Alums Bid To Rename Center

Harvard College’s struggling image has escaped another potentially crippling blow—this time, by one of its distinguished alumni.

Kerry L. Konrad ’79, in a shocking reversal of intentions, told The Crimson on Friday that he will not rename Boston’s FleetCenter the “Derek Jeter Center.”

Konrad, a Manhattan attorney who won an eBay auction for one-day naming rights to Boston’s FleetCenter, ignited a media frenzy when he declared his intention to rename the arena after the New York Yankees captain.

“It was a joke,” Konrad said. “It’s meant to be funny.”

His winning bid of $2,325 on Wednesday gave him the authority to name the arena on March 1, as corporate owner Delaware North Cos. continued to auction temporary naming rights and donate the proceeds to charity. Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., opted not to renew the naming contract with the arena after it acquired FleetBoston Financial last year.

Konrad said he reached a mutual agreement with arena representatives to “make something fun” out of the situation by bringing Red Sox fans from his Harvard days—the targets of his “ultimate private joke”—into the fray.

“They said, ‘why don’t you challenge buddies to donate more money, to buy out your bid?’,” Konrad said.

Thanks partly to Jerry Rappaport, Jr. ’79, Konrad’s college roommate, that strategy became a reality.

The proceeds—now $8,600 total, meant to symbolize the 86-year-long Red Sox title curse—will go to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund.

On Tuesday—instead of assuming Jeter’s name—the arena will be renamed the Jimmy Fund Center.

For Konrad, a former resident of Eliot House—the same outfit that annually organizes “An Evening with Champions,” a figure skating exhibition that has donated more than $2 million to the fund over the past 35 years—the gesture was a nice resolution to a surprisingly torrid storm of attention.

Since the eBay auction and subsequent backtracking by FleetCenter representatives—one of whom called the “Jeter” name “obscene”—the lawyer has received calls from the New York Times, ESPN, and NBC, among others.

Konrad will appear on Monday on NBC’s late-night “Last Call with Carson Daly”—a move that Konrad said amused his young daughter.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I have now experienced the full force of the 21st century information hurricane.

But he added, “I’m looking forward to the end of the attention.”

The networks and news media aren’t the only ones contacting Konrad. Rambunctious Red Sox fans have flooded his inbox with sometimes unflattering opinions.

“Lighten up,” Konrad said. “It’s not a Holy War. It’s just baseball.”

And it’s all part of a simple joke. A Chicago White Sox fan throughout his youth, Konrad experienced some of the most turbulent years of the storied Red Sox-Yankees rivalry in the late 1970s during his time at Harvard.

He became a Yankees fan after moving to New York and experiencing the “Derek Jeter Era.”

“It was just a great team,” Konrad said. “You had to love them.”

Konrad pointed to the recent A-Rod affair—Jeter’s Yankee teammate Alex Rodriguez has repeatedly received verbal barbs from the Red Sox since the opening of baseball spring training camps a week ago—as proof that Red Sox fans should, wink-wink, respect his proposal for a name change.

“The Red Sox keep comparing A-Rod to [Jeter], saying ‘We respect Derek,’” Konrad said. “[Jeter] is a great guy. He handles himself like a champion.”

In the end, Konrad noted that there was “no insult intended” with the joke, and that he meant to “tease” and “amuse” friends from his Harvard days.

Consider Rappaport, who added $6,275 to Konrad’s donation, teased and amused. A graduate of the College, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Graduate School of Design, where received a degree in City and Regional Planning, Rappaport has been “having some fun” with the situation, Konrad said.

A Red Sox fanatic and current president of New Boston Fund, Inc., one of Boston’s largest real estate investment funds, Rappaport could not be reached for comment.

Nonetheless, now that the difficult details of the situation have settled, Konrad said he expects a calmer future ahead. That is, except for the Carson Daly interview.

“I’m not going to rant and rave...or say ‘Red Sox suck,’” Konrad said.

“The real story,” he said—a story that has been buried within the context of bitter regional enmity—“is my friends and I worked it out.”

“I don’t even care what they call [the FleetCenter] at this point,” he added.

After all the attention, he may be the only one.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.