An Open Letter to the Owners of the Cleveland Baseball Team

Dear Larry and Paul Dolan:

I have been a Cleveland sports fan since the 1960s. In fact, I was born in 1964, the last year Cleveland won a sports championship prior to the Cavs cracking the 52-year curse on June 19th. I have lived through all the heartbreaking losses of the ’80s and 90s, and before that I kept the faith during the dark days of the 1970s when a fourth-place finish was a good year for our baseball team. I even lugged cups of Coca-Cola up and down the stairs at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium selling soda to thirsty fans. And so it is as someone who loves Cleveland and Cleveland sports and is thrilled that we are going to the World Series that I say, please get rid of the uniforms with Chief Wahoo on them.

It’s indisputable that the image of the grinning, red-skinned figure is an offensive caricature of Native Americans. Few people have even tried to defend the image, which is just as well because it’s indefensible. I don’t need to belabor that point. Truthfully, we should actually change the name of the baseball team. It’s been done before, and there could be a citywide contest to unite everyone behind a new name. Coming off a trip to the World Series would be a great time to make such a change.

In addition to the logo being offensive, which should be reason enough to make the change, it’s embarrassing to Cleveland fans everywhere, and it taints our enjoyment of the team’s success. Coming off the NBA championship, Cleveland is a City of Champions once again, and heading into the World Series with home field advantage, the eyes of the world are upon us. This is a time to shine and put forward our best foot, not our most racist image.

What’s particularly perplexing is that the team seemed to be heading in the right direction earlier this year. Multiple news outlets reported that the team had “officially demoted” the logo to secondary status and were replacing it with a much more appropriate and non-offensive letter “C.” Paul Dolan was quoted as saying, “We have gone to the Block C as our primary mark…Clearly, we are using it more heavily than we are the Chief Wahoo logo.” What happened? Why was that plan abandoned? How did we end up back here with the inappropriate image rearing its literally ugly head?

Please, Dolan Family, on behalf of Clevelanders of conscience across the country, let’s get this right. When the team takes the field for Game 1 of the World Series, allow us to deepen our applause by seeing that the team is sporting a uniform we can all be proud of.

In Solidarity,

Steve Phillips