“The silver lining on the Indians’ collapse,” Adler wrote, “is that they now have even less reason to hang onto the racist logo. A victory may have convinced the team to hang onto the logo and the “tradition” it represents until the end of time, but they blew a 3-1 lead in the World Series—their third championship loss since 1995, and their fourth since 1948—and Chief Wahoo is an even bigger avatar of failure than he was yesterday [italics added].”
Peter Pattakos, too, the man who wrote “The Curse of Chief Wahoo,” the seminal text on Wahoo opposition, in these pages [sic] in 2012, two years before the Plain Dealer took its “historic stance” against the logo, tweeted that the World Series loss certified the curse’s legitimacy and ongoing influence.
Change the name, change the logo, exorcise the most legit curse in sports and win clean. It's an infinitely better story, anyway.
— Peter Pattakos (@ClevelandFrowns) November 3, 2016
In the meantime, the Curse of Chief Wahoo is officially the most successful curse in sports
— Peter Pattakos (@ClevelandFrowns) November 3, 2016
Vox.com followed suit. Leaping on the news cycle’s bandwagon, Victoria Massie argued that the curse of Chief Wahoo itself “demands that Cleveland recognize Native Americans as more than mascots.”
Well, all of this is fairly yucky and stupid, if you want my take, though by-and-large well-intentioned: Its cumulative effect is to suggest that Cleveland and its fans are so morally bankrupt, so Faustian, that the only way they would surrender to the demands of basic cultural sensitivity would be in order to vanquish a curse, to thereby win a championship, to countervail against decades of almost-titles that would have been ours but for the curse. Folks who advance this view are having to strain ever more gymnastically to do so with a straight face.
Those who are still using the Curse of Chief Wahoo as a blanket city-wide scourge, for starters, must reckon with the Cavs championship in June. Was that an anomaly or what? Vox, for its part, actually cited the fact that the Cavs “had to rally from a 3-1 lead by the Golden State Warriors” to win its first title as evidence of the curse. Consider your pardon begged. The Browns, too, must be countenanced, but in a different way entirely; that is, in the sense that their failure and dysfunction are so absolute that to suggest they’re affected by supernatural forces of any kind gives them way too much credit.
The earnest curse-defender must then look at the preponderance of evidence and decide that its sphere of influence is limited to the Indians. Here, though, he finds himself on stabler terrain. And the 2016 Game 7 loss is presented as a kind of primary document.
But this is silly too, I’m here to submit.
The Cleveland Indians, with a rotation of “one trustworthy starting pitcher, a fringy innings eater, the Biblical Curse of Blood, and a child,” quoting here the second-best lede of the postseason, courtesy of the Ringer — this is the best, a three-graf gem from the New York Times‘ Waldstein, Hoffman and Mather — took Cleveland fans on the longest and most exuberant roller-coaster ride they could have, in an October that everyone and their brother at Yahoo counted them out of. Despite not taking home the ultimate prize, the old Indians’ magic was back at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario. The summer and balmy autumn of 2016 were incredible seasons to be a fan.
So what of the curse? Is its sole function to prevent the Cleveland baseball team from winning one game, one less than the maximum number possible? And out of curiosity, if the Indians hadn’t made the playoffs at all, would the curse have been considered more effective or less? Proponents might say — and have said — less, that the curse works best when tragedy is amplified by proximity to the ultimate goal. The fashion of defeat is key.
“[Russell Means’] curse specifically directs that the team make it to the seventh game of the World Series, with a 3-run lead, and lose on a walk-off grand slam home run on the very last pitch thrown. He wants the loss to be THAT excruciating for the city and its fans,” writes curse proponent Ed Rice in a piece originally penned for the Bangor Daily News.
But for heaven’s sake, what about the dramatic and decisive fashion in which the Indians dispatched both the Red Sox and Blue Jays, even, in Toronto, as a Wahoo legal battle was waged in a Canadian court hours before Game 3? What of Rajai Davis’ home run? That was the opposite of excruciating for most fans, in fact nearly as triumphant as the Cavs’ assorted fourth-quarter heroics of their own Game 7.
It’s just a very delicate argument to make, and for that matter, so is arguing that Chief Wahoo is a “bigger avatar of failure” today than it was yesterday. That might be technically true, but only because yesterday — two days ago now — Chief Wahoo was the de facto avatar of wild success, overcoming unlikely odds, Rust Belt grit, Francona, Lindor, Kipnis, Miller, Kluber and the “unbridled enthusiasm” it was originally designed to induce. The Indians might have one more World Series loss to their name, but they also, crucially, have one more World Series appearance, a distinction that 28 other teams, in 2016, could not claim.
