A post on the SABR Baseball Cards Committee blog broke the story.
"That Topps has also been making that change on its old designs which used to feature Wahoo is especially welcome," wrote contributor phungo2008. "It was only when I started looking through all my old cards that I began realizing both how often that logo showed up and how distracting I found it now. Where some logos cause me to feel nostalgia, every card with Chief Wahoo on it made me wince."
NBC Sports picked up the story. Topps is doing the same thing for the Atlanta Braves' old "screaming indian" logo too.
"They’re not airbrushing these logos out of photos of players — that would be Orwellian even for my extreme Wahoo-hating tastes," wrote Craig Calcaterra, "but in card designs which have team logos, Topps is using the block-C logo, not Wahoo, and the Braves “A” logo in place of the old logo. This includes throwback issues like the Heritage sets which put modern players on card designs from the 1950s-1960s and on simple retro designs like their 1987 variations. Any cards which once featured Wahoo on the border or on the back now features the block-C."
The decision by the MLB's official card manufacturer may be seen as further pressure from the league on the Indians, who have resisted phasing out Wahoo, despite relegating it to secondary status. The team wore Wahoo caps all through the 2016 postseason, for example.
Commissioner Rob Manfred met with the team in January, and while there was "nothing new to report," Manfred said at a press conference that he expected a solution that would be "good for the Indians and good for baseball."
