The Cleveland Infants And Other Outmoded Baseball Team Names

Following up on the National Museum of the American Indians’ recent “Racist Stereotypes and Cultural Appropriation in American Sports” symposium, SB Nation writer Rob Neyer offers a tour of Cleveland’s less controversial baseball team names from the past.

While the symposium focused mainly on the Washington Redskins and that team’s ain’t-gonna-budge billionaire owners, Neyer points out that the case study can easily be applied to Chief Wahoo et al.

His list of historical alternatives includes: the Bluebirds, Naps, Molly Maguires, Forest City, Infants, Lake Shores and Bearcats, all from the team’s time in the American League. Dubious options, at best.

Other legacies such as the Bears, Buckeyes, Red Sox, Giants and Broncos all found homes in other cities and, often, other sports altogether. In fact, the Cleveland Browns were once a local baseball team back in 1924.

Neyer does go on to point out that the Tribe’s logo remains the more significant sticking point.

Scene contributor Peter Pattakos writes in his 2012 cover story: “Six and a half decades after its creation, the Chief remains the only professional sports logo in the Western world that caricaturizes a race of people. But in the land of Wahoo, no reason is still reason enough.”

So… Go Lake Shores?

Unlikely.

This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2013.