Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[SFGiants58]

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

 

I'm not going to maintain literature doesn't matter, but it's ridiculous that people on this site say sports don't matter. Sports are a major part of our identity. Hell, you can't truly understand the history of the United States without baseball.

 

 

Except you can. You can give it a few lines, but you’ll find that it’s easy enough to downplay. Going into the historiography demonstrates that the sport doesn’t necessarily need mentioning outside of a few key figures.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Sports have played a major part of the civil rights movement,

 

I certainly wouldn’t deny that, I would support that assertion.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

played a role in the cold war,

 

Yes, but an negligible one. You can do an entire Cold War history book without it (as I’ve encountered many). Yes, there are books that argue that baseball was a crucial part of American imperialism, but what does that have to do with relocated franchises?

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

 

helped repair relations with Japan after WW2,

 

That’s certainly true, even if it was part of larger efforts that tackled cultural issues and adjusting existing stereotypes/ideologies on both sides of the conflict. War Without Mercy explains it in great detail. But official (as in, league-sourced) histories of individual franchises matters very little in this regard.  

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

created some of our most noted celebrities, provides insight to labor issues, antitrust, regularly gets roped into politics, national and local. 

 

Again, that’s all true.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Sure, what name a team uses may not appear that big of a deal, but recording those histories correctly can provide insight on how capitalism and consumerism impact sports in more ways than people realize. Hell, we talk about that every single day here. 

 

I agree with you here, with the caveat that I’m ok with league sources saying one thing and the non-league historical records (e.g., academia, third-party reference materials, the internet, city and national history books/articles, and non-league affiliated researchers). Just because the leagues says one thing doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will follow their lead. In fact, they’ll see fit to contradict them and correct them. How many times to people use the phrase “Cleveland deal” to describe a process for an expansion team. That act alone acknowledges the move and expansion.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

We should preserve history as best we can, even if the matters seem trivial, because that's how future generations learn and adapt.

 

That’s obvious, but franchise lineages according to league sources, are absolutely trivial compared to many other disciplines within the field.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Besides, isn't it easier to just pretend the new Hornets are the old hornets if it means that much to you than bending over backwards to rewrite history?

 

That’s the thing: nobody is rewriting that the two Charlotte Hornets are the same team outside of the league and their licensees. Any history besides the league’s official documentation (e.g., record books and press kits) acknowledges this. Just because one organization says this one thing doesn’t mean that the rest of the world (outside of a few licensees) has to listen to it. Anybody with enough interest can find this stuff out in a matter of seconds. This isn’t chiseling the faces off of hieroglyphs or denying war crimes.

 

When you study history, even microhistories, you find that some material is fairly trivial in the larger scope. If one source wants to connect one franchise to another, let them. It’s just one additional source in a wide array of sources to interpret and craft a thesis about any certain topic.

 

Heck, the “Cleveland deal” can speak to the connection any certain municipality had to their team (either due to their storied nature or impactful branding/placement in the city’s history). It may also reveal league processes unbeknownst to insiders, like how the NBA ties franchise lineages to intellectual property (i.e., vintage logos and uniforms) and the NHL doesn’t (i.e., the Jets have the trademarks to the previous club’s designs but not the records - as it should be). Even if it’s disingenuous for the league to do it, describing the process is incredibly useful in talking about the shifting understandings of branding and civic importance of sports franchises.

 

This is my long winded way of saying, it’s just sports. As long as the real history outweighs the league’s history in widespread acknowledgement, we’re cool and no harm has been done.

 

Besides, I like seeing teams adopt new identities upon moving and I wish that it was always the standard. But since it wasn’t for so long and many important brands traveled across the country, we just have to live with it and embrace it. Should the A’s move to Portland, they shouldn’t rebrand. Should the Rays abandon Montréal and focus on Portland or another market, they should rebrand. The difference between a storied heritage club and an expansion team created from litigation is a vast one.

