Cleveland Indians become the Cleveland Guardians

[MJWalker45]

16 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

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

Angel City FC did the same. So maybe they both look at roller hockey as a social event rather than a sport? 

https://the18.com/soccer-entertainment/nwsl-angel-city-team-name

[Lights Out]

16 hours ago, QCS said:

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.

 

It seems pretty bold to assume that the "Washington Football Team" circus is a deliberate strategy, not just the usual mismanagement by Dan Snyder.

[BadSeed84]

2 minutes ago, Lights Out said:

 

It seems pretty bold to assume that the "Washington Football Team" circus is a deliberate strategy, not just the usual mismanagement by Dan Snyder.

 

This, also people saying "Look what the Indians did in only 1 years time!" are forgetting this really was more a 14 years of the Indians chipping aspects of their identity away.

2008: Introduce road & alts that use block C hat.

2014: Change primary logo from Wahoo to Block C

2019: Wahoo logo is eliminated everywhere.

 

What did the Washington do again prior to changing to WFT to ease the transition again?

[Lights Out]

19 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

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.

 

My initial reaction was to say I disagree with you, since none of those teams are using an entire ethnicity as a mascot (which, political controversy aside, has always just struck me as being weird). But after thinking it over, you might be right. Even social movements that start off with the best of intentions - in this case, getting rid of truly derogatory team names in sports - aren't necessarily immune to losing sight of their original mission in favor of chasing more and more victories. It's like that part in Persona 5 where the Phantom Thieves let the fame go to their heads after the trip to Hawaii and get tricked into going after Okumura because they're too caught up in pleasing the Phan-Site instead of making rational decisions.

[SFGiants58]

Those teams all have it easy. Firemen Braves, firemen Chiefs, and a literal black hawk. Maybe the backlash will keep them around, I’m not sure. Dumping the chop and strictly enforcing the headdress and redface bans would help.
 

Spokane has the FSU excuse of allegiances with local tribes (Salish language jerseys and all that), while Indianapolis doesn’t. 

[coco1997]

19 hours ago, bosrs1 said:

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. 

 

The Blackhawks have an easy out in that if they do eventually cave to pressure to change their name they could keep it and just replace their logo with an actual black hawk. 

 

The Braves could theoretically rebrand so that their name refers to firefighters and play into the whole "Hotlanta" thing (but PLEASE don't adopt the horribly awkward sounding "Bravest" name). 

 

 

I'm not sure what if anything the Chiefs could do. 

 

EDIT: Dang, @SFGiants58 beat me to the punch as I was typing this post. 

[chakfu]

On 7/25/2021 at 3:19 PM, crashcarson15 said:

Granted, a major league franchise has enough money to make a mid-major happy, 

But Cleveland can be considered a mid major league franchise. The Butler of MLB.  Got within a buzzerbeater heave of a title but unlikely to get that close again.

 

One thing about spiders. It lends itself to monochromatic simple logos.  But anything further with more dimension and depth  would become really cheesy and forced. I suspect that's the real reason.

[chakfu]

19 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

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.

 

Would've been nicer if they had kept the modern murderers row intact long enough to actually win.  Same thing happened in 2017. Great lineup falls short...save money and hope to do better with a pretty good lineup. More alienating than a rebrand could ever be.

[bosrs1]

18 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Those teams all have it easy. Firemen Braves, firemen Chiefs, and a literal black hawk. Maybe the backlash will keep them around, I’m not sure. Dumping the chop and strictly enforcing the headdress and redface bans would help.
 

Spokane has the FSU excuse of allegiances with local tribes (Salish language jerseys and all that), while Indianapolis doesn’t. 

 

I think it'll come down to how quickly they dump any remaining native imagery from their identities.

 

The Braves are still unquestionably tied to native imagery with the tomahawk everywhere. If they were to dump that and go for a full rebrand away from the historical look they currently wear and tie into another type of "brave" the name might be salvageable. If they insist on maintaining most of the historic look like the Indian/Guardians did, then the Braves will almost certainly need a new name long term and keep the overall colorway and basic uniform layout like the Guardians did. I think it comes down to which is more important for maintaining historic ties, the name or the look. Guardians went with look. 

