Some history on baseball’s most racist team.

Tonight I stumbled upon an old Poynter.org column by Dr. Ink (aka Roy Peter Clark) about the best and worst team nicknames and I noticed the following reader comment:

The Indians were named for an American Indian player named Louis Sockalexis. The “Chief Wahoo” logo came along in the 1950, I think. The face is in the shape of a baseball glove, in case no one ever noticed. (Racist, my ass!).

Now, I’d never heard of Sockalexis, but Wikipedia says the commenter might have gotten his facts a little backwards, regarding how Cleveland got its name:

On the contrary, when the “Naps” sent longtime leader Napoleon Lajoie to the Philadelphia Athletics at the end of the 1914 season, owner Charles Somers asked the local newspapers to come up with a new name for the team. They chose “Indians” as a play on the name of the Boston Braves, then known as the “Miracle Braves” after going from last place on July 4 to a sweep in the 1914 World Series. Proponents of the name acknowledged that the Cleveland Spiders of the National League had sometimes been informally called the “Indians” during Sockalexis’ short career there, a fact which merely reinforced the new name.

So, that clears that up, to the extent that Wikipedia can reliably clear up anything.

But what about Chief Wahoo being shaped like a glove? I mean, maybe. But you really have to want it.

Can anybody see a baseball glove in the face of Cleveland’s mascot?

Of course, even if Wahoo’s face is shaped like a glove, that doesn’t make it any less racist.

NOTE: If you get a chance, click on the “Dr. Ink” hyperlink. It’s hilarious. Also, the Poynter column mentioned above includes a few errors by the usually reliable RPC. First of all, the Macon Whoopee were a hockey team, not a baseball team. And the Gonzaga team name, as a reader points out, is the Bulldogs, not the Zags.