Unfortunately, on this definitive issue, conscientious leadership is no longer on the table. I’ve written that the future date when the Indians abandon Wahoo will be precisely the day on which it becomes financially attractive to do so. If the Dolans do decide to re-brand or axe Wahoo now — and there will be no “quietly abandoning” Chief Wahoo, by the way, as Adler instructs, not in this day and age — it will only be because they have succumbed to mounting pressure: from a growing number of uncomfortable fans and employees, if not from the MLB Commissioner himself.
Given all that, from the perspective of fan base psychology, a World Series victory would have provided a much stronger case to sever ties with Chief Wahoo than a loss.
I guess this is the dissenting opinion, but to me the line of argument is clear:
1) Chief Wahoo is deeply enmeshed in the Cleveland sports fan’s whole identity template. It’s difficult to disentangle Chief Wahoo from the fan identity at large. If you do, it’s a conscious choice. Disentangling takes effort and is often really sad. (A lot of bloggers at national outlets haven’t quite nailed this yet: Though the logo may be racist, fans’ affection for it (usually) is not, and to dismiss every Wahoo diehard as a racist goon gravely misunderstands the issue, IMHO). And though for some, standing up against offensive imagery seems like an easy, obvious stand to take, it still requires you to take a stand. And as a fan, that’s a bummer because you want to #RallyTogether, you want to be #Allin, and even minor concessions to the #DeChief crowd can make you feel, in some ways, like a traitor.
2) Until very recently, the most central and deeply ingrained component of the Cleveland sports fan’s identity — of the collective psyche — was the fact that it was tortured; the fact that fans were quote unquote “long suffering.”
3) We are no longer suffering.
3.b) e.g. “The drive. The fumble. The shot.” is now “The Block. The Shot. The Circumstance.”
4) The soul or id of the fan base is transforming, thanks to the Cavs’ and the Indians’ performance.
5) Efforts to re-brand perennially awful teams anywhere without corresponding efforts to improve those teams are always perceived by astute fan bases as “lipstick on a pig.” No one cares about new uniforms or new logos or new scoreboards if the team itself is garbage. But if owners make sound decisions and invest in quality players and thus energize the fan base, everybody wins. (Have a look at the Cavs’ Championship parade).
6) Transforming — or maybe even, like, transfiguring — a fan base’s soul is the hard part, much harder than cosmetic stuff at any rate. Now that fans are coming to grips with what was once a bewildering idea — having winning, Championship-caliber teams — there’s no reason they shouldn’t accept or embrace a new face to go with this new identity.
7) A face is a really important part of one’s identity, especially when it wants to be out in public a lot.
8) The Cleveland Indians are a very good baseball team. They are innovatively managed by a man presumed to be destined for Cooperstown. The team’s core players have been signed to long-term contracts. The starting pitching staff, when healthy, is perhaps the best in the majors. There is little doubt that, barring catastrophe or bad luck, this team won’t continue to compete at a high level for several years, i.e, make the postseason, i.e. be out in public.
9) A World Series victory, more than any of the above factors in #8, is the clearest indication that a team is good. It’d be a signal, in this case, especially so close on the heels of the Cavs’ title, that Cleveland’s — that is: the teams’, the fan base’s, the city’s — soul is a champion’s soul at last.
10) New soul. New face. (New face = something other than Chief Wahoo.)
I’ve got some other thoughts on the ownership, in particular how claiming that they are paralyzed on the Wahoo front because of their deference to the fan base is a defense that’s positively festooned in horseshit. But I’ll spare you that for now.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2016.
Just do it
If Scene actually cared about Native American issues perhaps at least mention Saturday’s Dakota Pipeline protest in Ohio City, instead they would rather pander to indirect faux PC outrage.
I honestly think a big portion of anti-wahoo types are more in it for a sense of moral superiority and licence to shame the culturally insensitive than it actually relates to natives.
And yes I am against Wahoo, but big picture the Wahoo debate is pretty inconsequential.
Aleks, I wholeheartedly disagree. As the writer at Scene doing most of the Chief Wahoo content, I can assure you that I care deeply about the Dakota Access Pipeline, and I’m looking forward to covering Saturday’s event. I’m also eager to continue reporting on DAPL to the extent that it makes sense for our publication. Scene is of course a Cleveland-based magazine, and reporting in depth on a story taking place in North Dakota simply wouldn’t be appropriate, much as I wish it were. That said, the Chief Wahoo controversy is a local story. I tried to show how Wahoo and DAPL were related in a piece this week, one on which, incidentally you commented. More broadly, protesting is not a zero-sum game. It’s not like the local Native Americans who so steadfastly protest Chief Wahoo don’t care about DAPL. On the contrary. (Same goes — I suspect — for the reporters covering the issue). There is no faux PC outrage. If you talk to these folks, you’ll discover that the outrage is all authentic.
