Cleveland said goodbye to a racist team name and hello to the playoffs and a sense of renewal
Hello from Cleveland, where the youngest team in Major League Baseball has turned our family into a bevy of home team partisans who knock on anything resembling wood, leap over sidewalk cracks and police one another for jinxes.
Cleveland hasn’t won a World Series since 1948. Dare we hope that this is the year for our baseball team? Probably not, but here we go. Again.
Yesterday, in the first game of the playoffs, the Guardians beat the Tampa Rays thanks to a two-run homer by superstar Jose Ramirez and stellar pitching by Shane Bieber and Emmanuel Clase, whose name I keep forgetting how to pronounce so we just call him the best closer in baseball.
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In our home, we’ve watched the video clip of Ramirez’s homerun at least 50 times as Cleveland’s legendary baseball announcer Tom Hamilton yells, as only he can, “How many times can he come through? The answer is: infinite!” In Cleveland right now, this counts as a prayer.
This is the first season for the Guardians, the new name for the former Indians. First, the team said good-bye to the racist mascot, Chief Wahoo. That only took a few decades. On July 23, 2021, after years of pressure, team owners finally announced a name change for the team. The name was inspired by the eight giant Art Deco sculptures on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge. They’re called the Guardians of Traffic, so named by engineer Wilbur Watson in 1932 to “typify the spirt of progress in transportation.” In baseball, there’s always a story.
Some want to believe our biggest jinx, the team’s name, is finally lifted. Could it be? As we look forward to beating the Dodgers in six games in the 2022 World Series –
Hold on. I’ve just been cited for a jinx.
As we look forward to this beautiful fall day, this is me, whispering: Go, Guardians.
— Connie Schultz
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