Cleveland Indians become the Cleveland Guardians

[bosrs1]

3 hours ago, Tavarez said:

Cleveland-area writer Travis Sawchik wrote a piece on the name change relying heavily on quotes from the Brandiose people, including "I think you should find a name that cannot be ignored. If I was there assigned to them, I would tell them to think more like a minor-league team."

 

It could have been worse.

 

 

 

Brandiose

 

If ever there was a company to ignore. 

[bosrs1]

56 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Was there any pushback to that? I only remember that logo from mounds of Dale Murphy baseball cards, but by the time the team got great they had transitioned to their current look.

 

I mean it was 35 years ago. But I don't recall any real pushback. If anything the Braves went from a somewhat disjointed and odd lighter blue look back to their more classic style look so it was part of an overall big upgrade in brand. That and it happened quietly and organically as I recall. If Wahoo hadn't been in the movie, the new ballpark, and the logo during the Indians sudden 90's resurgence and instead just part of a quiet rebrand or brand adjustment in the mid to late 80's... we'd not be having half as many conversations about the Indians name today. Hell the Indians would likely be in the same boat as the Chiefs, Braves and Blackhawks. There'd be calls for a change, but they'd be far more muted as they are for those 3 teams, compared to the furor over (Washington Football Team) and the overall Indians package thanks to Wahoo. 

 

I mean I think Chiefs, Braves and Blackhawks (and the two MiLB Indians teams) all have an expiration date in the not too distant future. But I think you'll see those teams continue to resist a change for some time to come, with half measure such as banning the tomahawk chop and further banning of periphery things as you've seen already in KC, as well in part because they're not just in your face slurs and racist caricature. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

3 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

If only that movie used the Brewers, Angels, or White Sox. I blame Major League for helping to keep Wahoo around. It might have made it more socially acceptable to keep around.

 

That is certainly how it worked out.  But I have to think that the movie would have used the Cleveland Indians instead of those other teams regardless of the Indians' cap logo at the time.  The Indians had a long history of futility, sort of like the Cubs but without the charm.  Equally important, Cleveland is just funnier as a goofball location than Milwaukee (top cultural associations: beer, the Fonz) or Chicago (one of the world's major metropolitan centres; home of Al Capone and crooked elections) or California (plenty of associations, but certainly not associated with "losers").

So I say don't blame the movie; blame the team entirely.  The movie would have been made even if the team had been wearing the previous cap logo; and the movie's effect on keeping the offensive logo alive was inadvertent.

 

Also, as others have mentioned, the page could have been turned on the Wahoo logo upon the opening of the new ballpark.  That was the key moment where the team screwed up.  How nice it would have been if Belle and Lofton and Baerga and Martinez had been wearing a different cap logo and no Wahoo on the uniform.

[ManillaToad]

36 minutes ago, CS85 said:

 

The bristling at the change makes sense, particularly for older fans, but the words that come out usually aren't "I fear change."  It's "woke cancel culture is taking away my sports things*."  If you tested the water from the source, almost certainly the discomfort with change is almost always the prevalent bacteria, but after a few miles down the metaphorical creeks and rivers, those who seek to politicize, from whatever branch of the outrage tree, happily soak up those muddied waters and proliferate with a will.  So much so that the initial feeling - "change stinks" - has become "Cultural Battleground #6823972928174503454."

 

However it starts, and however casual or innocent the average fan is, when it comes to a lot of predominately white sports fans, these issues always end up absorbed into extreme polarities.

* - obviously this and every post regarding my takes on this topic are entirely subjective and heavily influenced by my personal experiences

 

 

I guess?  I find this and other Native logo controversies extremely simple, and don't get why it's such a personal issue for so many.  I mean I get it, but I don't get how the frustration lasts longer than, say, a few days.  It may just be how I'm wired.  I tend to move on from things extremely quickly by most standards.  If the Blackhawks changed their logo to look like the new Winterhawks identity (that is to say a boring, placeholder, thoughtless design) I'd be totally fine moving on.  I'm kind of already in that process now because of Letter-of-Recommendation-gate, but that aside, things change, and I can either choose to be pissed off and hurt about it, or I can move on because it's a sports team that aside from nostalgia has no real impact on my life.

 

If others would like people like me to stop rushing to judgments and assumptions, maybe they should  be aware of just how hijacked the "I'm gonna fight for my nostalgia" mentality has so many welcoming, pulling arms from extremists and hate-centric groups. 