[IceCap]

History should very much stay with the team. It's "what happened."

Not to say that the new Browns being the Browns is wrong. They can be the Browns if all parties involved are ok with it (see Jets, Winnipeg). Just don't lie to me and tell me the Browns of 1999-present are the same team Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar played for, because they aren't.

 

7 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Besides, I like seeing teams adopt new identities upon moving and I wish that it was always the standard.

Eh, I think it's a mixed bag. The fact that teams like the Oakland Athletics and Sacramento Kings have had (more or less) the same names since their early days across a number of locales is cool to me.

[SFGiants58]

16 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

History should very much stay with the team. It's "what happened."

Not to say that the new Browns being the Browns is wrong. They can be the Browns if all parties involved are ok with it (see Jets, Winnipeg). Just don't lie to me and tell me the Browns of 1999-present are the same team Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar played for, because they aren't.

 

Only the league and their press/licensees are pretending. The rest of the world (outside of some deluded fans, who are probably just happy to be rooting for a team with the same name and not caring about obscure records or the minutia of franchise transfers) and historical sources know damn well that they’re two different entities.

 

The non-league sources/real historical cataloguing (academia, periodicals, encyclopedias, etc.) are why I call the current San José Earthquakes the “Fake Quakes,” because the real team plays in Houston now and even a cursory glance into team history will tell you this. The minute somebody looks into the history of the New Orleans Pelicans, they’ll see a Hornets design and be instantly aware of their team’s true origins. They’ll be similarly alerted to the true history by seeing the logos and uniforms of the Charlotte Bobcats, especially when they hear the history of that name. 

 

Ultimately, if the leagues and fans want to pretend that the two teams are the same entity due to some suspended franchise certificate or IP transfer, let them. It’ll just make us historians that much more vigilant in describing what really happened. The real history is never forgotten, despite what some people in Cleveland or Charlotte (read: localized interests) want. Let them play pretend, as the rest of the world can correct them. The stakes are fairly trivial.

 

Sharing names is cool and all (see my name here), but adopting new identities (while preserving the record books, despite localized interests) should have been the standard. I’d have enjoyed seeing the Giants-Dodgers rivalry transcend New York by becoming the Seals-Angels conflict. The Braves becoming the Brewers (a name the former Pilots would subsequently adopt) and then a bird-themed name (to tie in with the Falcons/Hawks and to avoid the unmarketable “Crackers” name) would have also been cool. But that’s not what happened. 

 

Keeping transient identity around, one’s that don’t conflict with the location, is fine. If the name has been around for generations and offers no significant conflicts with the new spot, let it stick around.

[mjrbaseball]

♪ One of these things is not like the other. ♪

[Gothamite]

7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

But did they happen the way you insist they did?  That’s not actually clear. 

 

And in the case of the Cleveland Browns that you cite, the way the NFL records it is the way it actually happened.  It was recorded as sick at the time, and those who insist on pretending there is no franchise continuity at all are the ones trying to re-write history. 

 

Similarly, I’m not entirely sure that those trying to maintain a direct unbroken line between the 1902 Orioles and the 1903 Highlanders aren’t the ones imposing their own narrative on events.  If the 1902 club was truly defunct in the eyes of the league, if its assets were liquidated and the new 1903 club was created largely from scratch, then perhaps the story we’ve been telling ourselves isn’t quite as accurate as we thought. 

[Gothamite]

And let me be clear - I love history.  I’ve spent a lot of my life wandering down its trails and yelling for others to pay attention.  I’ll get the Brewers to do a Milwaukee Chicks “Turn Back the Clock” game if it’s the last thing I do.

 

But historical records should not be confused for objective fact.  As Betty Reid Soskin puts it, “What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.”  Not to mention the errors often carried forward by people who don’t care, don’t know any better, or who have an agenda of their own.  Especially in an era when Wikipedia puts facts to a vote.

