit down to rename the stadium, they look at more than money.