New in PJ Media:
Friday evening, some nameless ESPN wonk who might be out of a job today put onscreen a graphic advertising Saturday’s American League Wild Card game, which read, “Rays vs. Indians, Tomorrow, Noon ET on ESPN 2.”
Utterly unremarkable, except for the fact that there is no Major League Baseball team called the Indians. After the 2021 season, the Cleveland Indians bowed to the woke mob and rebranded themselves the Cleveland Guardians, exchanging their tribute to the valor and might of Native Americans for homage to a couple of statues on a highway bridge.
Oddly enough, the recrudescence of the despised “Indians” name did not cause widespread trauma. There were no reports Saturday evening or Sunday of PTSD or any other psychological ailments resulting from ESPN’s egregious relapse into the heinous, racist practice of reducing the Native American community to mascots. Emergency rooms nationwide were not filled with distraught baseball fans howling in fear at the prospect of the return of the resolutely grinning visage of Chief Wahoo. The only people who noticed were those who thought the Cleveland baseball team was stupid and cowardly to drop its 106-year-old name at the behest of Leftists who probably don’t watch baseball anyway. In this is a lesson, but no one is likely to learn it.
In making the name change, the team owners were bowing to the self-appointed guardians of acceptable opinion, and so in that sense the team’s new name is fitting. The idea that a baseball team named “Indians” is somehow demeaning to Native Americans is preposterous on its face; sports teams don’t name themselves after things they despise, but after things they admire, whose qualities they wish to emulate. In a sane society, the Indians and Redskins and all the rest would have been praised for honoring a group of people that has often been genuinely marginalized. But ours is not a sane society.
The reality is that the Cleveland Indians were not so named to mock Native Americans. They were named in honor of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine who hit .338 in 66 games for the old National League Cleveland Spiders in 1897. Sockalexis died of tuberculosis in 1913 at the age of 42. Two years later, the Cleveland team began calling itself the Indians. The Society for American Baseball Research notes that in January 1915, Cleveland team owner Charles Somers, “perhaps recalling the all-too-brief period of excitement that Louis Sockalexis had brought to Cleveland in 1897, dubbed his team the Indians.” Sockalexis.net, a site dedicated to the memory of Louis Sockalexis, is adamant, saying flatly that Sockalexis “most certainly did inspire the Cleveland Indians’ nickname.”
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CogitoErgoSum says
Really. Professional sports teams do not pick names that are degrading to them. There are no professional teams called the Skunks, the Slugs or the Losers. The members of a pro sports team like to be on a team that is smart and a winner. Naming a sports team the Indians was not an attempt to demean Indians at all but actually an act of admiration. It was a compliment. The people who made the name change are the ones who demeaned themselves and are the real losers.
somehistory says
All too true. Like “the Fighting Irish”….which evidently the stupid have not attacked. Indians, Seminoles,. Redskins, Braves, were all chosen for their school or professionals for one reason: to appear, and to want,, to be willing and able to fight to win like the namesakes. Not derogatory at all.
As you point out, when an animal name is chosen, it isn’t like those you mentioned, but are cougars, lions, bears, dolphins…all with fighting reps. all admired by humans for their traits. It’s the same when they choose a people.
Some people just look for ways to cause trouble. If they can make money in some way, all the more reason to jump in and make as much trouble as possible.
Mitch says
Perfectly put, Cogito. After enduring many silly changes over the years, I finally quit watching and attending MLB in 2019. I have great love for the game itself but when in 2020 I caught a glimpse of those idiots on TV, playing masked, in empty stadiums, I knew I’d made the right decision. In 2022 “my” team financially supported gender reassignment surgery for children. If I point out this fact to politically conservative baseball fans/addicts, they block their ears and keep watching.
James Lincoln says
Mitch,
I, too, stopped watching MLB at about the same time.
And for the same reasons….
Keith O says
This “woke” BS is slowly killing off human dignity and thought.
When 1-2% of the population are holding the rest to ransom because they thin or speak in a way that the minority find “acceptable” then a society has a serious problem.