 

So I have no problem going back and re-examining an event like the foundation of the Yankees.  And if what I’ve read is true, that the assets of the Baltimore club were liquidated and it was truly defunct, then maybe I was wrong to presume it was a simple and standard franchise relocation.

[The_Admiral]

22 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Why do people in Winnipeg have to think about Laine breaking Ilya Kovalchuk's Thrashers records and how is that a better system? 

 

Because bloggers who hate that Winnipeg is in the NHL tell them they have to!

[SFGiants58]

44 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

Because bloggers who hate that Winnipeg is in the NHL tell them they have to!

 

Compare that to mentioning the Expos on a Nationals fan community, where you’re met with calls of “I don’t care about the Expos,” “Why should I care about players who didn’t play for Washington?,” or “If Montréal gets another team, I’d love for the Nationals to give them back the history, as it’s not ours.”

 

While we ultimately follow the franchise model (with these few exceptions), sports ultimately reflect a regional kind of tribalism that is very location-specific. A lot of that originates from the popular cultural fallout of the Giants and Dodgers moving out west, where Walter O’Malley gets elevated to the level of Satan himself (even though Robert Moses was far more to blame). Even to the modern day, people will still wax romantic about that time and wrongfully curse O’Malley for ending it. No relocation really inspired this much ire until the moves of both the Colts and the Browns, which built upon this precedent for tying a team so thoroughly into the city. It was Cleveland that ultimately took it to court and set up this cockamamie scheme with the franchise certificates.

 

Quite frankly, all the people of Cleveland needed to do was to convince the NFL to get an expansion team and tell Modell to rebrand his team upon moving. The market had enough clout and a potential legal battle to force it. I doubt many fans would have cared about a franchise certificate or beating some AAFC records. If they were concerned about the records of the previous team, they could just refer to the “city history” (separate from franchise records), a la the Nationals or the Winnipeg Jets. They didn’t have to go as far as they did, and even when they did, it didn’t really hurt anybody. It was just sports. It’s OK to not take it as some great attack on anything. It was just a way of manifesting some location-based tribalism and “striking back” at the man who took their prestigious team away. Little did they know that the Ravens would have immensely more success than the expansion franchise that honestly doesn’t deserve to carry the name or records of Paul and Jim Brown’s club. 

 

Often times, you only care about what happened to your team in another city because:

a. Overlap in rosters of all-time greats (e.g., Mays, Aaron, Matthews, Koufax, etc.)

b. It makes your team’s championship count seem more impressive (I’d rather say that my team won eight titles, not three)

c. The team achieved something truly historical (e.g., Robinson breaking the color barrier, the careers of one of the greatest deadball-era pitchers - Mathewson, and two impressive dynasties) 

d. The relocation had a replacement team (e.g., the Mets, Brewers, Mariners, Nationals, Royals, etc.).

 

When these conditions are absent, you can default to a location-based sense of identity. They’re not “this team from another place that came in and brought their great history with them,” but are rather a blank slate upon which fans and marketers can project a sense of local tribalism. The St. Louis Browns, both the Sens/Nats and second Sens, the Pilots, and the Expos were such blank slates.

 

That last point ties back into my pro-Anaheim argument, but since this thread clearly isn’t about that anymore (does somebody want to split it off), I’m sure we’ll keep going in this discourse.

[SFGiants58]

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history. I have a degree in it, obsess over it, and even have the only thread on the boards that uses Turabian citations to prove that I’ve done my primary and secondary source research. Heck, I’m one of the few Sharks fans who will list the team’s establishment date as “1967, re-established 1991” since I believe in the un-merger, not a traditional expansion. I want statues of John McGraw, Carl Hubbell, and Mel Ott outside of Willie Mays Park, alongside Lefty O’Doul in a Seals uniform. If you’re promoting the history in your branding, go all the way!

