Indigenous nicknames, logos, mascots and rituals are inappropriate and insensitive
Why is this so hard? In the year 2021, why do some sports organizations still insist on using Indigenous American names, mascots, caricatures, rituals, etc., to promote their team? And in the case of Atlanta’s Major League Baseball team, why do they continue to encourage fans to do the tomahawk chop by turning the lights…
Cleveland MLB franchise sees the light and adopts a new name
Cleveland Guardians. Sure it sounds weird. Cleveland’s baseball team has been called the Indians for more than a century. But everyone will get used to it. Most importantly, it was the right thing to do. Yes, the name Indians is less egregious than the blatantly racist name Redskins that Washington’s National Football League team used…
Roberto Alomar was a great baseball player but there’s more to being a human than athleticism. The real hero is the woman who reported him
Public opinion is fickle. We love to sing the praises of individuals and put them on pedestals, but we’re just as apt to demonize these same people in the court of public opinion. Is this type of thinking getting us anywhere? Aren’t we all simply humans with the capacity to do good or bad things?…
Racism is pointless and will inevitably fail, as it did in baseball. But it is part of our history
My earliest memories of baseball revolve around the 1969 Chicago Cubs. Enthusiasm just resonated off Wrigley Field as the great Ernie Banks chimed, “Let’s play two!” Regardless of the disastrous finish to that season for the Cubbies, a love for the game was planted in my soul as a seven-year-old. These heroes were larger than…
What constitutes manhood in sports culture is archaic. As if the sports world has been frozen in time – Neanderthal time
What former New York Mets general manager Jared Porter did to a female reporter is despicable. He certainly deserved to be fired after admitting to sending dozens of explicit text messages and photos to the reporter in 2016. The sad part is almost everyone inside baseball – most notably women in baseball – know this…
Why is the Cleveland baseball team waiting until 2022 to make the change? Let the healing begin now
Finally, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball (MLB) team says it plans to replace its racist Indians nickname. That’s great news. The Indigenous shouldn’t be used as nicknames and mascots for sports teams in the same way lions, bears and other animals are. Period. But why is the Cleveland organization waiting until 2022 to make the change?…
This athlete-led movement needs a face – or two. Ideally, we have one Black sports figure and one white sports figure taking the lead
I was driving home recently and listening to a talk show about the social unrest in my country, the United States. The host was white and the guest was Black. After a couple minutes of discussion, the guest asked the host a powerful question. “Have you ever woken in the morning and started to worry…
New research has implications for reopening arenas to fans during COVID-19 pandemic
When one of the big four professional sports leagues in North America expands into a new market, it brings with it an increase in influenza-related deaths, according to a sport management researcher looking to inform the conversation around getting sports fans back in stands in the midst of a pandemic. “We wanted to find out…
But many questions remain about restarting professional sports, including how all those enormous salaries will be paid
With virtually no sports competition in North America in this COVID-19-blighted spring, the National Football League draft this week has taken on epic proportions. The fact that the teams and the players they select starting on Thursday may not even play in 2020 is irrelevant. We finally have a sporting event on TV that you…
Major League owners need to climb up from behind their wallets and take a hard look at what’s best for the game
Minor league baseball teams, like millions of other small businesses in North America, are in trouble. Big trouble. Unlike their Major League Baseball colleagues who typically get about half their revenue from media rights deals, minor league teams are almost exclusively reliant on ticket sales and in-stadium concession and merchandise revenues. MLB teams could play…