Tag: name change

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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Cleveland won’t stop selling Chief Wahoo merchandise

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There are now more (and official) details on the story first written about in this space on Monday: The Cleveland Indians will be no more, as early as the 2022 season. They will instead become the Cleveland… something else to be determined, at that point. They’ll remain the Indians for the 2021 season, though, rather than go the route of the Washington Football Club, which is a bit of a weird decision for Cleveland, since they already have a C block logo for their hats and alternate uniforms that say “Cleveland” on them in their current scripts. It wouldn’t be very hard to just go by Cleveland for a season while they figure out what the long-term name is going to be, but alas, just like with Chief Wahoo, the organization isn’t in a rush to change the thing they are willing to admit is racist.

The more worrisome point to come out of owner Paul Dolan’s announcement on the matter was actually regarding that part of Cleveland’s identity that was supposed to be dead and buried back in 2019. In 2018, when Cleveland announced that the Chief Wahoo logo would be phased out — a move that happened only because, in what was a very poorly kept secret, the organization wanted the All-Star Game and MLB wanted them to lose the logo — it was clear that they planned to continue to manufacture and sell Wahoo merchandise locally. They wouldn’t do so nationally — you couldn’t find Wahoo-branded gear on MLB.com anymore — but if you went to the stadium, or local shops, you could still find licensed gear with the awful racist caricature of a Native American on it.

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