 

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

 

The Cleveland Browns misrepresenting themselves in the record books didn’t obscure conspiracies or lead to systemic oppression, all it did was set the bar too high for an expansion club and give the Ravens a clean slate. The Hornets/Pelicans/Bobcats switchover was a mess and points to a significant problem in NBA branding policies (tying logo trademarks to team records), but it didn’t misrepresent artworks influential to the development of popular literature or performance art. 

 

Yes, sports are important, but they’re not that important.

[TBGKon]

22 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

The regional Florida team is probably the best solution, though it’s impossible considering what Miami did for the Marlins in exchange for rebranding themselves as “Miami’s team”. 

Strangely enough, IF a split shared city team had to happen I could be on board with Tampa Bay and Miami sharing.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 6/27/2019 at 7:32 AM, Gothamite said:

On 6/26/2019 at 11:55 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

But did they happen the way you insist they did?  That’s not actually clear.

 

The move of the Browns to Baltimore is an objective fact.  The business of the "leaving the history" is a pure fiction.  We know this because, in the real world, it is not possible to "leave one's history", as one's history is the record of what one actually did.  (You know that drunken night of debauchery that ended with me belting out "Purple Haze" with my trousers around my ankles?  OK, from now on, I didn't do that.  Some other guy did that.  I have left my history with him.  Egad, man.  The Browns deal is no less insane.)  I certainly realise that the private entity the NFL has the legal right to record its history any way it wants to.  But any honest observer has the ethical duty to call that out as bunk, and to make clear that it's a lie to people who would otherwise not know this.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 7:32 AM, Gothamite said:

Similarly, I’m not entirely sure that those trying to maintain a direct unbroken line between the 1902 Orioles and the 1903 Highlanders aren’t the ones imposing their own narrative on events.  If the 1902 club was truly defunct in the eyes of the league, if its assets were liquidated and the new 1903 club was created largely from scratch, then perhaps the story we’ve been telling ourselves isn’t quite as accurate as we thought.

 

At the time this was definitely not seen as the creation of a new club.  The American League could have folded the Baltimore club after the tumultuous 1902 season, as the National League had done with four of its clubs (including Baltimore) a few years before.  But it did not do that; rather, it took over the club's ownership, and then sold the club to new owners.  The continuity is a matter of fact. 

 

The "new franchise" story was concocted much later at the behest of the Yankees, who were approaching some milestone win mark, and wanted to count only those wins since 1903.  The Yankees petitioned the Major League Baseball historian John Thorn, who ultimately acquiesced.  Thorn gave a very unconvincing justification for his ruling, citing the difference in the rosters of the 1902 Baltimore team and the 1903 New York team (and glossing over the fact that that is completely irrelevant to the question of franchise continuity).  Before the ruling officialising this fiction, Baseball Reference had counted the 1901 and 1902 Baltimore team as part of the Yankees' franchise, because any honest reading of history established that that is what it was.  After the ruling, it adjusted its listings to be in accord with the official records.  So much for "independent sources"!

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 8:26 AM, Gothamite said:

And let me be clear - I love history.

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history.

I will also declare my love of history.  I don't even follow current baseball (except for the uniforms); I am a fan purely of the sport's history.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

Heck, I’m one of the few Sharks fans who will list the team’s establishment date as “1967, re-established 1991” since I believe in the un-merger, not a traditional expansion. I want statues of John McGraw, Carl Hubbell, and Mel Ott outside of Willie Mays Park

 

Now you're speaking my language.  And the idea that the Sharks should be considered a continuous franchise with the California Golden Seals is a very good point. The NHL acknowledged the un-merger when it had the North Stars participate in the expansion draft; so the continuity between the team that was merged with the North Stars and the team that was separated from the North Stars is consistent with that.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

 

I wholly accept the assertion that the misrepresentation of the franchise histories is trivial as compared to obscuring or justifiying atrocities.  But I would call it a trivial expression of the same phenomenon. 

