Indians/Guardians and the Topps History Police
 

I haven't collected Topps' new releases in a number of years, but I am now going through some to see what's out there.

Sorry if I'm late to the party on this one, but in doing so, I learned that where a player played for Cleveland in prior years on their 2022 cards, the team name on the back is ID'd as "Cleveland" - will it stay "Cleveland" on their 2023 release, or will it read Guardians?

I will say that I have absolutely no issue with the team changing its name, and I can certainly see where it was probably overdue (putting aside the quality, or lack thereof, of the new name and logo). Full stop.

But, this attempt to change history is insidious. Right or wrong, from 1915 through 2021, the Cleveland MLB club was called the Indians. Probably best that Topps didn't get renewed. Of course, the new kids on the block will probably be just as bad.

Terrible.

The new kids on the block (Fanatics) bought the old kids on the block (Topps), so while I expect we'll see some changes, it'll probably be more of the same.

And don't forget, the new kids on the block are also partially owned by MLB, who was party to and at least partially behind the push to see the name change in the first place.

So, wouldn't leaving the Indians name on cards going forward then make MLB look a bit hypocritical? Or how about when creating any heritage, throw-back or other type cards showing old, retired players, are they going to automatically scrub and remove old Cleveland player photos used to then airbrush out the Indians name on uniforms, or the Chief Wahoo images? Great question, and will be interesting to see what they end up doing.

And you can probably pose the same question in regard to future football cards of the Washington players.

I don't collect football, but I had that same thought - any football collectors reading this? What do cards use as the team name prior to the Washington Football Club?

The team is based in Cleveland. Hasn't that always been true?

Actually no - the club originated as a minor league team in Grand Rapids in the 1890s.

But, to the point I think you're trying to make - if Topps traditionally listed the Red Sox as merely "Boston", the Padres as "San Diego" and so forth, I wouldn't have a concern.

Yes it is true since they joined American League back in 1901. As noted above, the team did actually come from elsewhere first.

I believe Dewey's point/question has to do with how in the past, cards would often refer to a team's name/nickname, and not just the name of the city itself, when giving some prior year or other biographical info about a player on the back of their card. His question would be along the lines of what are they going to do going forward if say they had a bio on the back of a card and mentioned something like how the player won the ROY award several years earlier, before they changed the team name from Indians to Guardians. Are they still going to list it as Indians, since that was the actual team name at the time, or will they now just use Guardians for everything? Or maybe they'll try to skirt and ignore the entire question by just referring to everything as Cleveland from now on that was prior to the name change. I threw in the added question then about using images of players from before the name change as well, and if they would alter and remove any instances of the Indians name or Chief Wahoo on the uniforms, or maybe just be sure to only use images/photos that don't show the Indians name or Chief Wahoo anywhere on them.

Yes, it's an inconsistency to play the PC game. We should do this to every team, few of them survive a PC check if one look to be offended.

The Trolley Dodgers is offensive to the mobile impaired.

The Padres are offensive to non-Christian identifying individuals.

The Giants are offensive to the vertically challenged.

The Reds are offensive to the colorblind.

The Astros are offensive because after their original was changed for not being PC, they named themselves for the space initiative, which was partially the work of former Nazi scientists.

The Texas Rangers (baseball team) are offensive because the Texas Rangers (law enforcement) were racist long ago.

The Pirates are offensive because pirates stole, murdered and raped people.

The Nationals are offensive because American nationalism is evil and racist.

Change all the team names, and remove these offensive words from the baseball cards. We shouldn't use the city names either though, many of those are offensive too. Step it up Topps, change the words before others do, be the leaders instead of the followers in improving the world.

A lot of cards from the 50s and 60s just list the city on the back of the card, at least on the annual stats rows, and not the mascot. Haven't gone through every year carefully through 2022, but depending on the specific issue, it might not be that big of a deal, unless there are certain city names that become offensive and need to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

There are numerous cities that do or have had multiple teams. The current and past have the same impact to releases as so many tribute and throwback cards are made. Listing by city is a terrible idea now and forever.