 

Same would apply to the Blackhawks for much of the same reason. Either go full rebrand with black hawk birds or something military themed since they claim it's a reference to a military unit while maintaining the name. Or drop the native head and other related logos while keeping the rest of the identity/colorway and rename. 

 

Same with the Chiefs. Either complete rebrand to a different kind of Chief, or drop the arrow logo and rename while maintaining the colors and unis as they exist now. 

 

I don't expect the above to happen quickly as there is a little more room for debate among some circles about how offensive each of these are. Though that said I've seen most of the folks who went after Washington and Cleveland lumped these 3 into the same boat for much of the same reason so I don't think there's a ton or room for debate. I think a good example of how something like this can be done is to follow the Golden State Warriors example. They quietly removed all reference to the Native imagery of their own 50 years ago, soft rebranded completely away from it, and other than one post on twitter a half dozen years ago by Carmelo Anthony, I've never seen anyone bother them about their name again. I think the above 3 would need a slightly more invasive soft rebrand given they're under a lot more scrutiny now than the Warriors were 50 years ago, maybe new colorways and new qualifiers such as Firechiefs or Black Hawks. 

 

 

[chakfu]

22 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

 

Considering this talk (from others) about whether the Indians have been a relevant franchise (they have, it's a silly argument), and the exasperation over the fact that Chief Wahoo existed as long as it did, I find it even more perplexing that the logo perhaps hit its apex in the heat of the '90s, which doesn't feel all that long ago to me. (I'm 44, so it was.)

 

I was a 13-year-old baseball fan without cable TV  when “Major League” came out, so my only real exposure to the Chief Wahoo hats had come from the infamous 1987 Cory Snyder/Joe Carter SI cover proclaiming Cleveland the best team in the AL (spoiler alert: they weren't.) By the end of '89, I not only owned a Wahoo hat, I probably wore it more than any other hat in my collection. The movie made it cool. The team's sudden rise to near greatness in the mid-90s kept that engine humming for years. 

 

Last night I dreamed that Cory Snyders late career mini resurgence with LA and SF was still going on.  I also constantly wore the hat around 89.

[chakfu]

On 7/26/2021 at 8:36 AM, CLEstones said:

 

Totally agree.

 

Honestly, the number of people who said "ILL NEVER WEAR GUARDIANS! I ONLY ROOT FOR THE INDIANS!" or "IM GOING TO MAKE A SHIRT THAT SAYS 'IM GOING TO WATCH THE INDIANS AT THE JAKE,'" this weekend was more than I would have guessed.

 

It seems the rebrand was incredibly rushed (looks at the logo package) and short-sighted.  I can already pin a few people in our social groups who will be stubborn for years about calling the team the Indians and telling their kids to call them the Indians (but they already have issues of telling their young, impressionable children lies and making them regurgitate it).

 

I will say, I think getting rid of the block C was a mistake.  I think they should have maximized that font and used it on the CLEVELAND jerseys, rather than just a non-serif font that doesn't match the block C.  The Block C has a ton of historical context and would be a great way to tie the entire cycle of the identity together.

 

I might be more willing to let go of the block C if the new C was somewhat palatable, but it is sooooo bad.  It looks like they tried to use the cave man C logo as inspiration?  Honestly, they took the worst aspects of all the identities over the years and smashed them into one.

 

Like you said, if the franchise really wanted to distance themselves from it, a new color pallet would have also been the most beneficial.  I would be willing to be the majority of people continue to wear Indians gear, since its the same colors, and boycot Guardians gear.

 

Again, it just seems like so many missed opportunities.  The bridge is forest green, the stadium walls and seats are forest green, one of the original pro baseball teams in Cleveland was the Cleveland Forest Citys.  There is just so many connections to forest green and could be a unique color, especially if Oakland continues to push kelly green.

