Overshadowed in town by a mismatched trio of celebrities – Johnny Manziel, LeBron James and Donald J Trump – the Cleveland Indians rolled into first place in their division and have stayed there. Fans are talking, again, about their team, The Tribe, winning its first World Series in 68 years.
With success comes more attention, and the Indians, led by the former Boston Red Sox manager Terrence John “Terry” “Tito” Francona, are becoming centerpieces as the Major League Baseball drags on. That part has changed. But their look has not, even though it was supposed to.
Before the Indians opened the season in April, Paul Dolan, the owner of the team, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the Indians had moved to the block C as its primary logo, pointing out that the team is using the block C more heavily than the Chief Wahoo logo. But he also added that, while sympathetic to critics who say Chief Wahoo is insensitive to Native Americans, it would stay.
Of the 216 Cleveland Indians hats for sale at the team’s online shop, 112 carry the familiar smiling red face of Chief Wahoo, the 69-year-old logo that people either love or hate. Of the 88 games in the first half of season, the first-place Indians wore Chief Wahoo caps in 58, winning 37. (They split 30 games in several caps with a block C, most likely because all were road games.)
Earlier this month, Indians spokesman Curtis Danburg told the Guardian: “We are very cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the conversation – our fans’ deep, long lasting attachment to the memories associated with Chief Wahoo, and those who are opposed to its use. We continue to research our fan base to better understand their perception and stance on the logo, but at present time have no plans of making a change. We will continue to have the Wahoo logo represented on our uniforms and home cap during the 2016 season.”
An MLB spokesman said sales figures are not disclosed for caps. Danburg said he did not have access to current sales figures – the Indians have been on the road because of the Republican National Convention – but he said that the Indians’ navy blue home cap with a red brim and Chief Wahoo on the front was the club’s most popular seller last season.
(A 10-team list on the MLB’s online shop of “Top MLB Caps” does not include the Indians. The list: Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, Giants, White Sox, Tigers, Royals, Braves. There are no Indians on a 10-player list of “Hot MLB jerseys.”)
But many people who “are opposed to its use” say nothing has really changed. According to Flipflopflyin.com, a website run by an Englishman named Craig Robinson who now lives in Mexico City, the Indians wore Chief Wahoo caps in 97 of 161 games in the 2013 season, or 60.2%, which is actually less often compared with 65.9% in the first half of this season.
And when the Indians wear the block C caps on the road, a Chief Wahoo logo appears on the sleeve.
“And whether Wahoo is on the uniforms or not, it’s still all over the park, on signs, on fans’ gear,” Peter Pattakos, a Cleveland attorney, said. “And Indians fans still regularly dress up in redface.”
Pattakos then pointed out a photo of a person rowing a boat on the Portage Lakes, near Akron, earlier this summer. His face was painted a bright red, with Chief Wahoo’s oversize triangular eyes and toothy smile in white makeup, plus a headdress with a single feather.
“Whether the team phases out the logo, or gets rid of it, or whatever, you’ll always have fans wearing it and dressing up in redface as long as the team is named the Indians,” Pattakos wrote. “And that gets to the bottom line for me, which is that even the team name is absurdly offensive if one wants to be remotely realistic about the history of this nation and what happened to Native Americans.
“At this point, I’ve come to appreciate the fact that the Dolan family have been brazen enough to keep Wahoo around for so long. If someone is going to have such disregard for basic humanity, I suppose it’s just as well that they be open about it.”
Until James and the Cavaliers won the NBA championship last month by stunning the Golden State Warriors with an unprecedented three-victory comeback in the finals, Cleveland was saddled with the grim statistic that no sports team had won a major-sports championship since 1964.
The Indians have not won the World Series since 1948. Wearing jerseys that included an even more primitive version of Chief Wahoo on the sleeve but wishbone Cs on their caps, the Indians beat another team named after Native Americans, the Boston Braves, in six games. The Indians lost the World Series in 1954, 1995, and 1997.
According to the Indians’ website, the team got its nickname through a poll of sportswriters in 1915 because the owner needed a new one. The team had been known since 1903 as the Naps, after its player and manager, Napoleon (Nap) Lajoie, who was released after a 102-loss season in which the team drew only 185,000 fans.
“Indians” was chosen because it was reminiscent of an exciting National League team in the city in the 1890s, known formally as the Spiders, that included Louis Sockalexis, the first Native American in the major leagues. Sockalexis batted .338 as a rookie and caused so much of a stir that the team was called the “Indians,” then intended to be a term of honor.
In 1947, Bill Veeck, then the Indians’ flamboyant owner, commissioned the JF Novak Co to design a new caricature for his club. A 17-year-old draftsman, Walter Goldbach, drew Chief Wahoo, and the logo became iconic. When interviewed by a Cleveland radio station in 2014 about the retirement of the logo, Goldbach said that would be “a big mistake.”
The Indians were said to be considering dropping Chief Wahoo as early as 1993, when they were about to move from the creaking, cavernous Municipal Stadium to what is now known as Progressive Field. Richard Jacobs, then the Indians’ owner, said the team would retain Chief Wahoo because of historical reasons, even though the team had not won a pennant since 1954.
The Chief is still in Cleveland. When a young man recently bought a Chief Wahoo cap, he was actually ribbed for jumping on the team’s bandwagon, not making any sort of social statement. Winning drives sales, and as long as the Indians don’t turn into the 1902 Cleveland Naps, nothing will really change, even though the team says it will.
• This article was amended on 27 July 2016. An earlier version omitted the Indians’ 1995 loss in the World Series.