It's not much worse that the logo less stuff that has become the new norm. Before it was just oddball issues like MSA, It's hard to like a regular baseball card that is logo less and listing a team name as the City, as many do (Panini and Leaf for example), I know its a licensing issue, so I guess I am glad more didn't try earlier in my collecting career to make them as common as they are today

Changing the team listing has happened before. Take a look at the Joe Morgan cards from 2015 or 2016 Topps Archives. The backs list the “Houston Colts” and not the Colt 45’s. I don’t remember a lot of complaints and maybe people didn’t even notice for the most part.

I’ve thought the 1903 Cleveland naming contest was a hilarious glimpse into the the future. This exerpt was from an NBC Sports article in 2014 on the many transitions to get to the Indians.

“ OK. Well, let’s get through the inaccuracies. Cleveland baseball had a long and mostly losing battle with team nicknames before 1915. They had been the Infants, the Spiders, the Bronchos, the Blues and unofficially they had been the Exiles, the Castoffs, the Misfits, the Molly McGuires (for a brief time in 1910) and countless other names. I had no idea until I went back and looked how much people HATED the nickname Spiders, which I always thought was kind of cool. The nickname confusion got so bad that in 1903, a Cleveland newspaper actually DID have a contest to name the team and the choices were so uninspiring and uninteresting (Cyclops? Excelsiors? Gladiators? Thistles?) that they finally voted on just naming the team after Cleveland’s best player, Napoleon Lajoie. That’s how they became the Cleveland Naps.”

Even in 1903, the Gladiators name was an uninspired joke of a thought, but just like the every 15 year return of bell bottoms, bad ideas always seems to somehow float back to the top.

Not the worst name in sports as that for me will always be the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and the NHL for selling out so horrifically they allowed naming an expansion team after an unwatchable children’s movie. It took away the integrity of an entire league in one swift move. I guess we could have had the Cleveland Garfield’s and just had orange striped unis and it would have been little difference. Also, really not much less blah then their choice.

I think it is important both as I mentioned earlier, having a city name causes confusion as just listing “New York”, “Los Angeles”, or others. It also places a more important timeline in your head and better assimilation for the reader. I can’t possibly count how many complaints I have read on this site about unlicensed cards, but now we need just city designations?

I obviously do not like the Gladiator name but I want it on the card just like the Indians, Redskins, Bullets, Colt 45’s and all the others to denote time.

I don’t think I ever saw a airbrushed logo coverup, nor were the .45s told to change the name. It was just to honor the space program with the Astrodome. As for Topps archives treatment, I’m sure they likely are doing it for PC reasons but the Colts was an acceptable designation as it just rolled off the tongue better. The jerseys did not have .45, just the hat. They also played at Colt Stadium.

The story I've always heard is that it was largely due to problems with Colt and merchandise. Colt gave permission to use the name, named after the 1873 Colt Single Action Army revolver, but argued with the Astros after a couple years over merchandise revenue. They may well have been cutting into Colt's own revenue of branded material, though Colt wasn't exactly suffering at this time. Colt is still around and typically is pretty responsive, if slow, to people about inquiries into their archive. Probably worth an interesting look into the primary source material at some point here. Most clubs early histories are a fun dive of forgotten material.

The Colt .45's were definitely often referred to at the time as the Colts or sometimes the .45's. I suspect this has nothing to do with people being offended, but just the tendency to shorten names whenever it flows off the tongue fine to do that.

It's a shame Joe Morgan never had a full career contemporary card in a .45's uniform, just the half rookie with the cap. Series 1 of 1965 has them as the .45's, series 2 until the end as the Astros without any logo. An Astros logo only appears in the final series with the Astro's Rookie Stars card that has 3 of the new hats.

I do remember the 50th anniversary game in 2012 the Astros wore the full Unis. The League originally asked to nix the revolver but acquiesced.

That was a cool game to see,

I personally think that every MLB team name is offensive - except the Cardinals! :D

Greg, it seems I have made a habit of correcting you lately! ;)

The Cardinals are offensive for only featuring the male of the species

They honor the female species by wearing the away gray uniforms!

So....still not offensive! :D

I have always wanted to have somebody to correct all of the silly things I say. You're going to have your hands full, it seems I have a lot to learn about the perfection of the Cardinals!

