Goodbye and good riddance. I’m sure the decision has a lot to do with the 2019 All Star game but I am glad that something is being done about it before we have to hear the rest of the country bash our dumb racist logo. Again.
I’m a lifelong Indians fan and have no love lost for Wahoo. I stopped buying any Wahoo-adorned stuff about 10 years ago. I absolutely do not understand the mentality of “I will not support the team if they get rid of the logo.” I cheer for Indians Baseball not the logo.
You’ll note that Wahoo didn’t become the team logo until 1947. The name might have been in “honor” of our Native American player (who was kind of a shitty person and a shitty player, and the “honor” came 2 years after his death when someone dug up the idea and submitted it to a sportswriter) but the Chief logo was just a caricature drawn based on jokey racism of the time.
And the reaction on twitter and such is exactly the cringe inducing crap you would expect. Anyhoot, this should put the focus on the NFL and their much more racist team name.
“But the inconvenient reality of sharing a planet with other human beings is that you don’t get to decide what is or what is not offensive to people. And if you divorce yourself even momentarily from the laundry you’ve grown up rooting for, it’s really not difficult to understand why Native American groups would be offended by this exaggerated, unflattering, cartoon portrayal of their people.”
Sorry, but the Chief Wahoo logo wins that embarrassing competition, hands down.
Sure, rename the Redskins too (not that pro football should even exist anymore, but since it does, go ahead and rename the Redskins), but that caricature of Native Americans is horribly insulting.
Oh, there are plenty of “wins” to go around. Cleveland’s got the worst logo. Washington’s got the worst name. And Atlanta has the worst excuse for fans based on the chant-and-chop that any decent human being ought to be embarrassed to be seen imitating.
A smaller step than it might seem. The team is going to continue to sell Chief Wahoo swag at the stadium and in local retail outlets; they just won’t put him on TV or on mlb.com anymore. If it isn’t the least they could do, it’s damn close.
My understanding is that part of the reason for this is for the Indians to be able to maintain ownership of the logo. If they were to cease using it entirely, the trademark would eventually lapse, and it’d become legal for anyone to sell Chief Wahoo gear, anywhere.
I take your point, but I’m not sure I agree. I don’t know what the bare minimum is that Cleveland would be required to sell in order to maintain control over the trademark, but if it can be brought down to, say, a single store where merchandise with the logo can be purchased, and the store happens to be frequently out of stock of said merchandise, I’d prefer that to seeing the logo on every street corner.
Again, though, I get that we’d rather not have the team sanctioning any sale of such merchandise. Especially a team I root for. I honestly don’t know.
As was mentioned already, this is a positive thing.
On a side note, I am reminded of that Onion story about how the Washington Redskins had finally agreed to change the name of the team. The new name: The D.C. Redskins.