 

Not only that, the rest of the bridge is sand/beige... would be a great complimentary color, would be perfect for an alternate uniform color or in lieu of gray away uniforms.  The Guardian statues have so many beautiful architectural aspects, including "baseball seams" going down their cloaks.  The logo package could have been some of the best in sports... now it's in the running for worst.

 

I would REALLY like to see a concept with forest green added to the current palette. I've prattled elsewhere in the thread but as a dark understated color I think it could complement navy without being too big a departure from tradition.

 

I feel like the team's tradition and history are important but are not so strong that it can't be evolved.  I hate the tradition of falling short, then rebuilding "one brick lower" instead of higher.  I like the idea of adding a new color with the new name if it can be subtle like forest green..

[bosrs1]

28 minutes ago, coco1997 said:

 

The Blackhawks have an easy out in that if they do eventually cave to pressure to change their name they could keep it and just replace their logo with an actual black hawk. 

 

The Braves could theoretically rebrand so that their name refers to firefighters and play into the whole "Hotlanta" thing (but PLEASE don't adopt the horribly awkward sounding "Bravest" name). 

 

 

I'm not sure what if anything the Chiefs could do. 

 

EDIT: Dang, @SFGiants58 beat me to the punch as I was typing this post. 

 

One has to wonder why they haven't made those obvious and simple changes organically over the years like say, the Warriors did. Why the insistence on hanging on to dubious imagery when many of the same Native American groups that were going after the (Washington Football Team) and Indians told the Chiefs, Braves and Blackhawks that theirs weren't any better. A simple organic change in all 3 cases could have really cut off most attacks against the names at the knees. 

[BadSeed84]

I do wish this stayed or at least in the script font like Guardians.

 

 

[damnyoutuesday]

17 minutes ago, EddieJ1984 said:

I do wish this stayed or at least in the script font like Guardians.

 

 

I'm a sucker for scripts with the city/location name on the road jerseys, but this one never did it for me. It just looks off for some reason

[SFGiants58]

With the Braves, the firemen rebranding would be easy. Add a fireman sleeve logo, replace the tomahawk with a fire ax, and renovate the heck out of Cobb County Park to remove the tomahawk imagery. Also, ditch the chop in favor of a cartoony fire siren. 
 

The Blackhawks can just slap on new logos akin to this:

 

 

Sure, it’s close to the head logo, but it’s more akin to a literal black hawk.

The Chiefs could replace the arrow with a Florian Cross or a a fireman helmet with the “KC” logo. It would also be a good opportunity to dump the black outlines. Uniforms would be unaltered.

 

All very simple, all could’ve been done Warriors-style and ages ago. But they didn’t and now they could be next in line.

[-Akronite-]

19 hours ago, the admiral said:

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.

 

I think the "not care," especially at this point, is probably a bigger slice than those that would want to nix the change, though. One could chalk this up to the right change (no need to turn Native Americans into your mascots) for the wrong reasons (it's not as profitable to be viewed as a racist organization), but the bad press and unimaginative branding weighs down the fanbase as well. 

 

I know plenty of younger fans from the area that are excited to move on from the old moniker, even if they don't love the new one, because it's been feeling less and less acceptable to sport "Indians" gear in modern society.

 

When I was young, I loved Wahoo as a logo and didn't think much of the name. I grew up, got a better understanding of the historical context for the protests, and changed my mind. I'm sure for a lot of people it will take a while to get used to/over it, largely because they spent much longer rooting for this team with it's previous name. But this is the smart move for maintaining/growing a younger fan base, insomuch as the market & baseball's popularity in general will allow for.

 

As for the public trust v private property discussion, hard to say considering how unrepresentative our actual democratic republic is. You could say the change isn't a reflection of the public because the public isn't what forced the issue. Well, they changed the name and the public is mostly accepting it. That :censored: wouldn't fly if they tried to move the team, on the other hand, so I guess there's your answer.

[Eastport76]

Sorry but Firemen Chiefs sounds dumb to me...It's just my opinion. I'd rather rename the team to Monarchs due to Royals.

  Like Buffalo, both Bills and Sabres had a bison logo. Or all Pittsburgh's pro teams wear same colour scheme.