I have refined my all-time team to:
SP: Dizzy Dean
C: Yadier Molina
1B: Stan Musial
2B: Rogers Hornsby
3B: Stan Musial (it's okay he never played there!)
SS: Dal Maxvill
LF: Stan Musial
CF: Willie McGee
RF: Curt Ford

Hate the new name as well. Don't understand the problem just using the name Indians, but no more Chief Wahoo. Atlanta isn't being pressured to do away with the Braves name (And what about their tomahawk chop chant?). I guess the native Americans view the word "Indian" as culturally derogatory, right? And that is why they don't want us to use it (and same reason you can't buy E$k!m@ Pies anymore either). Anyway, I'll continue referring to them as the "Indians", or as "the Tribe".

As for the name change, I thought it may have been neat to try going back to the "Naps". Has some historical significance and a Cleveland connection. Also, it's a nice, short, simple name that is easy to remember and rolls off the tongue. Oh well!

I see exactly how you baited me on that one. That is your choice for YOUR all time Cardinals team, so I'm not going to say one word about it. I am NOT going to correct you on it.

So there you go - I am keeping my promise - not going to correct you.

I have written 3 paragraphs and have not corrected you. I'm doing so good!

= = =

Ok! I can't take it any more! Are you telling me that you have the audacity to leave Albert Pujols and Ozzie Smith off of an all time Cardinals team? Seriously!!!!

I must admit that that Ozzie guy was pretty good, but he didn't have a cool action pose in the 1971 set like Maxvill. I don't make the rules!

702. Hearticulation
Being a lifelong fan and refusing to call your beloved team by the random, ‘politically correct’ moniker it was suddenly changed to, and sticking with what the franchise has always been called.

See also: Wokerevokers - people who aren’t necessarily fans of the team, but have a love for the game’s traditions and team identities, and refuse to use the silly new name.

I think just like most of these things (and personified by Gen-Z seemingly more than most) many people believe history only started the moment they were born. Anything before that was wrong or a myth and can only be interpreted by their lens.

These mascots will die with the fans that remember them and grew up with them. Yes, I will never use any of the new names and I am sure the new generation will look at me quizzically each time in confusion.

with the incorporation of the NL DH, you can add Pujols to your list.

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Personally, I'm glad they changed the name of the Indians and Redskins. And how they incorporate team names on cards is unimportant when compared to belittling an entire population of US Citizens. MLB took far too long to do what was right; it should have happened decades ago.

If Topps wants to just state Cleveland on the back of a card, no one is going to be confused. Records and histories move with franchises. This is nothing different.

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I think you can say things like Feller played for Cleveland and it won’t trip anybody up. There’s only one franchise.

Topps History Police - why did I think of JollyElm? :>

I have mixed feelings about it.
In some ways it's further erasing that population of American citizens (who in some ways are citizens of two nations (or more) on the same land. *

As one chief put it several years ago
"The day a sports team name is my peoples biggest problem will be a very happy day. "(may have the exact quote wrong, but it's pretty close)
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* In CT, the state couldn't prevent foxwoods casino because it was on land federally recognized as belonging to a tribe. As such it was not US territory!
The independent governor was very anti gambling. What he did do was use a very little used piece of the CT constitution that said he could make a treaty with a foreign nation. So he did, granting the tribe exclusive rights to have slot machines in CT for something like 5 million. The legislature wouldn't act because they had a defecit, and it was a bit of money. And just before the election the tribe publicly said they'd had a much better than expected year and gifted the state something like 40 million as a thank you for the treaty that effectively kept other casinos out of the state.

About Native casinos, WA State (where I live) and ID State have had them for a long time! We have 5 within an hour of Spokane...or possibly more.

Our regional multi-state tribes recently co-sponsored a bill that ended the use of tribal mascots in our high schools. The only way to keep a mascot was to regain tribal authorization. Two schools with highly successful sports programs (multi national championships within the last decade - North Central HS in Spokane, and Kamiakin HS in Kennewick) failed to gain reauthorization. So maybe it's a regional thing. I know that ND Natives wanted to maintain their NCAA mascot but could not.

