Wahoo Resigns Over Rampant Consumerism

This is the story I had hoped I’d never have to write but somehow, in the back of my mind, knew I would one day need to. I had interviewed the Cleveland Indians’ logo known as Chief Wahoo back in January and had found — instead of the air-headed huckster I had expected — a somewhat complex, philosophical pitchman whose at times brooding ruminations were in stark contrast to his perpetually over-toothed grin.

At that time, warehoused in his modestly appointed digs and back-dropped by a picture of his hero Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Wahoo joked about the Indians mascot Slider getting too big for his britches; pointed out that kids should remember that he was a logo not a role model; denied the inflammatory charges in the recently published unauthorized biography, “Only the Feather was Straight”; stressed that he was in total sympathy with Native Americans who found his image offensive; and glibly shrugged off rumors of his imminent retirement by saying, “Biology is destiny. I wasn’t drawn to quit.”

These brave words are the ones that stayed with me over the past two months as I heard the whispers about Wahoo appearing to be despondent while marketing in public. But much more troubling were the non-stop rumors that he had become increasingly isolated and was about to resign his position as one of the nation’s most enduring sports logos. Sadly, those rumors proved to be true and by the time you read this, Wahoo will have officially submitted his resignation, effective April 1.

When I called last week to ask why, he said he would send a written explanation to me. A few days ago a package was delivered to my office, wrapped in a yellowed 1950s Sears Catalog shell and bearing Wahoo’s frayed image along with a note leaving it up to me to decide whether or not to make it public. After reading through the tortured, yet inspired, ramblings and musing over questions of journalistic ethics versus societal responsibility, I concluded that I owed it to the community to at least excerpt its contents in the hopes of capturing the essence of its message. Why? Because all of us need to hear what this logo has to say about where we are as a people.

Opening with the defiant cry “I will shill no more forever,” the document is a scathing indictment of the merchandising of America and the marketing of innocence. It is, indeed, profoundly disturbing but it burns with an almost biblical righteousness and brims with the kind of heaping rage that helped Samson, eyeless in Gaza, tear down the pillars. Few are spared Wahoo’s wrath: the players, the owners, the fans, the pro- and anti-Wahoo protesters and all who live and breathe by the motto, “I buy and sell, therefore I am.” But Wahoo is no hypocrite and his harshest criticisms are most often reserved for himself.

Yet, commingled with anger, there’s the poignancy of a figure, not unlike the Velveteen Rabbit, who, though inanimate, somehow learned what it meant to be loved and now is trying to learn how to cope with having lost the capacity to love himself. So when Wahoo rails so achingly about the bottom-line mentality of the world he never asked to be sketched into, what comes through loud and clear is not pure bitterness, but the hint of a broken heart.

However, make no mistake, buried knee deep in the wounded Wahoo is white hot fury, mostly directed at his and his fellow logos’ bosses, the team owners: “I’ve seen all of their tricks: emitting a self-important glow at cocktail parties; knowing exactly what to do with your hands in a sky box; standing, just so, in a late autumn locker room while a few great athletes pretend you’re one of the guys; and, most contemptibly, saying with a perfectly straight face that baseball’s unique anti-trust exemption, which their robber baron predecessors jimmied through Congress way back when, is not a welfare program for the already wealthy.

“During several strikes and work stoppages over the past few decades I watched this group of economic royalists dragged kicking and screaming to the bargaining table. I’ve seen them promise not to collude, but do so anyway. I’ve seen them swear to pull in the reins on salaries but slit each other’s throat whenever possible. I’ve seen them agree to arbitration and free agent restructuring, then whine that they couldn’t live with the agreements. I’ve seen mega-rich clubs hide profits in order to qualify for stadium subsidies. And day in and day out I’ve also seen, in my mind’s eye, their grotesque cash vaults bulge each time some tacky item — slicked up with a logo like me on it — got run through the take out scanner. And God forgive me, I never spoke up. All those years, I just kept grinning. All those times being taxed, wrapped and shopping-bagged out the door, I remained mute. But no more.”

Under the heading “Reality Check,” Wahoo turns his rapier wit on those fans who are obsessed with baseball or other sports and continue to be surprised when they are revealed to be businesses, instructing these naive folks to “Wake up and smell the overpriced Progressive Field coffee,” and bitterly referring to them as “the real losers” if they chose to “lay on the couch, wallowing in resentment over a game instead of really looking at and listening to those closest to them.”

In one of the more provocative passages Wahoo discusses at length his feelings about the controversy as to whether or not his image is racist and admits to at one time contemplating logocide after witnessing a particularly nasty exchange in which a protesting Native American was humiliated by two guys wearing Toby Keith T-shirts. While admitting that if it were possible he would opt for his own extinction because he knows his image is a racist one and deeply hurts certain people, still he tenders rather surprising words for some of those whose cause he so vigorously supports:

“Emerson wrote, in reaction to his New England neighbors’ outrage over Caribbean slave trade, ‘Thy love afar is spite at home.’ And that’s the only thing I see when a righteously indignant Wahoo protester screams denunciation at young couples with small kids in Wahoo caps. It’s ugly and it’s verbal assault and somebody should be reprimanded, no matter how much people believe their victimization or that of those they claim to champion exempts them from the rules of decency.”

In this troubling treatise Wahoo is revealed as part philosopher and part dreamer. But he is all logo and this cold, hard fact is at the core of his disenchantment and fuels his anger. For if nothing else this text is a biting commentary on the corrupt culture of consumerism and how it dominates our existence. “Don’t you see,” Wahoo practically wails near the end, “it doesn’t have anything to do with baseball, or fathers and sons or fields of dreams or purple mountain majesties or spring trainings or classic falls. The only thing it’s about is ‘Got Game?’ or the ‘Just Do It’ swoosh, or having ‘No Fear’ or whatever simple-minded mumbo-jumbo slogan that can produce filthy lucre.

“Don’t you see, it doesn’t have anything to do with singling out Native Americans, either. That’s just a diversion so we stop caring about the profit-driven debasement of everything, including scores of other human-depicting logos like the Demon Deacons, Cowboys, Raiders, Mets, Mariners, Midshipmen, Trojans, Spartans, Fighting Irish, Packers, Boilermakers, Mavericks, Hoosiers, Ragin’ Cajuns, Vikings, Yankees, Rebels, Twins, 49ers, Buccaneers, Minutemen, Patriots, Black Knights of the Hudson, Pirates, Hilltoppers and Cornhuskers and so many more who, like me, are cursed to perpetually smile or frown or menace or wink or look goofy or tough or sexy or fearless. But always and forever to have a price branded on their heads — a price all of you seem forever willing to pay.

“No more … please.”

[Photo: Sanford Kearns]

Larry Durstin is an independent journalist who has covered politics and sports for a variety of publications and websites over the past 20 years. He was the founding editor of the Cleveland Tab and an associate editor at the Cleveland Free Times. Durstin has won 12 Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, including six first places in six different writing categories. LarryDurstinATyahoo.com

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