Cleveland Indians become the Cleveland Guardians

[beachperroAZ]

On 3/11/2021 at 9:39 PM, Cujo said:

At this point, I think they (ownership) is simply keeping "Indians" to soften the blow for select Cleveland diehards. There is no other reason to continue on with it. Players avoid the name. It's not on any gear that touches the field. Just go "WFT" for the year and start anew in 2022.

I have seen some latino players in the past few years on the team sneak an undershirt with the wahoo logo on it every now and then.

[MC Buffalo]

I apologize if this was already brought up earlier in this thread. I started reading every page, so I didn't send a duplicate message, but after about page 10 I just couldn't continue...

Also, I am not trying to start a discussion about whether teams should or shouldn't have to move away from a name deemed insensitive either, but I did have the following thought...

 

Isn't there a way for the Cleveland Baseball team to close the door on the Indians era by changing the name, logo etc... but still keep an association with Native American heritage while beginning a new era?

 

Something as simple as the Cleveland Tribe, which seems to work for William & Mary College athletics and has often been a moniker used to reference the team in the past. I know when the Buffalo Bisons were the AAA affiliate of the Indians, the parent club was often referred to as "The Tribe" when talking about player callups/demotions.

OR

Like Florida State has done with the Seminole Tribe in Florida, Cleveland could work with the leadership of any still existing Nation that used to be native to Northeast Ohio.

 

From a website that is maintained by the University of Akron, regarding Native American nations that lived in the Northeast Ohio area...

The Mingos were an Iroquoian group which consisted of mostly of former Seneca as well as Cayuga, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Tuscarawas, and a few non-Iroquoian Mohicans. 

 

So you could have the Cleveland Mingos or Cleveland Iroquois, etc. No cartoonish characterization like Chief Wahoo, but just mutually approved identities and logos that both the Native Leadership and Team Leadership can agree on.

 

 

[SFGiants58]

Nope! The team said they’d abandon Native American imagery and themes altogether. The Dolans don’t want to put in the effort of establishing tribal relationships.

 

I think a clean slate is the best way to go.

[Gothamite]

Even under the best of circumstances, that’s a delicate balance to strike. 

 

But in this case?  Not possible.  As you say, clean slate is the only option.  

[Ridleylash]

The name and brand themselves are poisoned through association with MOD REDACTED. It's nuke it all or nothing.

 

 

[The_Admiral]

 

1 hour ago, MC Buffalo said:

No cartoonish characterization like Chief Wahoo, but just mutually approved identities and logos that both the Native Leadership and Team Leadership can agree on.

It's what they should have done but it probably wouldn't have been enough for the baying hounds anyway

[SFGiants58]

4 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

It's what they should have done but it probably wouldn't have been enough for the baying hounds anyway

It would’ve been enough, but we all know the Dolans would never do it. They had to be strong-armed into abandoning MOD REDACTED, no way would they have reached out to any tribe for branding guidance/partnership.

 

Their cheapness is their defining trait.

[Silent Wind of Doom]

5 hours ago, MC Buffalo said:

I apologize if this was already brought up earlier in this thread. I started reading every page, so I didn't send a duplicate message, but after about page 10 I just couldn't continue...

Also, I am not trying to start a discussion about whether teams should or shouldn't have to move away from a name deemed insensitive either, but I did have the following thought...

 

Isn't there a way for the Cleveland Baseball team to close the door on the Indians era by changing the name, logo etc... but still keep an association with Native American heritage while beginning a new era?

 

Something as simple as the Cleveland Tribe, which seems to work for William & Mary College athletics and has often been a moniker used to reference the team in the past. I know when the Buffalo Bisons were the AAA affiliate of the Indians, the parent club was often referred to as "The Tribe" when talking about player callups/demotions.

OR

Like Florida State has done with the Seminole Tribe in Florida, Cleveland could work with the leadership of any still existing Nation that used to be native to Northeast Ohio.

 

From a website that is maintained by the University of Akron, regarding Native American nations that lived in the Northeast Ohio area...

The Mingos were an Iroquoian group which consisted of mostly of former Seneca as well as Cayuga, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Tuscarawas, and a few non-Iroquoian Mohicans. 

 

So you could have the Cleveland Mingos or Cleveland Iroquois, etc. No cartoonish characterization like Chief Wahoo, but just mutually approved identities and logos that both the Native Leadership and Team Leadership can agree on.

 

Hehehe.   It's funny to see both sides of the issue agree on this.   It's sadly impossible.   When we've gotten to the point that someone suggests a name based on the city's locomotive history and is called racist because of it, the discourse has been too poisoned to come to a reasonable conclusion.   Even if they did the work, tribes would not jump to work with them because of their past history of transgressions and the bad press if they did come to an agreement.  It wouldn't do any good.  People would just call them sell-outs.

 

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

It would’ve been enough, but we all know the Dolans would never do it. They had to be strong-armed into abandoning MOD REDACTED, no way would they have reached out to any tribe for branding guidance/partnership.

 

Their cheapness is their defining trait.