 

Also, even if I were to grant that the Browns deal was harmless in practice (which I do not grant — the Browns led directly to the Earthquakes, which, in turn, caused the NBA to consider the Hornets scam to be a viable plan, which, in turn, will lead to a similar arrangement when an NBA team moves to Seattle, which, in turn, could very well bring that mess into baseball history when a team moves to Montreal), even then I would be bothered by the principle.  I mean, if I can get worked up over defending the DH or denouncing the no-pitch intentional walk, things which have no connection to anything else in the world, then it is not surprising that my passions would be stirred over a principle that is philosophically linked to the more serious misrepresentations of history to which you allude.

[rmc523]

18 hours ago, Survival79 said:

 

You're welcome! Here's an email the team just sent out.

 

Subject: Tampa Bay Rays Sister City Concept

 

 

 

 

 

We desperately want the Rays to stay in Tampa Bay*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Meanwhile, there is no "plan B" of the Rays staying in the Tampa area full time, and we publicly stated we don't believe the Tampa area can support a team.   But yes, please believe us that we want the Rays to stay in Tampa........

[mjrbaseball]

13 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

At the time this was definitely not seen as the creation of a new club.  The American League could have folded the Baltimore club after the tumultuous 1902 season, as the National League had done with four of its clubs (including Baltimore) a few years before.  But it did not do that; rather, it took over the club's ownership, and then sold the club to new owners.  The continuity is a matter of fact. 

Much the same as MLB did with the Expos, except the whole business was concluded in a single off-season rather than spanning three years.

[Sport]

14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

And what exactly did the Browns get for that whopper of a trade? A three-year vacation?

 

Yes. Nobody said it was an ideal situation for them. With the situation they were in, however, it was the best outcome they could've hoped for. Better than waiting for a crappy relocated franchise with no connection to their previous franchise (Winnipeg) or never getting another one ever again (Harftord), though.

 

Players, coaches, staffers, even owners do not a franchise make. They change franchises all the time. If, hypothetically, a plane crash, heaven forbid, wiped out an entire team and the franchise took a few years off to recuperate, complete with an expansion draft, that would still be the same franchise, would it not? Same thing with the Browns franchise except replace plane crash with ahole owner. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 6/26/2019 at 7:38 AM, jmac11281 said:

On 6/25/2019 at 6:12 PM, Ice_Cap said:

Gotta admit, I admire the civic pride Vet’s showing, still salty about the A’s leaving Philly. That’s dedication. 

I'm with Vet. I'm trying to avenge the loss that my then 30 year old grandfather had to endure. Long live the Philadelphia Athletics!

 

I was very pleased when I visited Philadelphia to see the Connie Mack statute near the Phillies' ballpark, and, on it, a plaque commemorating the inductees into the Philadelphia Athletics Wall of Fame.

 

  

 

(Though we can quibble and note that the plaque uses an Oakland A's logo.)

 

I also loved finding the store Shibe Sports, where I made sure to pick up an A's cap.

 

[IceCap]

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

The whole “it’s just sports” thing doesn’t fly with me because if that’s all it was then some of us would go “who cares, let the Browns be the Browns” and some of us would go “the records should reflect that the OG Browns moved to Baltimore” and we’d all agree to disagree and go back to arguing over sock stripes or something. 

 

And yet we’re here tossing paragraph+ posts at each other trying to prove one of two points. We obviously care. Maybe more than any of us should, but we care none the less. 

 

I’m well aware of the way history can and has been weaponized for nefarious purposes. And in that context? Yeah, Cleveland pretending their 1999 expansion team is really the original Browns team isn’t that big a deal. Thing is...if it didn’t matter at all? Cleveland would have said “Baltimore can be the Browns, we’ll call our new team the Bulldogs or whatever.” So yeah. It’s a line in the sand enough people felt passionately about to draw so here we are. 

 

Thing is...I am skeptical of historical revisionism as a concept from an academic standpoint because all academic historical study must be grounded in fact. What happened. You can only re-examine and reinterpret the historical record so much before you cross the line from revisionism to “making  up” (not the proper academic term ). 

