The Little Orange
Divine Vengeance
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Well, it seems my superstitious blogging abstention wasn’t enough to make the Cleveland sports gods look the other way for the Indians. Understandable: based on our geography, they’re Native American gods, and we’re not going to win the World Series without a complete image overhaul.
What could’ve transpired in 1948 to convince the gods to turn a blind eye to our racism? A-ha: the Indians’ signing that year of Major League Baseball’s first African-American pitcher, Satchel Paige. Looks like we’re going to have to move a huge Civil Rights foot forward if we want to be world champs. Unfortunately, short of tossing our name and logo, there’s only one frontier left: women.
As if.
But check this out: the Indians’ only other World Series win occurred in 1920, the same year the United States ratified its Nineteenth Amendment — which is, of course, the amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote.
Women or Wahoo? Looks like we need a movement.
Tags: baseball, Chief Wahoo, Civil Rights, Cleveland Indians, Indians, Native Americans, Nineteenth Amendment, racism, sports, women's suffrage, World Series
Chief Wahoo Go Bye-Bye?
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The Indians’ Chief Wahoo is a racist logo. Everyone knows it. Part of his original race was buffed away with a makeover in 1951 so that he’s now more of an ethnic mutt, his feather the only clear indicator of his ancestry. His muted race still offends, though, and the deeper we get into baseball season, the more the Chief Wahoo debate escalates.
Someday Wahoo is going to have to go, but there’s probably some way to get rid of him without losing his essence. For instance, maybe we could ditch the head and keep the scalp? Err, feather? Or make him the Cheshire Chief, a disembodied grin?
The Washington Redskins have taken similar flak for their name and logo, but it seems Chief Wahoo gets a lot more abuse. Perhaps our Chief just needs an injection of nobility? After all, a proud chief in profile is a much better representation of Native Americans, who hardly ever smile.
If we have to ditch Wahoo, can we be the Indians without him? And if we aren’t the Indians, what do we become? The Giant Purple Biological Disasters, as inspired by Slider? Maybe it’s just my Barney rebellion coming back every time I look at him, but man, do I hate that thing.
We’d need a fierce name. I figure that’s why so many sports teams drew on Native Americans for their identities: we respect, even revere, Native Americans as a proud, strong people, and being proud and strong, damn if they’re not dangerous on the turf and the diamond.
But if we’re realists, we can’t very well go on operating under the name of a people who actually exist. Greek gods, maybe. Hmm, how about the Cleveland Olympians? Probably too much of a stretch. The Cleveland River Fires? Too traumatic for the fans. The Cleveland Needles, as in Record? Too oblique. The Cleveland WMDs? Fierce, but I shouldn’t even have typed that.
I think we need to dig down into Cleveland’s soul and draw on what we’re really about, where we come from. I propose this: the Cleveland Slavs. Our logo: a belly. The hotdog race becomes a race between a pierogi, a kielbasa, and sauerkraut. The fierceness? Have you ever eaten all three at once?
Of course, this choice leaves out all the non-Slavic people in Cleveland, and so the controversy becomes one not of racism but of discrimination. Cleveland anguishes for another few decades over its baseball team’s identity until it reveals its new name: the Cleveland Humans. Wow, is that wimpy.
Tags: baseball, Chief Wahoo, Cleveland Indians, discrimination, ethnicity, Indians, Native Americans, racism, Washington Redskins
Leavin’ Cleve
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Believe me, this blog is not going to be one saccharine love letter to Cleveland after another. Though I may wax warm and fuzzy, I am a realist. I see the grit. I have my beefs. For instance, why does everyone leave Cleveland?
Okay, take a step back. Not everyone. My family has been in this town since before World War II. The leavers — betrayers — I’m talking about are all the people who constitute a pool of those persons who are, well, dateable.
I cannot tell you how many men I’ve met who are in the process of getting out of here. Maybe it’s a line? What, I’m cute until sentence three? What’s harder to believe than the number who say they’re leaving is that so many guys would have the manners to lie.
The phenomenon goes beyond my mating pool — extends, in fact, into my friendship pool. At one point no fewer than six of my friends were seeking exodus in one fashion or another. Six! Post-college, that’s an entire social network!
I’m young; my friends are young; the men who are possibly maybe once in a while dateable are young at least most of the time — the obvious answer here is Brain Drain, one of Cleveland’s favorite moans. Where are all these kids going? And what can we do to keep them here? Furious, furious whispers among our local big cheeses. Their solutions? Always some form of economic development. Jobs. I’d say a sparkling singles scene would be better glue, but who am I.
The reality remains that at any moment, one of my friends (or potential mates) could decide to mosey on down 80 and leave a hole in my existence (or, what, little black book? ‘Cause you are not a part of my existence at sentence three, honey). The only friends I don’t worry about are those with roots here — like me, except that my family left too, once upon a time. And it was our roots that ultimately brought us back.