The issue centers on team rebranding – logo and nickname – which includes Atlanta. And unless there is a seismic shift that vaults MLB past the NFL on the pop culture scoreboard, the tripwire for change remains with Dan Snyder and Roger Goodell.
The garbage doesn’t get picked up, the streets crumble every year, the city government is full of corruption and theves and moochers…but for SCENE, it’s all about the Chief. Year in and year out. AS regular as the arrival of the first lake-effect squall. But it’s a squall of words instead. Much as I hate snow, I’d prefer it at this point, especially after such a painful loss. It’s easier to shovel snow than horseshit.
Chuckles the Clown
Caucasians more offended than actual native americans
I was driving across northeast Arizona through Navajo Indian land. A local high school displayed the school’s sports team name: “Redskins”.
I visited several times with Native American friends on the Walker Indian Reservation outside of Reno, Nevada. I attended their sweat lodge ceremony several times. The medicine man or leader of the ceremony said he wasn’t offended by Chief Wahoo.
Keep The Chief.
Went to the World Series. There were 3 protestors. Meanwhile there were 40,000 people with the wahoo logo. Get over it. Stop pandering to the minority who want to see racism in everything. You aware of what Oklahoma means in Choctaw? It translates to Red People. It’s a term a Choctaw chief used to distinguish themselves from the white man. How about you actually do some research instead of just crying racism? And the whole idea of a curse just makes anti wahoo people look even dumber than they already are.
You have quietly tried to subdue Chief Wahoo on Indians apparel with th letter “C”. Sneaky with a semi successful move. If you get your way, you will end up name them the Cleveland “C”*nts.
“1) Chief Wahoo is deeply enmeshed in the Cleveland sports fan’s whole identity template. It’s difficult to disentangle Chief Wahoo from the fan identity at large. If you do, it’s a conscious choice. Disentangling takes effort and is often really sad. (A lot of bloggers at national outlets haven’t quite nailed this yet: Though the logo may be racist, fans’ affection for it (usually) is not, and to dismiss every Wahoo diehard as a racist goon gravely misunderstands the issue, IMHO). And though for some, standing up against offensive imagery seems like an easy, obvious stand to take, it still requires you to take a stand. And as a fan, that’s a bummer because you want to #RallyTogether, you want to be #Allin, and even minor concessions to the #DeChief crowd can make you feel, in some ways, like a traitor. “
It’s refreshing to see someone finally understand this. When on the subject of perceived racism it’s all too easy for protesters to get self righteous and judgmental, which puts fans on the defensive and makes them respond with equally tiresome arguments like “PC” and “liberal media”, and ultimately all that’s accomplished is more hard feelings and no real action or insight. It’s not helpful or productive to label everyone wearing Chief Wahoo apparel as “racist”
Cleveland INDIANS name is a tribute to honor the first native American who played for the team and was the first ever to play professional baseball. An indian version of Jackie Robinson. We don’t object to Notre Dame being called ” the fighting IRISH ” So what , should we eliminate all references to native American s and pretend they never existed. Drop the name of the state of Indiana, and numerous cities, counties , parks roads, rivers , all sport teams etc. Very few actual American Indians are as upset about the name as are the self-righteous politically correct white people who just like to gripe .
The last gentleman, “Jim,” claims the team’s name is “a tribute to honor” Louis Sockalexis. As the author of a book on Sockalexis, I can unequivocally state that NOTHING could be further from the truth. While I have worked successfully with Curtis Danburg and, earlier, Bob DiBiasio, both directors of communications for the team, to correct the biography of Sockalexis in the team’s annual media guide, as well as “okay” the wording for the small plaque in their hall of honor at Progressive Field, those are the only two places the team properly acknowledges its connection with Sockalexis. The portrait at the ballpark? An insult! They use The Old Man portrait, propped up in his uniform, taken in 1912, one year from his death. Would you do that to Feller? Boudreau? There is a statue to Larry Doby, the second Afro-American to play professional baseball. Sock is the first-known Native American to play and he did, indeed, inspire the nickname. So where is his statue, if the team is “honoring” him? Finally, just “follow the money”…The gift shop…There is NOTHING in the gift shop about Sockalexis, for Sockalexis…or that even mentions his name. Just a sea of Chief Wahoo images. Tell me, Jim, where and how does the team show respect for Sockalexis? The simple answer is….It doesn’t. It just abuses Sock’s tortured history to further exploit him.
Well, curse…or no curse. World Series victory…or loss. Really, Sam Allard, does it matter? I wonder if you can appreciate, from my perspective, how absurd it seems when serious writers like yourself can write thousands upon thousands of words on this subject, article after article, year after year… and NEVER bother yourselves at all about The Real Man, Louis Sockalexis, at the lost core of the story? What’s your answer to this?