Category Archives: Almost Seven Wonders

The Almost Seven Wonders files

Why I Wish I Could Cheer Even More for the Cleveland Indians

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I’m glad to see my favorite baseball team nearing the World Series. I’ve watched every inning of the playoffs, and damn near every pitch. I can spout for hours, if you wish, about the stunning emergence of reliable middle relief. I can praise Fausto Carmona’s transformation into a second ace, Kelly Shoppach’s reliable backup backstopping, and Asdrubal Cabrera’s underappreciated season for days.

But I also wish I could be even happier about it.

I grew up watching every game I could, even during the darkest horrors of 1970s Cleveland baseball. You think your favorite team has its rough spots? Ask me how many homers Duane Kuiper ever hit, or who ended Ray Fosse’s career, or which pitcher got hit by a chair during the Beer Night Riot.

Ask me all about Sudden Sam, the Hawk, Eck, Dirty Kurt, No-Neck, the Booger, the Dybber, the Grubber, the Hammer — all of them, losing year after horrible year, with Herb Score’s voice on WERE 1300 and then WWWE 1100 (listened to for years on the tinny two-inch speaker of a lemon yellow Panasonic spherical novelty radio) patiently imploring us to muster up hope yet again.

Which, dammit, we always did.

The one thing I could never feel good about, however: Chief Wahoo, the bug-eyed hook-nosed red-skinned explicitly racist mascot more akin to Der Ewige Jude than corporate sports marketing.

Still, I always figured he’d go away eventually. I was wrong.

So now, in 2007, I turn on the international TV broadcast, night after night, and what do I see, from a hometown that apparently still doesn’t mind?

Sample Image

Forgive me, but despite nearly 40 years as one of the Indians’ more passionate fans, it’s just really hard to cheer for the same team as these guys — not to mention the other 500 people in their section, and 500,000 fellow residents of the community, who apparently aren’t shaming them into removing the redface. (AP photo.)

That this behavior is apparently still considered acceptable — and even presentable for television, an image that many Clevelanders are apparently OK with broadcasting to the world — speaks for itself.

Cleveland, the rest of the 21st century is watching right now. Do you truly have no idea how this looks? 

I’ll probably get a stack of angry emails now from hyperdefensive Clevelanders repeating crap rationalizations rather than simply admitting just how goddam appalling this really is. Don’t waste your breath. Just, I mean, come on, for the love of god, just look at that picture for one more minute, and pretend you’re from anywhere else in the civilized world, or that the makeup portrays Africans, Asians, Latinos, or any other ethnic group. And no, the team was not named to "honor" Louis Sockalexis or anybody in 1915; newspaper archives make it clear that the name was simply meant to evoke popular images of savagery, as the Boston Braves had while winning the pennant the year before. (Even the Indians’ own official history no longer makes the Sockalexis claim, although their conspicuously confusing wording around the key point might mislead a casual reader.)

The Cleveland Indians were named in the racial climate of 1915, the same year D.W. Griffith’s pro-Klan Birth of a Nation was released. That film’s crude, thuggish racism is no longer considered acceptable — at least not toward blacks. Too bad that regarding slightly redder shades of skin, at least some Cleveland fans are still living one century ago, if not two.

I understand this may come off as holier than thou, and if so, my bad.  Truth be told, I’ll still probably keep cheering for the team I grew up loving, despite it all. I can’t help myself. I still remember Buddy Bell hitting a triple in the All-Star game in his rookie year, sliding headfirst into third with a big grin on his face. I still remember listening to Frank Robinson’s opening day home run against the Yankees in 1975, thanks to a music teacher who let us all listen to the game on his radio that one day. I remember Len Barker’s perfect game, Joe Charbonneau’s one terrific season, and every heartbreak of the near-misses of 1995 and 1997.

So of course I’d like to yell "Go Cleveland!" this week as they attempt to reach the World Series, and at times I surely will.

But I’ll never be able to yell it with full voice — not until this shameful Red Sambo show finally ends.

Why I Wish I Could Cheer Even More for the Cleveland Indians

Posted on by

I’m glad to see my favorite baseball team nearing the World Series. I’ve watched every inning of the playoffs, and damn near every pitch. I can spout for hours, if you wish, about the stunning emergence of reliable middle relief. I can praise Fausto Carmona’s transformation into a second ace, Kelly Shoppach’s reliable backup backstopping, and Asdrubal Cabrera’s underappreciated season for days.

But I also wish I could be even happier about it.

I grew up watching every game I could, even during the darkest horrors of 1970s Cleveland baseball. You think your favorite team has its rough spots? Ask me how many homers Duane Kuiper ever hit, or who ended Ray Fosse’s career, or which pitcher got hit by a chair during the Beer Night Riot.