 

It's like a weeping family begging their heroin-addicted son to go get treatment, but they don't because they feel judged.  Well yeah.  You're a heroin addict.  I feel bad for you, but I also judge your bad decisions that got you into this mess and now place the welfare of your person onto your frustrated and exhausted family, and they must go about mandating this change in a slow, methodical way, lest the addict feel judged and seek any excuse to break sobriety.

 

Anyway, I may have pulled this entire post/series of posts out of my ass.  Fin.

 

I think you should take a break from twitter or whatever social media site you're trawling to find these types of people

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, infrared41 said:

It is possible that people don't like the name change for far less sinister reasons. People are creatures of habit. You make a big change in their routines and they're going to resist simply because they don't like people messing with their routines. Right, wrong, or indifferent, people loved the name Cleveland Indians for reasons that have nothing to do with playing the team politics game.

 

I'm thinking about the notion of privately owned sports team as public trust, which is a concept we all like to come back to when we hate crappy owners. If there had been a mass movement among Indians fans to change the name, who could possibly object? This wasn't that. This was pressure from a small sliver of the professional-managerial class leveraging institutional power to get what they wanted (more precisely, that's what happened to the Washington Football Team as a result of the race war/pandemic, and the Indians figured then and only then that they'd better get it over with, which is to say that decades of indigenous protests never meant a goddamn thing). One can say "it's the billionaire's team, he can do what he wants," but how does one just now reconcile that with the sports-team-as-public-trust concept? Which public is the team entrusted to? the people who go to the games or the people in the tall buildings far away? If Dolan tried to move the team to Nashville, who outside of Nashville would champion his right to do what he wants?

Your average dude in Akron either wants the name to stay or doesn't care either way. A human-resources officer for JPMorganChase wants the name gone and cares very much. The big guy, the ol' you-know-who, said something to the effect of "a small group of people is forcing these changes," and as is so tragically often the case, he's not entirely wrong. It's then a question of to what extent you believe our cultural elite has the moral obligation to lead the rest of us benighted souls into the light, i.e., how much you agree with Herbert Marcuse.

 

 

[Marlins93]

6 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

It’s why I wouldn’t have minded Dobys as a team name, provided Larry Doby’s estate was cool with it.

Meh, I know that kind of idolatry existed in baseball 100+ years ago (hence the "Naps") but that feels much too out of place in today's game. So I'm not a fan.

 

Guardians might not be perfect but it works much better than everything else that's been considered. Spiders, Forest Citys, Foresters, Commodores (that would have been okay, but I have some reservations), or anything to do with music or rock. I agree that green is underutilized in MLB and while Cleveland historically has the nickname "Forest City," it doesn't genuinely reflect the character of the city today. Leaning into a green, woodsy color palette wouldn't work so well, in my opinion. When/if Portland gets a team, hopefully they can do more with greens and browns.

 

A truly perfect Brandiose name would have been the Cleveland River Fires, but obviously no MLB team would be so self-deprecating. 

 

While Guardians doesn't connote much excitement in some respects, it's a name that's akin to The Mets/Metropolitans, Twins, or Phillies. I feel like if any of those cities tried to adopt those names today irrespective of their storied histories, many fans would be put off and disgruntled. Change can be tough sometimes but they will get used to it, especially if they start winning and they manage to fine tune the branding visually.

 

The Guardians works splendidly as a name. The wordmark is very nice, but the insignia feels undercooked.

[ManillaToad]

where are my Cleveland Lake Shores fans at

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

Your average dude in Akron either wants the name to stay or doesn't care either way.

 

This is where I'm at and maybe it will help put a less political spin on the people who aren't crazy about the name change. If I'm being honest, my heart would have chosen to keep the name Indians. Why? The best reasons I can give you are that I grew up with it. I'm used to it. It's what I know. That being said, in my head, I know changing the name was the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure I'm not a unicorn in that respect. Simply stated, we're going to need a little time to let our emotions catch up to our better angels. That is not going to happen overnight. Sorry if we're not moving as fast as people would like. We'll get there. 