Our local MiLB team (Spokane Indians) has a partnership with our local tribe - the Spokane Tribe - and this partnership has been highlighted by Copperstown HOF. They are owned by George Brett and his brother. They also own the local WHL hockey team, the Spokane Chiefs. Our MiLB mascots are a salmon and a dinosaur. The have uniforms written in Salish. They have a museum walk in the stadium. They donate money to tribal causes - like saving local salmon populations.

When I think of the Cleveland Indians in comparison with my MiLB team they failed at promoting and respecting Native peoples.

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My first wife was native Chippewa, and as such my son is native and a member of the tribe as well. I can certainly see the benefit of reaching out to local tribes to establish relationships but not erasing Indian imagery in some misguided white savior move. I spent his childhood at tribal events to build his knowledge of culture with powwows and celebrating the traditions.

His tribe has a partnership with Central Michigan College as they are the Chippewas. I honestly have never personally heard anyone at the tribe discuss any concerns with mascots other than this older article here supporting them used positively when asked -

https://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/...w_chippew.html

As an addendum to this article, the local school district was indeed forced to change their Warrior logo to the chagrin of the tribe in the end that took pride in that representation. The federal government threatened to withhold school funding for the mascot that they deemed offensive on behalf of the tribe who were financially donating to the sports program to support the mascot.

What I found shocking was this quote in a similar article on the mascot forced change from a press release by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights:

stated a press release from MDCR. “Continued use of American Indian mascots, names, nicknames, logos, slogans, chants and/or other imagery creates a hostile environment and denies equal rights to all current and future American Indian students and must therefore cease. ... Because there is now, for the first time, an objective showing that actual harm is resulting and that it disparately falls on American Indian students, there is no longer any need to question what the school, or what the ‘reasonable American Indian’ thinks about the mascot.”

Yep, that just shut down any American Indian that would disagree with their purity plan by disavowing their opinion because any “reasonable American Indian” would of course agree with them.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic when people say things like "changing the team name erases Native American culture".

Erasing Native American culture has been government sanctioned since there was a government to put those policies into place. And Native American culture isn't derived from professional sports teams either. There are much more meaningful ways of protecting the culture.

Who are you quoting?

If you, your wife, or son are interested in Native American history classes, I found these classes on Native American history to be really interesting. I took these to renew my teaching certificate in WA State. They try to be a survey of history across the entire US; but in each hour they zoom in on a particular story. They are $40 each, each including something like 10-15 hours of college professor seminars. They are produced by Gilder Lehrman which works closely with the AP US History program. The Case Studies is taught by a professor at Dartmouth, and the Recasting one is taught by a Native American professor at Yale. I liked the Case Studies one better - I thought the professor was a bit more organized - but they are both good. The last two/three hours in each course try to focus on 20th century changes that try to explain current lobbying by tribes around the country. The professors also make distinctions how tribes in the Northeast have a very different relationship with state governments than tribes in the Midwest, or Tribes in the West. They also try to discuss the ebb and flow of support or lack of support by the Supreme Court. Each class also lightly covers the Civil Rights Era activism by Native Americans - such as occupying Alcatraz.

Case Studies: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/node/500051/spc

Recasting: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/node/500052/spc

A common argument put forward by people who are generally against changing the names of teams.

Is it possible that some Tribes take pride in a local team with a Native American team name? Yes. I know tribes in North Dakota were supportive of their NCAA FCS team winning football championships. They were disappointed when NDSU had to become the Buffalos. And the Spokane Indians are an amazing extension of the local tribe for MiLB. Many in the local tribe would be disappointed if the team name changed.

But are there other tribes that hate team names like Savages and caricatures like Chief Wahoo? Yes. Those are racist stereotypes that don't do anything positive or uplifting.

We just need to remember that region to region, and tribe to tribe, Native American opinions about mascots change on how they are represented. And that's okay.

Ok apologies, I took it as a misrepresentation of what I was saying. Happy I asked. :)

I was only discussing my experiences living in a mixed family. I am sure they are different than many and assume that everyone will and should have many other thoughts, beliefs, and opinions.

No sorry about that. It was a tangent. I appreciated the perspective in your post.