Ask me all about Sudden Sam, the Hawk, Eck, Dirty Kurt, No-Neck, the Booger, the Dybber, the Grubber, the Hammer — all of them, losing year after horrible year, with Herb Score’s voice on WERE 1300 and then WWWE 1100 (listened to for years on the tinny two-inch speaker of a lemon yellow Panasonic spherical novelty radio) patiently imploring us to muster up hope yet again.

Which, dammit, we always did.

The one thing I could never feel good about, however: Chief Wahoo, the bug-eyed hook-nosed red-skinned explicitly racist mascot more akin to Der Ewige Jude than corporate sports marketing.

Still, I always figured he’d go away eventually. I was wrong.

So now, in 2007, I turn on the international TV broadcast, night after night, and what do I see, from a hometown that apparently still doesn’t mind?

Sample Image

Forgive me, but despite nearly 40 years as one of the Indians’ more passionate fans, it’s just really hard to cheer for the same team as these guys — not to mention the other 500 people in their section, and 500,000 fellow residents of the community, who apparently aren’t shaming them into removing the redface. (AP photo.)

That this behavior is apparently still considered acceptable — and even presentable for television, an image that many Clevelanders are apparently OK with broadcasting to the world — speaks for itself.

Cleveland, the rest of the 21st century is watching right now. Do you truly have no idea how this looks? 

I’ll probably get a stack of angry emails now from hyperdefensive Clevelanders repeating crap rationalizations rather than simply admitting just how goddam appalling this really is. Don’t waste your breath. Just, I mean, come on, for the love of god, just look at that picture for one more minute, and pretend you’re from anywhere else in the civilized world, or that the makeup portrays Africans, Asians, Latinos, or any other ethnic group. And no, the team was not named to "honor" Louis Sockalexis or anybody in 1915; newspaper archives make it clear that the name was simply meant to evoke popular images of savagery, as the Boston Braves had while winning the pennant the year before. (Even the Indians’ own official history no longer makes the Sockalexis claim, although their conspicuously confusing wording around the key point might mislead a casual reader.)

The Cleveland Indians were named in the racial climate of 1915, the same year D.W. Griffith’s pro-Klan Birth of a Nation was released. That film’s crude, thuggish racism is no longer considered acceptable — at least not toward blacks. Too bad that regarding slightly redder shades of skin, at least some Cleveland fans are still living one century ago, if not two.

I understand this may come off as holier than thou, and if so, my bad.  Truth be told, I’ll still probably keep cheering for the team I grew up loving, despite it all. I can’t help myself. I still remember Buddy Bell hitting a triple in the All-Star game in his rookie year, sliding headfirst into third with a big grin on his face. I still remember listening to Frank Robinson’s opening day home run against the Yankees in 1975, thanks to a music teacher who let us all listen to the game on his radio that one day. I remember Len Barker’s perfect game, Joe Charbonneau’s one terrific season, and every heartbreak of the near-misses of 1995 and 1997.

So of course I’d like to yell "Go Cleveland!" this week as they attempt to reach the World Series, and at times I surely will.

But I’ll never be able to yell it with full voice — not until this shameful Red Sambo show finally ends.

“Nobel Economics Winner Says Market Forces Flawed”

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That’s an actual current Reuters headline.

Princeton professor Eric Maskin shares this year’s Nobel Prize in economics with two colleagues; the trio are pioneers in the field of mechanism design theory, which is dedicated to finding ways to make markets work more efficiently and fairly.

Maskin dares to say something fairly sensible, it turns out:

Professor Eric Maskin, one of three American economists to receive the award, said that he "to some extent" takes issue with free-market orthodoxy championed by U.S President George W. Bush and some other western leaders.

"The market doesn’t work very well when it comes to public goods," said Maskin, a slight, soft-spoken 57-year-old who lives in a house once occupied by Albert Einstein.

[snip]

"If I buy a car, I use the car, you don’t and the market for cars works pretty well. But there are many other sorts of goods, often very important goods, which are not provided well through the market. Often, these go under the heading of public goods," he said.

Prof. Maskin goes on to speak of the needs of ensuring that public goods are provided for properly, taking into account the interests of all citizens, and on the role of his field in finding ways to do so most fairly and efficiently.

This should be considered sane, valuable, important work, especially if we care more about building sustainable human societies more than any ideology, yes?

However, the mere acknowledgment of this complex field is an affront to "free market" ideologues who prefer to believe that markets are, by their very existence, efficient — in much the same way that food riots are, by their very existence, orderly. 

Unfortunately, this remains something of a state religion in the US, so while hundreds of newspapers have reported on Maskin’s winning of a Nobel, few have bothered to pick up the Reuters story of what the Nobel Prize winner actually says.  (In fact, as I write this, the wire story is already a day old, and while I might have missed something, I can’t find it in a single American newspaper.)

The efficiency of the great free market, absolutely proven once again.