Category: Racism

The Braves are chopping during Ryan Helsley appearances again

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Hey, do you remember the 2019 National League Division Series between the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals? While playing at home in Game 1, the Braves, as they always do, utilized the Tomahawk Chop to engage the crowd, which led to rookie reliever Ryan Helsley of the Cherokee Nation to speak up on the matter:

“I think it’s a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,” Helsley said. “Just depicts them in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren’t intellectual. They are a lot more than that. It’s not me being offended by the whole mascot thing. It’s not. It’s about the misconception of us, the Native Americans, and how we’re perceived in that way, or used as mascots. The Redskins and stuff like that.”

The Braves’ response was to essentially admit that the Chop was indeed racist…

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Just drop the appeal, Josh Donaldson

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The Yankees’ Josh Donaldson was suspended by MLB for exactly one (1) game for twice calling the White Sox’ Tim Anderson “Jackie” during last Saturday’s game between the two clubs. He is appealing the suspension, which is not exactly a great way to show that the supposed contrition in his statement is genuine:

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Round-up: The Chop, Commissioners, MLB for cord cutters

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I wrote about the failure that is the Tomahawk Chop making its way to the 2021 World Series back on Monday, but I certainly have not been alone this week in publishing pieces on the subject. Rob Manfred opened his mouth before Game 1 to let some bullshit spill out, about how MLB’s teams only market themselves regionally, and therefore no one outside of Georgia should be concerned with the chop, but also, Native Americans everywhere definitely support the chop; that certainly gave some folks an angle to work with.

Clinton Yates was one of those people, for The Undefeated, in a piece headlined, “Manfred misses the mark with Braves.” The focus here is on how the chop and MLB’s insistence that this is all progress and everyone who needs to be fine with the chop is fine with it is simply an extension of white supremacy. Yates also spoke with Natalie Welch, who participated in the video MLB and the Braves are now touting as proof that the chop has the seal of approval of Native Americans:

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Names and cultures have changed, but the Tomahawk Chop persists

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The Atlanta Braves are in the 2021 World Series, which means the Tomahawk Chop is also going to be in the 2021 World Series. Atlanta was briefly forced to confront the racist chant back in the 2019 postseason, but the lack of fans at games in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic gave them an opportunity to bury all of that talk of potential change, and now here we are. The Washington Football Team is a thing, the Kansas City Chiefs have enacted some protocols to combat the culture of racism in their fan base, and the Cleveland Guardians will officially replace the Cleveland Indians in 2022, but the Braves? They are still the Braves, and they are still chopping.

Let’s go back to 2019 for a moment. It was then that Cardinals’ reliever Ryan Helsley, a member of the Cherokee Nation, spoke out against Atlanta’s use of the chop. The Braves’ response was… lacking:

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Round-up: Athletes as workers, rediscovering America’s pastime, and the NWSL

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I’ve been pretty lax of late pointing y’all toward things I’ve been reading that I also think you should read, which was kind of the fault of a whole bunch of factors, but hey. Let’s change that up, and dedicate this whole newsletter entry to stuff I’ve been reading that I think you should read.

First up is Britni de la Cretaz and the return of Mic. Their first feature for the relaunched publication is on the fact we’re not used to seeing athletes as workers, even though they have to deal with management, even though they are not in control of capital within their own leagues, even though there are plenty of professional athletes out there who are making less money each year than some of the folks reading this right now. The topic is not only one that is close to me, but de la Cretaz spoke to me a bit about the subject, and I’m quoted in there a few times.

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Curt Schilling, regrettably, will not be removed from his final Cooperstown ballot

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​In what I hope is not even a little bit surprising at all to you, I have no love for Curt Schilling, for a number of reasons. You could just pick one of them and it would be understandable — that he basically defrauded Rhode Island taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars while lying to his own employees about their healthcare status, that he has a collection of Nazi memorabilia for “historical” purposes but also aligns himself politically with white supremacists making the entire “historical” thing even more questionable, that he’s especially racist toward Muslims, that he’s a disgusting transphobe, etc. — but the point is that there is a whole spectrum of reasons to think he sucks, and we shouldn’t forget that he stacks them on top of each other like this just because picking one would be disqualifying enough.