[sky1324]

2 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

 

This is where I'm at and maybe it will help put a less political spin on the people who aren't crazy about the name change. If I'm being honest, my heart would have chosen to keep the name Indians. Why? The best reasons I can give you are that I grew up with it. I'm used to it. It's what I know. That being said, in my head, I know changing the name was the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure I'm not a unicorn in that respect. Simply stated, we're going to need a little time to let our emotions catch up to our better angels. That is not going to happen overnight. Sorry if we're not moving as fast as people would like. We'll get there. 

This reasoning right here is actually why I think the Washington Football Team strategy is the right move - utilize a temporary brand so that fans can get their anger at losing the name out, then by the time the new brand is ready, fans will hopefully be more accepting right away and ready to embrace the new name.

[bosrs1]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

I'm thinking about the notion of privately owned sports team as public trust, which is a concept we all like to come back to when we hate crappy owners. If there had been a mass movement among Indians fans to change the name, who could possibly object? This wasn't that. This was pressure from a small sliver of the professional-managerial class leveraging institutional power to get what they wanted (more precisely, that's what happened to the Washington Football Team as a result of the race war/pandemic, and the Indians figured then and only then that they'd better get it over with, which is to say that decades of indigenous protests never meant a goddamn thing). One can say "it's the billionaire's team, he can do what he wants," but how does one just now reconcile that with the sports-team-as-public-trust concept? Which public is the team entrusted to? the people who go to the games or the people in the tall buildings far away? If Dolan tried to move the team to Nashville, who outside of Nashville would champion his right to do what he wants?

Your average dude in Akron either wants the name to stay or doesn't care either way. A human-resources officer for JPMorganChase wants the name gone and cares very much. The big guy, the ol' you-know-who, said something to the effect of "a small group of people is forcing these changes," and as is so tragically often the case, he's not entirely wrong. It's then a question of to what extent you believe our cultural elite has the moral obligation to lead the rest of us benighted souls into the light, i.e., how much you agree with Herbert Marcuse.

 

 

 

If that were true however, what was driving the managerial class as you call them to make the change

[Bill0813]

 

 

http://www.clevelandguardians.com/

 

 

[Ridleylash]

Lmao, of course the Dolan team would undergo Critical Research Failure

[The_Admiral]

lol, I'm sure the issue came up, they just figured they could buy off the (snort) men's roller derby team with new uniforms and a pizza party

[bosrs1]

24 minutes ago, Bill0813 said:

 

 

http://www.clevelandguardians.com/

 

 

 

Wow, amateur hour in Cleveland...

[Gothamite]

46 minutes ago, Bill0813 said:

 

 

http://www.clevelandguardians.com/

 

interesting article.   But this quote jumped out at me:

 

“The purpose of the trademark laws is to avoid confusion in the marketplace, Geronimo said. But two businesses could have similar names without trademark problems if their goods and services are very different.

“Apple Inc., the technology company, for example, is a completely different type of business than Apple Records. The differences between Major League Baseball and a roller derby team could be viewed similarly, Geronimo said.”

 

kind of glosses over the fact that Apple Records and Apple Inc had thirty years of litigation over the name. 
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

[panthers_2012]

1 hour ago, Ridleylash said:

Lmao, of course the Dolan team would undergo Critical Research Failure

Sounds about right with them. They didn't want to pay the money for that. God I hate the Dolans.

[SFGiants58]

I doubt this will be an issue.

[SpenserRM]

23 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

We're going to find out because that is definitely going to happen. Hell, I have 4 Indians jerseys, 6 Indians hats, a classic Indians starter jacket, an Indians hoodie, and a few t-shirts. Am I expected to throw all that away now? I'm not one to wear an Indians jersey to a game as a you to the new name. but I'm also not going to burn all my old Indians gear.  I like the new name a lot, but I also have literally hundreds of dollars wrapped up in Indians gear. It's a weird spot to be in. I guess I can keep wearing the hats.

 

And before anyone asks, no, I do not have any Wahoo gear. I stopped wearing Wahoo gear a long time ago.

Nobody is going to make anyone stop wearing Indians gear. WFT isn't stopping anyone from wearing their old merch... 

[Marlins93]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

I doubt this will be an issue.

 

Neither do I, but I imagine that the MLB team would want to obtain that domain name, even if it would simply redirect to mlb.com/guardians.

[O.C.D]

1 hour ago, SpenserRM said:

Nobody is going to make anyone stop wearing Indians gear. WFT isn't stopping anyone from wearing their old merch... 

I wouldn't bet my money on it staying that way in the future