Maybe the brain-drain solution isn’t some kind of better economic mousetrap: instead, maybe we should think about tapping the immense human capital that’s been rooted here for decades, growing our own grain stronger. Imagine what the city will look like in a couple generations if we do — and then imagine what it’ll look like if we don’t. To hell with the betrayers; let’s take care of our own.
O! It’s Cleveland!
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Though I’m several years away from being the target audience of Oprah’s O Magazine, I can’t help but pick up a copy every so often. It’s packed with so much delicious information that I kinda wish middle age would get here already. Actually, to be fair, there’s a lot of general information in the mag, and I can devour the rest like so much soap opera and store it away for my makeover-weightloss-divorce years.
Every so often I spot a Cleveland Clinic ad in O, but this month I landed on a page that had me flipping to the cover to make sure I was reading the right magazine. The Rock Hall in the upper right corner, Franz Welser-Most in the bottom left…damn, did Cleveland Magazine auto-renew my subscription again? No, indeed, the city of Cleveland occupies a whole page in O’s October issue: page 94, “The Place to Be: (Renewed and Improved) Cleveland.”
Wanna guess how the article starts? Oh, you don’t even have to guess: “On June 22, 1969…” Poverty, crime, even Lebron James can’t overtake our burning river in the nation’s consciousness. Happily, sentence four and on are all in our favor. Lebron makes paragraph one, and paragraphs two and three are dedicated to the cultural world’s Lebron, the Cleveland Orchestra. The right-hand side of the page lists other Cleveland attractions: Tremont, the Rock Hall, University Circle, the Museum of Art, restaurants Lola and Fire, and hotels Glidden House and the Renaissance. Big names — but what would your Cleveland synopsis include?
I had out-of-town visitors stay with me on two separate weekends over the past month or so, and I must confess that I didn’t take them on the tourism route. First of all, I insisted that we take public transportation (except while shoe shopping) — parking is bad for my health. Both times we made it over to the West Side Market, and both times we took a jaunt up to Coventry. I took the beer lover to the Winking Lizard and Great Lakes Brewery, and we also caught an Indians game. I took the shoe seeker gallery walking and shoe shopping. Their stays were enhanced versions of my daily life; we went to my favorite spots (and shops), which gave me an opportunity to share the things I enjoy regularly with friends I rarely see.
I figure tourism might be a rough business for me, though. The Rock Hall is a must-see! And you capital-M Must hear the Orchestra! Sure, both are very “us.” However, there are smaller, unnamed, and largely unwitnessed parts of Cleveland that I wish I could share with the world: the mass of TV towers blinking silently above Parma; the greenery shoving its way up out of every incline along the road; the city twisting its shoulders as I drive east on the innerbelt; the Cuyahoga bending through its stolid industrial morass, stepping around the complexes as if they were there first.
These are the parts of Cleveland that make Cleveland mine. I share this Cleveland with visitors in sideways comments too shy to take themselves seriously. My Cleveland brochure would be pictures of those most savorous Cleveland quietnesses — and no one would come because, of course, you have to live somewhere before you can love its unnamed parts.
::SuccessTech::
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It’s hard to know what to say about this — a school shooting today at SuccessTech Academy. I don’t feel I have the vantage point from which to evaluate the tragedy as anything more. My thoughts are with the students and families involved.
The same scene has repeated across the country a frightening number of times. The fault isn’t peculiar to Cleveland; though city officials and administrators can always do more, the issue here is societal. Yes, we should always demand the utmost from those charged with our safety, but I find it useful to see the present as a stepping stone towards a time of greater capacity. If we work at it, the phrase “school shooting” will ring as ancient history in future Americans’ ears.
Cleveland, Clementine
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The City of Cleveland: always, by its own measure, “not quite.” Always a hint of shame, a qualifier, hesitancy. As an outsider-native — I returned four years ago, having moved away before kindergarten — Cleveland’s poor self-esteem is a foreign tongue. How exactly do I color my driving directions with cartographical self-consciousness? And exactly which syllable gets the low note in “Cleveland sucks”?
By my measure, Cleveland is the Little Orange: comparisons with other, bigger cities — east, west, or New York — are nonsensical. We’re a city of under 500,000 in a region of roughly 4 million (counted as Cleveland+), yet we despair at our limited national and international profile. We scramble for examples of our worth and surrender to labels of “poorest” and “small.” Our media outlets saturate their copy with enough pro-Cleveland talk to move them from Current Events to Self-Help, and our sports teams are an embarrassment even when they best every team but one.
How did Cleveland’s self-esteem get so low? Do Clevelanders meditate daily on the promise of the early 1900’s and the glory post-World War II? Do we flog ourselves regularly over flaming rivers, defaulting mayors, and football infidelity? Or is our speech pattern a cultural heirloom, a Northcoast drawl we acquired just as teenagers learn their hyperbole and hedging? Above all, do we believe what we say, or are we, like, joking?
I can’t take it anymore, Cleveland. I may not be able to talk you out of your despair, but at least I can talk back. Yes, yes, apples are delicious; maybe someday you’ll realize that clementines are tasty too.
