Really Cleveland?

The Guardians? You really intend to call your baseball team the Cleveland Guardians?

I'm just going to say it straight it out: it's a bloody stupid name. I don't care what you think about the old Indians moniker, Guardians is inane. It simply reeks of trying to go way, way out of their, uh, way to be inoffensive. Had the Pastels already been taken? How about the Melt Into The Backgrounds?

Spiders would be better. At least there's an historic precedent for it. If you're going to take on a losers' name at least Spiders has merit, losers that they were. Or go way back and become the Cleveland Forest Citys, at team which briefly existed in the 1870s. But the Guardians?

I'm glad I got my Chief Wahoo cap before all this nonsense started.

The Cleveland Baseball Club

It seems, in keeping with the spirit of the times, that the Cleveland Indians are going to change their name. Well, so be it. They are within their rights to do that, even if such a choice is a gutless, puerile attempt to seem relevant to those who don't even care about sports in general or baseball in particular. Those petty tyrants will have their way.

That concession made, I wonder where that leaves the Notre Dame Fighting Irish? As a person of Irish descent, and with the apparent right to be insulted which the current political climate demands, I suppose I must be offended by that. Then there's the San Diego Padres; have you seen the goofy monk swinging a bat which is one of their logos? As a Catholic, do have I the right, indeed the obligation, to be enraged by such a picture? And I haven't gotten yet to the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. My Protestant friends and family should be chomping at the bit, they should be in arms about that, oughtn't they?

I am not upset at all by the University of Notre Dame (well, at least their athletics), the San Diego Baseball Club, or Wake Forest. Nor should I be. They're employing monikers for fun, people. For fun. None of those mascot choices in their natures put anyone down. Neither does the name Indians. Period.

Still, again, the Cleveland Baseball Club has the moral right to change their name. If they open to suggestion, I recommend the Pastel Unicorns. 

Great. Now I've brought the wrath of unicorn nation down upon me, haven't I? After all, I'm being unjust to non-pastel unicorns.

Save Chief Wahoo

I see this morning that Major League Baseball has made the Cleveland Indians remove their smiling Indian mascot, Chief Wahoo, from their uniforms. This action will only make me wear my own personal Chief Wahoo cap more and more often even though I am a lifelong and devout Detroit Tigers fan. No tiger that I know is offended by that, and being me, perhaps they should be.

Chief Wahoo violates, in the eyes of many, one of the worst sins of the modern world: racism. I will not debate his origin. Being not naive, I would not be shocked if the image originated with a degree of racism. I also don't doubt that the charge is overblown, or at least ameliorated over time. Chief Wahoo in 2018 is a symbol of a baseball team. Nothing more.

Now I'm really going to stir the pot. As a white guy, a Catholic, and being of Irish descent, I'm sure that I cannot possibly understand such harm as Wahoo offers (I'm being smarmy here folks). Be all that as it may, I am in fact not offended in the least by the San Diego Padres and their sometimes-used goofy friar pathetically swinging a bat at a ball, nor by the enraged Irish caricature used by the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (and don't you dare tell me that the Irish weren't a genuinely offended group once), neither by the Wake Forest Demon Deacon. Why should I be? They are, to use the word again, mere caricatures and intended to be funny. I am not so overly sensitive, so thin-skinned that I cannot take a jibe. I wonder if we shall ever be equal until we can equally jibe one another.

Yes, the line can be crossed. Not to upset NFL fans, but the moniker Redskins does cross it. But the problem with Chief Wahoo is nothing more than he offends the PC police. And I intend to offend them all summer long with my Cleveland baseball cap. They've earned it.

The Cubs, the Tribe, and the Lions

I'm happy for Cubs fans, and sad for Indians fans. Baseball has a way of playing the fates; as most of you probably know. Chicago and Cleveland respectively were the longest without a championship in their league. Now the Indians own the distinction of longest drought in the game. I was personally rooting for the Tribe. Now I content myself that, just maybe, they'll begin to get the attention that the Cubs and earlier Red Sox held for so many years.

At least the Tribe made the big show this year, and the Cubs had been the team to go the furthest without even appearing in their sport's championship. Now, unless I'm miss my guess (I'm being too lazy to try and look it up) are our own Detroit Lions. They haven't been in a Super Bowl at all, and last appeared in the NFL Championship in 1957. That's the year my parents got married. I blame them.

So the long cold winter begins. To quote Rogers Hornsby, the old baseball great for among others, the Cubs, commenting on the offseason, "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

I hear ya Roger.

Native American Mascots Not Necessaily Offensive

The Michigan Department of Civil Rights is asking federal officials to issue a national ban barring schools from using American Indian mascots and names on the grounds that such names are offensive.

We wonder who is actually being offensive on issues such as these. Catholics do not appear offended by the San Diego Padres logo of a goofy looking monk swinging a baseball bat. Why should they be? It's all in good fun. Are Irish Americans bothered by Notre Dame's Fighting Irish and that mean looking two-fisted leprechaun image with which they proudly adorn themselves? It doesn't seem to be the case. It's not meant to provoke the Irish, and indeed they might rather like the idea that their ancestors from the old sod are seen as rough and tough.

So why should Native Americans be offended by Chiefs or Hurons or Chippewas or Braves or even Indians? We'll wager that a good many aren't, in fact; they may actually like the references along the lines of the Irish and the Catholics. We will concede something on Redskins, to be honest, as that moniker does seem to cross the line in rudeness. But then, we aren't saying that all's fair either. Do we really think that a group of citizens are so thin skinned that they can't appreciate a powerful, or even playful, nod towards their culture? If they are, we humbly suggest, then, that that's their problem.

In short, don't insult or use overtly racist slurs in naming teams and institutions. But don't be a stick in the mud either. It's supposed to be fun, remember?

Or does our increasingly politically correct society wish to ban that too?