{"id":48041,"date":"2021-08-11T11:12:13","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T16:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=48041"},"modified":"2021-08-23T11:12:30","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T16:12:30","slug":"lets-talk-about-the-cleveland-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=48041","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s talk about the Cleveland Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Originally written for July 23, 2021<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In one hand, there\u2019s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians.\u00a0 But at the same time, there\u2019s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won\u2019t be met with the unforgiving, relentless wrath of internet comedians.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s something to be said about the fact that they stopped dragging their feet, and made official an actual change to the team\u2019s name and identity, because sure, they\u2019re going to and already getting all the ridicule and jokes of the internet, but they\u2019ll also be the first to be forgotten, moved on from, and it will really<\/em> suck for the Redcorn team that changes their name last, because they\u2019ll inevitably be the one most remembered, and hardest to move forward since they\u2019ll have nobody after them to help take the shrapnel next.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, so let\u2019s talk about the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the racist-ass Cleveland Indians.\u00a0 Now I\u2019ve said my peace<\/a> several times about how I couldn\u2019t really care any less about team names, but I\u2019m neither a triggered descendent of Native Americans nor am I an evil whitey who is exploiting them.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter what they team name was going to be changed to, it was inevitable that it wouldn\u2019t be good enough, logical enough, or provide nearly enough room for clowning on, to possibly make it ironically good.\u00a0 And make no mistake, \u201cthe Guardians\u201d most certainly fulfills that failed destiny of a mediocre name change, but surprising nobody at all, it\u2019s 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\u2019s basically perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n

As far as their general branding goes, it\u2019s perfectly safe, sterile, and basically feels like a little league team\u2019s identity has been promoted to the big leagues.\u00a0 The wordmark is sterile, boring and I don\u2019t even want to know what fake-ass creative agency\u2019s rhetoric is behind it\u2019s boring-ass display.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let\u2019s talk about the, what I\u2019m guessing is some sort of alternate logo, featuring the G of Guardians.\u00a0 It\u2019s basically a straight rip of a Korean professional gaming club, SK Telecom\u2019s T1 logo<\/a>.\u00a0 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\u2019s wings used in their T1 logo.\u00a0 Seriously, the style of them is literally the same as T1\u2019s, except they angle it differently as if logo savants on the internet wouldn\u2019t notice.\u00a0 It\u2019s literally the same 4+3 feather pattern that merges into a G instead of a T1.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, as a whole package, the Cleveland Guardians is about as exciting as a local home and garden expo.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t have the wherewithal to double check<\/a> that \u201cCleveland Guardians\u201d was entirely available, because not only was the URL, the Facebook and Instagram accounts for \u201cCleveland Guardians\u201d already taken, they\u2019re owned by a roller derby team and have been for the better part of the last decade.\u00a0 Not just any roller derby team, but a male<\/em> roller derby team, and this is the first time that I\u2019ve ever heard of such a thing actually existing.<\/span><\/p>\n

By now, all the jokes in the world have already been made that I\u2019m not even going to bother to try and pile on top of.\u00a0 All I know is that eventually, the MLB Cleveland Guardians will get what they want, but I can definitely hope that the men\u2019s 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\u2019s basically the golden ticket that no other men\u2019s roller derby team will ever be lucky enough to stumble on again in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally written for July 23, 2021 In one hand, there\u2019s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians.\u00a0 But at the same time, there\u2019s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won\u2019t be met … Continue reading Let\u2019s talk about the Cleveland Guardians<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,131,83,52,89,58,49],"class_list":["post-48041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-branding","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-racism","tag-sports","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48043,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48041\/revisions\/48043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}