Originally written for July 23, 2021
In one hand, there’s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians. But at the same time, there’s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won’t be met with the unforgiving, relentless wrath of internet comedians.
And as much as I too am ready to clown on the Cleveland Indians for being among the first of red-flagged sportsball team names, there’s something to be said about the fact that they stopped dragging their feet, and made official an actual change to the team’s name and identity, because sure, they’re going to and already getting all the ridicule and jokes of the internet, but they’ll also be the first to be forgotten, moved on from, and it will really suck for the Redcorn team that changes their name last, because they’ll inevitably be the one most remembered, and hardest to move forward since they’ll have nobody after them to help take the shrapnel next.
Anyway, so let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the racist-ass Cleveland Indians. Now I’ve said my peace several times about how I couldn’t really care any less about team names, but I’m neither a triggered descendent of Native Americans nor am I an evil whitey who is exploiting them.
No matter what they team name was going to be changed to, it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be good enough, logical enough, or provide nearly enough room for clowning on, to possibly make it ironically good. And make no mistake, “the Guardians” most certainly fulfills that failed destiny of a mediocre name change, but surprising nobody at all, it’s a bland, vanilla, generic name type that of course, has no potential to offend anyone, and in the corporate, soulless world of professional sports, it’s basically perfect.
As far as their general branding goes, it’s perfectly safe, sterile, and basically feels like a little league team’s identity has been promoted to the big leagues. The wordmark is sterile, boring and I don’t even want to know what fake-ass creative agency’s rhetoric is behind it’s boring-ass display. And it should be of no surprise at all that the boring-ass capital C that has been the interim icon of the franchise, appears to have stayed.
But let’s talk about the, what I’m guessing is some sort of alternate logo, featuring the G of Guardians. It’s basically a straight rip of a Korean professional gaming club, SK Telecom’s T1 logo. Why the letter G needs to have wings is one question, but it just so happens that said wings are literally a direct rip off of SKT’s wings used in their T1 logo. Seriously, the style of them is literally the same as T1’s, except they angle it differently as if logo savants on the internet wouldn’t notice. It’s literally the same 4+3 feather pattern that merges into a G instead of a T1.
Either way, as a whole package, the Cleveland Guardians is about as exciting as a local home and garden expo. But it still succeeds in moving the franchise past their supposed racist predecessors, and for corporate investor stooges, this is of the utmost importance to get back onto the MLB money train that will make money regardless of if the team was named the Indians, the Guardians, the LeBrons or the Zukes.
One funny side effect of more or less, retroactively posting something about this topic is this little nugget that showed up not long after the initial press release introducing the Cleveland Guardians: apparently a corporation as buttoned up and polished like MLB didn’t have the wherewithal to double check that “Cleveland Guardians” was entirely available, because not only was the URL, the Facebook and Instagram accounts for “Cleveland Guardians” already taken, they’re owned by a roller derby team and have been for the better part of the last decade. Not just any roller derby team, but a male roller derby team, and this is the first time that I’ve ever heard of such a thing actually existing.
By now, all the jokes in the world have already been made that I’m not even going to bother to try and pile on top of. All I know is that eventually, the MLB Cleveland Guardians will get what they want, but I can definitely hope that the men’s roller derby Cleveland Guardians will put up just enough of a fight to embarrass their baseball bitches, and ultimately get a nice big fat settlement out of it, because it’s basically the golden ticket that no other men’s roller derby team will ever be lucky enough to stumble on again in the future.