 

And to be clear historians, rightfully, pass judgement all the damn time. We openly acknowledge that the American Founding Fathers were hypocrites for declaring “all men are created equal” while allowing slavery to continue. We all recognize that Henry VIII had no real ideological qualms with the Catholic Church and only kickstarted the English Reformation as a power play/excuse to divorce his wife. We all acknowledge that the Western Allies of WWII, champions of the free world and democracy, had a collective moral failing when they refused to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe. 

 

All of that is pretty broad historical consensus in the academic community. It’s not as simple as the study of what happened, we do pass judgement. 

And yeah. It’s not out of line to acknowledge Art Modell was an hole for moving the Browns as he did, but that doesn’t change that it happened. And again, if the new team wants to call themselves the Browns? All the power to them. Just don’t insist the new team is the old team, because it’s not. 

 

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

But historical records should not be confused for objective fact.  As Betty Reid Soskin puts it, “What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.”  

Thankfully we live in an era where newsworthy events (which franchise relocation qualifies as) are pretty well documented. Human memory, on the other hand, is fallible, sometimes to ridiculous and often hilarious extremes. Even regarding events from the past five years or so. 

The fact is the Charlotte Hornets moved and became the New Orleans Hornets and then the New Orleans Pelicans. Then the expansion Charlotte Bobcats changed their name to the Hornets when the original Hornets adopted the Pelicans name. 

Now again, if the fans in Charlotte wanna root for the Hornets, let them. Just don’t lie via the record book and pretend the current team the memorable late 80s expansion team. Record books are controlled by leagues, and leagues have their reasons for distorting them. Thankfully we have independent records of historical events that we can use to verify those books. And if it doesn’t add up?  I see no reason not to call them out on it. Again, if it were just sports none of us would still be having this conversation.    

[IceCap]

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

And let me be clear - I love history.

 

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history.

As do I. I probably love it to a degree more than most because I chose to dedicate the rest of my life to the subject. I don’t say that to brag or pump myself off because damn that was a lot of writing/arguing I could have spent doing nearly anything else  

 

And maybe that’s the kicker for me. History to me is important. And it’s not something that changes for the sake of convenience. It’s our collective story, for good or bad. And hopefully we learn from the bad bits or appreciate the good bits, but ultimately? It’s the story of humanity, warts and all. We pass judgement, even academically. We interpret and reinterpret events- to a point. We don’t- or shouldn’t- try to alter the historical record to fit a preferred narrative though. That’s not history. 

 

And that’s why crap like “the Cleveland deal” or the Hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats record swap bugs me. Maybe it shouldn’t because “it’s just sports,” but then again if it were just sports I wouldn’t have cared so much that a mostly disappointing 1995 expansion team I followed from nearly day one just won a major championship. Sports are weird. We collectively care about them more than we probably should, but care we do. 

 

[SFGiants58]

Yeah, I’m being an utter hypocrite caring so much to tell people about why they shouldn’t care. I apologize.

 

I’m just irritated with how people act like the Browns went full Jack the Ripper on the history books. It just seems ridiculous to me as a historian. Ultimately, the extensive documentation from additional parties makes it slightly less offensive to me. I don’t view it as all that harmful.

 

However, I still think that it’s a crappy way to inflate the importance of an expansion team in an intellectually dishonest way. 

 

I still would prefer if the records followed the team to Baltimore (renamed as the Ravens and downplaying their pre-Baltimore past) and the Cleveland expansion team (not named Browns - the NFL had the right idea with the Oilers) gets to start anew. I would prefer if the NBA didn’t pair team histories with historic logo trademarks (that was confusing AF). I would like for my Quakes to stop pretending that they’re the 1996 team or the NASL squad (I kind of abandoned them over this).