Keep the colour scheme and uniforms. replace the arrow with a crown, eliminating black outline. 

Easy, right?

[bosrs1]

18 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

With the Braves, the firemen rebranding would be easy. Add a fireman sleeve logo, replace the tomahawk with a fire ax, and renovate the heck out of Cobb County Park to remove the tomahawk imagery. Also, ditch the chop in favor of a cartoony fire siren. 
 

The Blackhawks can just slap on new logos akin to this:

 

 

Sure, it’s close to the head logo, but it’s more akin to a literal black hawk.

The Chiefs could replace the arrow with a Florian Cross or a a fireman helmet with the “KC” logo. It would also be a good opportunity to dump the black outlines. Uniforms would be unaltered.

 

All very simple, all could’ve been done Warriors-style and ages ago. But they didn’t and now they could be next in line.

 

That's the part that bugs me the most. They held on for so long for no real good reason. I mean look at the Braves, they've had 7 different names over the course of their history. Yet the one they've hung on to inexplicably is the one that was given to them by a Tammany Hall hack who owned the team for a brief time in the 19-teens and it's associated imagery they've been told is offensive. It would not have been hard to either revert to one of the old team names (Bees, Rustlers, Doves, Beaneaters, Red Caps, Red Stockings, pick one), or alter the underlying imagery that makes the name offensive and they could have claimed to be honoring history and being culturally sensitive. Instead now they'll come out looking like they're begrudgingly going along when they inevitably do make a change.

 

Chiefs is even worse IMO since they've got so little native imagery left in the set, yet they inexplicably haven't removed it. If I'm not mistaken the arrow logo is all that's left. Getting rid of it and going to something otherwise "chief" related, be it Navy Chief, Fire Chief, etc... would have been so easy. 

 

Blackhawks too with the obvious bird move is just dumbfounding. 

 

I think it's the insistence of hanging on far longer than they should that really makes the move more painful and annoying that it otherwise should have been. I keep bringing up the Warriors, but they highlight just how quiet and simple a change this could have been. And it's sitting there staring these other teams in the faces. 

[Sport]

20 hours 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. 

 

Sounds like my dad. He's been a fan of the Cleveland Indians for 60 years and he's a smart, thoughtful, open-minded, forward thinking man who calmly explained to a 7 year old me why people were protesting Chief Wahoo the first time we went to Jacob's Field in 1994*. He's evolved his own politics over the years as well as his stance on the logo/name and has known for a while that this day would eventually come. He's not one of these boors who can't be an adult about it, but at the same time this thing he's had a relationship with since he was a little kid is gone and although he knows it's for the best I think he's having a harder time coming around than he thought. He had the Browns and they were taken from him and now he's losing the Indians too and I think he's also sad that he** never got to see either one win the championship proper. 

 

*for anyone claiming the protests are new, they aren't.

**he is the only person I've ever met who is a Bengals, Browns, Reds, and Indians fan. 

[gosioux76]

1 hour ago, chakfu said:

 

I would REALLY like to see a concept with forest green added to the current palette. I've prattled elsewhere in the thread but as a dark understated color I think it could complement navy without being too big a departure from tradition.

 

I feel like the team's tradition and history are important but are not so strong that it can't be evolved.  I hate the tradition of falling short, then rebuilding "one brick lower" instead of higher.  I like the idea of adding a new color with the new name if it can be subtle like forest green..

 

I don't want to be one of those who guy's who is automatically resistant to change. Generally, I'm cool with blowing things up and trying for something better, and there's certainly no better opportunity to do so than during a wholesale name change.

 

But doesn't it seem like every team that changes its color scheme eventually goes back to it at some point? I look back at the Pistons in teal or the Sabres in black and red and think of those as experimental college years. Your freshman roommate's decision to shave his head might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but eventually he realized the crew cut looked right all along.  Like that. 

 

I get that navy and red aren't to Cleveland what pinstripes are to the Yankees, but I can't help but think that any change would end up as another short-lived experiment.  It wasn't long ago that the Brewers added forest green into their color scheme.