By Mansfield Frazier
Believe me, I’m not trying to throw salt into an open wound — but then again maybe I am since all previous efforts at playing nice on this subject have failed — but isn’t it past time that management of Cleveland’s major league baseball team bites the bullet and finally does what it takes to bring our town a winner: Get rid of Chief Wahoo. Once that racist cartoon character is relegated to the dustbin of history the team’s fortunes will experience an immediate and dramatic turnaround. Bet on it.
Management and fans alike obviously don’t believe in curses … they continue to whistle past the graveyard while ignoring the fact Native Americans placed a jinx on Progressive Field the day it opened, and it will remain in place until the club quits mocking them with that redskin Chief Wahoo.
So, you’re not superstitious you say; cool, but neither are you out there on the playing field. It’s a well-known fact baseball players are the most superstitious of any professional athletes … and with good reason: They scrap and struggle their entire careers to make it to the majors, and it doesn’t take much — perhaps a sliding batting average — and they’re back down in the minors with the quickness. That kind of career insecurity makes a person grab at all kinds of straws and superstitions.
Really, are baseball players superstitious? Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?
And as long as the majority of the players around the league believe in the curse (you don’t expect them to come out and say it do you … that would be the fastest way to get booted off the team), it will play mind games with them when they are on the field … causing strikes to look like balls and the making of “mistakes” in a game where wins versus losses can be measured in mere inches.
Dr. Jane Risen and some of her colleagues at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently published a scholarly paper of their findings that a jinx can be very real … to those who believe in them. Dr. Risen conducts research in the areas of judgment and decision-making, intuitive belief formation, magical thinking, stereotyping and managing emotion.
For instance, team fans might say they don’t believe in magical thinking, yet virtually all of them showed up at Progressive Field for the playoff game wearing red shirts and waving white towels. Excuse me, but isn’t the approved method of surrender on the battlefield the waving of something square and white? I’m just sayin’.
It’s completely understandable that the team’s management doesn’t care to relinquish a proven moneymaker like Chief Wahoo. Millions are spent on his red visage year in and year out by fans that obviously would rather keep getting their hearts broken than admit that Native Americans have a valid point in regards to their desire to not be disrespected … and that they also have the power to place and enforce the curse.
Yeah, I’ve heard the weak argument that some Native Americans don’t find Wahoo offensive; but I have yet to meet any with this opinion. But, I also have heard that some blacks don’t find slavery all that offensive. Which just proves some folks will say anything if the price is right.
Because a curse is not corporeal — it cannot be seen, touched or felt — team fans fool themselves into believing one cannot exist. But these are the same fans — overwhelmingly Christian — that profess to believe in the Bible, which stated in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Like it or not, the curse is real (failing to make the playoffs year-in-and-year-out prove that beyond any reasonable doubt) and it will remain in place until an entire nation of people — minus a few sellouts — are no longer disrespected. Other teams at every level have already taken the step (some years ago) — why not Cleveland’s?
As we say in the ‘hood, “Evidently some folks don’t believe fat meat is greasy … but eventually they learn.” Consider this as an effort to “learn” the owners and fans alike: Dump that racist caricature Chief Wahoo … or continue to suffer “the agony of defeat.”
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Is Fat Meat Greasy?”
Peanuts
This would be a good point Mansfield, if the Washington Redskins hadn’t won those 3 Super Bowls……
Peter Lawson Jones
When I was a member of the Ohio General Assembly, I authored a resolution calling upon the owners of the Cleveland Indians to jettison Chief Wahoo. Not surprisingly, the measure received nary a hearing. Native Americans have expressed their quite understandable opposition to the caricature that is the Indians’ logo. Deference should be paid their perspective.