July 7, 2020
As the country engages in a painful — and long-overdue — reckoning over its racial history, both the Washington NFL franchise and the Cleveland MLB franchise are, apparently, considering changing their mascots to something less racist.
In response, President Trump tweeted yesterday that “They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness,” and that these “two fabled sports franchises… look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct.” (I omit the next sentence, in which he insults Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren).
First of all, I’m not sure “Pelicans” or “Blue Jackets” or “Mighty Ducks” are necessarily team names that evince images of “strength.”
And I’m not convinced, in any event, that either franchise can be called “fabled.” Old, sure: The Cleveland team has been around for abut 120 years and the Washington football team is about 90 years old. Between the two of them, those 210 years have resulted in a total of seven championships (that’s one every 30 years), the most recent being Washington’s Super Bowl year of 1991. Cleveland has not won a World Series since 1948.
If Cleveland is looking for a replacement mascot, I would suggest the Routine Pop-Ups. It is historically accurate, and they could get a lot of sponsorship dollars from internet advertisers.
I actually stole that last bit from my brother, but he never reads my blog, so he’ll never know that I plagiarized it.