That being said, despite my right and true dislike of him and everything he stands for and believes in, I was hoping he would have his request to be removed from his 10th and final Baseball Hall of Fame ballot granted. Sure, he wanted off for extremely childish reasons, and asked for it in a tantrum of a statement following his failure to be elected to Cooperstown once again last year, but we could speed up this whole process by removing him from the Baseball Writers Association of America’s version of the election process, and gain a year of silence on the matter for our troubles, too.

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Cleveland’s MLB team finally picked a new name

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​Back in December of 2020, it was finally announced that the Cleveland Indians would eventually be known as the Cleveland… something else. The name was yet to be worked out, but we were all assured that the organization had finally taken that next step and decided to drop the old moniker that had fostered a racist culture around the team, one that used the excuse of “honoring” Native Americans as justification for its existence.

Now, we finally know what that new name is. It will take until 2022 for Cleveland to actually make the switch to become the Cleveland Guardians — sure, it’s not feasible for them to make a dramatic, mid-season wardrobe and name change, but it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t have been fun to see them try it — but it’s happening. There’s a new logo and people from outside of Cleveland complaining that the name isn’t good enough for them and everything. I’ll let Scott Hines handle that particular angle, other than saying that more sports team names should be inspired by Lord of the Rings-ass statues that exist in real life, even if it means we need to build more statues like that now to prepare us for future name changes.

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MLB supports voting rights, immediately has antitrust exemption threatened

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On Friday, Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia’s recently enacted voter suppression laws, those laws themselves a response to Georgia’s voters rejecting as much of the Republican party as they could in recent elections. You know, like the one that booted the truly wretched (and never elected) Kelly Loeffler from office and also convinced her to sell her stake in the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

You can debate whether what MLB is doing is the right thing or not — do the people in Georgia who will be impacted by this restriction of voting rights want these boycotts of the state? Is this anything more than a corporate reaction to which way the winds are blowing, in the same way their empty rhetoric around Black Lives Matter was around one year ago? — but what’s undeniable is that the decision to pull the All-Star Game out of Atlanta has infuriated the right. That’s no surprise, given they’ve been trying to spin what’s going on in Georgia as a strengthening of voter rights, not a direct attack on them, and also because like, three-quarters of what they’re up to now is culture war, America-is-being-canceled bullshit. MLB basically threw catnip for racists at a bunch of racists.

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Kevin Mather resigned, but the structural and cultural issues of MLB remain

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​Back when general manager Jeff Luhnow was fired by the Astros for his role in the sign-stealing scandal, I wrote a piece for Baseball Prospectus titled “Jeff Luhnow is gone. Jeff Luhnow is everywhere you look.” The idea was that, while Luhnow, physically, was no longer a part of the Astros or Major League Baseball, from an ideological point of view, his influence was spread far and wide. Getting rid of the man was not the same as getting rid of his ideas, and less than a year later, the minors shrunk and efficiency was put even more at the forefront of the league, just as Luhnow and his former acolytes had been angling for.

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The Atlanta Braves should become the Atlanta Hammers

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The death of Henry Aaron shocked and saddened the baseball world last Friday. Aaron was a giant, a tremendous player and steward of the game who pushed back against the very racism he encountered during his playing career in his days as an executive with the Braves as well. Paying tribute to the man isn’t easy — in fact, some paying tribute to him end up just being insulting or dismissive of what he actually went through and felt, leaving others to clean up those messes — but there are certainly ways to do so. The Braves, the team Aaron spent decades with in both Milwaukee and Atlanta, have an opportunity for a long-lasting tribute to the man: rename the team the Hammers.

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