Opinion: MLB, club won’t budge on Atlanta baseball team’s nickname, but here’s why I won’t use it.
HOUSTON — The caricatures on their jerseys were blatantly racist, so it was changed.
Their mascot was offensive, so it was booted.
The headdress and face paint were insulting, so the team strongly discouraged it.
We’re not talking about the Washington Football Team.
This is about the Atlanta baseball team in the World Series.
You know, the team that says it no longer encourages fans to do the “tomahawk chop,” and stopped passing out those foam hatchets and removed the Florida State University marching band music.
Instead, there’s a drum beat to accompany the tomahawk chop that is now mostly a hand motion. The stadium lights go out at Truist Field during each pitching change, with fans whipping out their cell phones, turning on the flashlights, and chanting for everyone to hear.
Apparently, as long as St. Louis Cardinals reliever Ryan Helsley, a member of the Cherokee Nation, is not around, the tomahawk chop is not supposed to offend anyone.
“I think it’s a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,” Helsley told the St. Louis-Post Dispatch in 2019 when the Cardinals were playing in Atlanta. “Just depicts them in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren’t intellectual. They are a lot more than that. It’s not me being offended by the whole mascot thing.
“It’s about the misconception of us, the Native Americans, and it devalues us and how we’re perceived in that way, or used as mascots. …
“There have been schools who in the past 20, 30 years have changed their mascots. I don’t see why professional teams are so far behind on that.”
The Washington Football Team did it. Cleveland’s baseball team is doing it next season, becoming the Guardians. The Atlanta baseball team, however, has said it has no intention of changing.
And talking to reporters before Game 1 the World Series on Tuesday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made it clear the league doesn’t intend to pressure Atlanta – and lauded the organization.
Commissioner standing down on Atlanta’s tomahawk chop, nickname
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When you dare bring it up, Atlanta will offer to put you in touch with Chief Richard Sneed of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who has a working relationship with the team.
They’ll tell you they created a Native American Working Group “with various local and nationwide leaders to partner with and collaborate on matters related to culture, history, education, outreach, and recognition.’’
They will sell a T-shirt written in Cherokee syllabary, and donate proceeds to the New Kituwah Academy and Cherokee Speakers Council.
Sorry to break the news, but Sneed is hardly speaking for every Native American. Atlanta’s name may be fine for one tribe, but deeply insulting and offensive to another.
“You can say you’re working with my tribe, but that doesn’t mean you’re talking to everybody in my tribe, or talking to the entire leadership,’’ Dr. Natalie Welch, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and professor at Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon, told USA TODAY Sports this summer. “There’s not even a consensus from our own tribe about this. When they speak about having support from a tribe, it doesn’t mean it’s unanimous support.
Atlanta sent a letter to season ticket holders that its nickname will be here forever.
It’s their prerogative.
It’s also mine not to use their nickname.