 

I don’t like the histories being messed with to make some locals happy (even though the locals probably don’t care that much about the minutia). I believe in relegating that stuff to “city history,” a separate category from the franchise books. “City history” enables the Hornets MK II to honor Bogues and Mourning without falsifying records, while also allowing the Cleveland team to honor Jim Brown. It sometimes overtakes franchise history in branding, such as the Nats, Winnipeg Jets, Twins, Grizzlies, RedBlacks, Avs, etc. You can dress up as the old squad and honor the great players/games all you want, just don’t go pretending that you went on an extended hiatus to inflate your resume.

 

I gotta praise the NHL here for going back on this type of deal. The arrival of the expansion Ottawa Senators included the presentation of a franchise certificate calling this normal expansion team a “continuation.” However, when the team later wanted to acquire the records, the NHL rightfully told them to eat dookie (for lack of a better term). Not that it stopped the Sens, of course. In the words of Lo Pan:

 

 

Putting the modern logo of an unrelated team on a banner is a dick move. 

 

Ultimately, I’m not as upset by this, because it’s just sports. However, it still upsets me a little and comes off as entirely pathetic.

 

This was once about the Angels, wasn’t it? Either way, this discussion is far more fascinating than anything to do with where they’ll try to play.

 

[Sport]

 

2 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

And maybe that’s the kicker for me. History to me is important. And it’s not something that changes for the sake of convenience. It’s our collective story, for good or bad. And hopefully we learn from the bad bits or appreciate the good bits, but ultimately? It’s the story of humanity, warts and all. We pass judgement, even academically. We interpret and reinterpret events- to a point. We don’t- or shouldn’t- try to alter the historical record to fit a preferred narrative though. That’s not history. 

 

 

In the case of the A's or other franchises who've relocated, yeah trace that lineage all the way back, baby. The Sacramento Kings are the Rochester Royals. Cool with me. On the other side, if you're the hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats, go f*** yourselves you revisionist pricks. Preemptive f*** you for when they inevitably reappropriate the Thunder's Sonics records to the new expansion Seattle Sonics. But the Browns, though, the Browns are different. I think the fact that they all agreed to shelving the franchise/start a new one in Baltimore in 1996 is everything. If the Sonics had done that when the team moved to OKC I'd say the same thing about them too. It's a shame they didn't. 

 

My point since I've been old enough to ponder on this is I don't see how the Browns' historical record was altered or changed, though. There's the way people want it to have been handled - the usual way, and then there's the way it was handled, but because it unfolded in real-time and not as some after the fact 1999 erasing, that's not altering the historical record, that's just the historical record. 

 

Let's look at the two ways they could've handled this - How is this report of the history: "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns. In 1999 an expansion franchise returned NFL football to Cleveland and they are called the Cleveland Nutsacks." any more valid or right or correct a history than something like, "In 1996 Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore where they became the Baltimore Browns until threatened litigation forced the league to reconsider their approach to the relocation. All interested parties agreed that the Browns franchise would stay in Cleveland, dormant until a new group could put the team back on the field in a new stadium. Modell agreed to take over a new franchise in Baltimore comprised mostly of former Browns players and staffers. He called this franchise the Baltimore Ravens"?

 

 

[Waffles]

 

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

In the case of the A's or other franchises who've relocated, yeah trace that lineage all the way back, baby. The Sacramento Kings are the Rochester Royals. Cool with me. On the other side, if you're the hornets-Pelicans-Bobcats, go f*** yourselves you revisionist pricks. Preemptive f*** you for when they inevitably reappropriate the Thunder's Sonics records to the new expansion Seattle Sonics. But the Browns, though, the Browns are different. I think the fact that they all agreed to shelving the franchise/start a new one in Baltimore in 1996 is everything. If the Sonics had done that when the team moved to OKC I'd say the same thing about them too. It's a shame they didn't. 

 

It seems like Seattle might have some kind of deal with OKC to retain their identity and history.

 

And perhaps we can all agree that the their approach to "sharing" their history, as described in that article, is completely effed. Like, what would that even look like if the Sonics come back?