This year's Yankee Elimination Day * is particularly sweet, since it was brought to us by my first baseball love, the Cleveland Indians. I first discovered the joys of following major league baseball, in 1958 when I was 10. Back then, Rocky Colavito was in right field and all was right with the world. **
I haven't called Cleveland home for more than 40 years, but there's still a soft spot in my heart for the hometown baseball team . . . except for its ubiquitous logo, Chief Wahoo. I can't help but cringe when I see it, and when you watch the Tribe play, it's everywhere.
Now I know these are fighting words in my family: When I visit them, Chief Wahoo's grinning countenance is inescapable all over Cuyahoga County and beyond, staring down from huge banners draped across house fronts and up from doormats and lawn ornaments, grinning at me from coffee mugs, emblazoned on first-string winter jackets, and on flags flapping from cars speeding down the Shoreway.
It's a kind of wallpaper, the offensiveness of the stereotype clearly not visible to the good, sincere people of Cleveland who apparently see in the hook-nosed, grinning "savage" with the bright red skin a mascot no more exceptional than the Philly Phanatic or the San Diego Chicken. But believe me, when you don't see him often, Chief Wahoo is shocking.
Yet, considering the offensiveness of the stereotype, questions about Wahoo don't appear to surface that often. I might have missed it, but I didn't hear the decades-old controversy mentioned at all during the national TV broadcasts, not even when Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain -- a member of the Winnebago tribe -- was pitching.
You've got to wonder what the players themselves think of having to wear it. And bringing up the subject with my relatives would be sure to engender blank stares or, more likely, puzzled defensiveness. It's a blind spot that appears to be growing, despite pleas to moralityfrom nearly every religious organization in Northeastern Ohio.
Sales of Chief Wahoo memorabilia are hotand getting hotter.
When the question is posed, the answers -- from non-native Americans, of course -- read something like: Isn't it an honor? We don't mean it as a slur, so no one else should see it that way -- all variations on, "lighten up." It's what usually gets said to minorities when they're being insulted: You're being a bad sport if you object.
I used to love Chief Wahoo. In fact, since his was one of the very few images I could draw as a kid -- along with Bugs Bunny -- I drew him everywhere. For Girl Scout day camp, I drew him on name tags I made for my best friend Faith and me. But hey, that was a different world, one that's long ended, thank goodness, when black jockey lawn ornaments still graced the lawns of rich liberals, and ads with buck-toothed Chinamen in coolie hats identified cans of bean sprouts.
Over the years, lots of teams have changed names and symbols with little problems, but
clearly, a decision has been made to continue promoting the Chief Wahoo logo. It could easily have been eased out of existence, with the Indians continuing the block "C" or "I" they occasionally have worn. President Clinton famously insisted on a cap without the mascot when he threw out the first ball at Jacobs Field in 1994.
It's one thing to resist re-naming the club; it's another to market this stereotype, and that's what seems to be happening. It will only get worse the better the Indians do in the post-season.
To me, Chief Wahoo is more objectionable even than the name of the football Redskins. They stubbornly refuse to change the team name, yet their logo is a rather dignified chief in traditional headdress. (BTW, it's not uncommon to see Pueblo Indians at feast day dances in New Mexico wearing Redskins' caps as an ironic touch. I've never seen a real Indian wearing Chief Wahoo, though.)
As the pennant series moves to Boston, Chief Wahoo will be in everyone's faces. And what will happen if, as I dearly hope, the Indians move on to the World Series, with three games for sure to be played in either Denver or Phoenix, where the issue of native American identity and pride won't be so easily ignored?
Don't get me wrong. I'm still rooting for the Cleveland franchise in the American League. I just wish I wasn't so embarrassed when the camera goes in for a closeup.
* My family has celebrated Yankee Elimination Day whenever appropriate since sometime in the 1980s. It's a quasi-religious holiday in that, like Jewish holidays, it goes from sundown to sundown, so that we can enjoy the day after an eliminating Yankee loss by exchanging phone calls and well wishes. It was created by my husband, who grew up rooting for the Washington Senators and is rather extreme in his hatred of anyone in pin-stripes, a bias he assiduously tried to pass on to our now-grown children. When they were kids, they would come down to breakfast to find a bunch of sweets and sparkling cider along with their English muffins. After only a second of puzzlement, one would say to the other, "Oh, it must be Yankee Elimination Day."
** I remember like it was yesterday -- the Easter Sunday in 1960 that Rocky was traded to Detroit for Harvey Kuenn . It was a late Easter (April 17 ) and unseasonably warm, so all of us were out on our porches enjoying the holiday. In the era long before the 24-hour news cycle, you could see the terrible news travel down the street, people forming in little bunches and passing it on, much as the news of any other disaster. We were bereft. It seemed unreal. Two days later, on Opening Day in Cleveland, fans had to face the terrible reality: Rocky in a Detroit uniform. He and Cleveland never were the same.