 

I was shocked to read this as being a New Yorker has caused the name "Dolan" to be associated with many other things than cheapness, but the fact that you referred to a family rather than a singular spoiled boy-king made me research and realize that it's two different Dolans, albeit in the same family.

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, Silent Wind of Doom said:

 

Hehehe.   It's funny to see both sides of the issue agree on this.   It's sadly impossible.   When we've gotten to the point that someone suggests a name based on the city's locomotive history and is called racist because of it, the discourse has been too poisoned to come to a reasonable conclusion.  
 

 

That guy was a troll, trying to stir up controversy here with “engines” being a barely-homophone of “inj..s” (which I’d argue is worse than “Indians”). Plenty of us responded to his trolling accordingly. 

 

Quote

 

 

I was shocked to read this as being a New Yorker has caused the name "Dolan" to be associated with many other things than cheapness, but the fact that you referred to a family rather than a singular spoiled boy-king made me research and realize that it's two different Dolans, albeit in the same family.

Yup, they’re the Habsburgs of team ownership.

 

 

[infrared41]

Just dropping in to remind some folks in this thread that a racial slur is a racial slur regardless of context. Don't use them. Period.

 

Carry on.

[Jymp]

Mod edit:  No.

[LMU]

Perhaps this will dumb the concept enough for people to understand.

 

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, LMU said:

Perhaps this will dumb the concept enough for people to understand.

 

If that doesn't do it, I bet this will.

 

SLUR + POST =

 

 

[Bill0813]

Quote

Cleveland Indians owner Paul Dolan said Thursday on a Zoom call with the Akron Roundtable that the team might have to delay implementing a new nickname for 2022.

The organization will decide by the middle of the 2021 season whether they will go ahead with the name change in 2022, or whether they will delay it until the 2023 season.

“The timeline remains the same,” Dolan said, “Just to be clear, we said, ‘No sooner than 2022.’ Our target is still 2022, but it is a difficult process. Trying to find a name that works, that we can clear, and ultimately in a tight time frame.

https://www.outkick.com/indians-owner-dolan-says-team-might-not-change-team-name-till-after-2022-season

[panthers_2012]

10 minutes ago, Bill81361 said:

https://www.outkick.com/indians-owner-dolan-says-team-might-not-change-team-name-till-after-2022-season/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1616168338

See... They can still screw this up God, I hate the Dolans.

[SFGiants58]

The hammer should come down on the team hard to change their name. Forfeit all their draft picks for the 2022 draft if a name is not announced by draft day. Forfeit the contracts of their top ten prospects, allowing other teams to sign them.

 

If they don’t change on time, cripple the club. Make them regret even entertaining the thought of keeping the name around.

[ManillaToad]

46 minutes ago, Bill81361 said:

https://www.outkick.com/indians-owner-dolan-says-team-might-not-change-team-name-till-after-2022-season/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1616168338

 

Hopefully they don't give in by going the WFT route

[The_Admiral]

20 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

The hammer should come down on the team hard to change their name. Forfeit all their draft picks for the 2022 draft if a name is not announced by draft day. Forfeit the contracts of their top ten prospects, allowing other teams to sign them.

 

If they don’t change on time, cripple the club. Make them regret even entertaining the thought of keeping the name around.

 

Why would the Commissioner's Office be more beholden to academia/NGO-land than to one of their member teams, though? You can't punish them for delinquency in something you didn't require them to do in the first place.

[SFGiants58]

9 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

Why would the Commissioner's Office be more beholden to academia/NGO-land than to one of their member teams, though? You can't punish them for delinquency in something you didn't require them to do in the first place.

PR. It’s a bad look for the league. Heck, too much (read: any of) of the discourse around the 2016 World Series was Wahoo-related. It’s why Wahoo had to go to get the 2019 ASG.

 

Heck, Cleveland Baseball Club is preferable. Having no identity (even less that WFT) is the perfect punishment for keeping the odious name and odious logo for so long. 

[The_Admiral]

I don't remember much Wahoo discourse from 2016, because the block C was pretty much the primary by then, but also, considering where I live, it wasn't a local priority.

 

I don't think baseball cares that much. The fact is that Cleveland has been on the ropes as a baseball market in spite of some strong seasons due to cheap and uninterested ownership. Crippling the cost-controlled side of their operation to appease a handful of pissbabies on Buzzfeed will do so much long-term damage that once you do spook them into changing their name into the Spiders or whatever, nobody will be around to buy the merchandise except for Paul Lukas. There's no place for measures that draconian short of some massive institutional failure like Penn State child rape or using the entire organization to launder money for organized crime. We're only talking about unfashionable aesthetics here, a cause which, let's not forget, the Indians already acceded to by getting rid of the logo everyone hated so much.

 

Maybe the Indians really are taking their time to get it right for 2023, maybe they're taking a calculated risk that America will burn itself out on constant race warfare by then and get distracted by something else, I don't know. Neither one really causes me much anguish. It's more important to me that Cleveland gets back to being a strong baseball town again, which wouldn't be a direct function of changing their name.