Summer of 1964. Two little eight year old boys standing near the end of the driveway, trying to see around the bend in the road. Around 3 PM. The local paper was a daily and didn’t come until around 3 PM. It was mid-summer and hot, but that didn’t really matter. Their baseball team, their mighty and powerful (and actually pretty awful) baseball team had played the night before. They weren’t always on TV and their radio home didn’t have the best reception out in farm county. So the boys had started waiting for the local paper, The Telegraph, to come and read the account of their mighty team’s game against the likes of the Tigers or the Red Sox or the Yankees or whoever. Trying to see past the bend in the road to see the car coming that would bring the paper to put in the paper box for the two boys to grab and read and see how their heroes had made out the night before. The team did surprisingly well that year, finishing with 79 wins and 83 losses, which was better than anyone had anticipated. Those were two excited little boys.

          Last month, June 2021, one of those little boys died. He left behind a wife and two sons and daughters-in-law and grandkids and a sister and her family and a brother and his family. And that other little boy who had peered down the road with him, trying to see that rusty, green car that carried the newspaper. He was left behind as well, along with a cherished childhood.

          And last week, July 23, 2021, that heroic baseball team caved into the ‘woke’ crowd and announced they would be changing their name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians. Another piece of a cherished childhood memory.

          Before you get started on me, I know it is just a name change. If it was for some viable reason, I would be OK with it. If tribal leaders from several tribal entities had presented a formal request, that would have been fine. But it has been called a racist name. A name given to incite ridicule and mockery. A name to shame the noble Native American population. Anyone who would bother to learn the history of the name would see otherwise, but history is no longer important to those who are righting the wrongs of an evil America. The intent is to erase history. This name change was instigated by the same group that killed the Washington Redskins. Elitist white and (dare I say it) black folks who claim it to be an insult and leave only the pure, Aryan race…..Oh, sorry, I slipped in NAZI speak because erasing history is how the NAZIs started.

          However, since history has been mentioned, let’s look back into history and see where the name Cleveland Indians came.

          The Cleveland team was named the Cleveland Forest Cities in 1865. In 1882 they became the Blues. In 1889 they became the Spiders, supposedly because so many of the players had long, skinny legs. In 1890 they became (for some reason) the Cleveland Infants. Seriously. In 1900 they became the Lakeshores, which was a much better name. Then they became the Bluebirds in 1901. Then, the best player in baseball, Napoleon Lajoie, came to play in Cleveland and in the latter half of the 1901, they became the Cleveland Naps. After Lajoie left in 1914 a contest was held to seek a new name. The first Native American to ever play professional baseball was a man named Louis Sockalexis, who had played with Cleveland at the end of the 19th century. Clevelanders had loved Sockalexis, who had just died in 1913. In 1914, in honor of Sockalexis, the team was named the Indians. But, history does not matter. All that matters is what the new ‘woke’ crowd deems worthy.

          Just to take the history lesson a tad further, the new name, the Guardians, comes from four statues atop the Hope Memorial Bridge in Cleveland. These statues are called the Guardians of Traffic. So, the name has been changed from a name honoring Native Americans to a name for glorified traffic cones.

          So, you have seen the history. There was no outcry from the indigenous population. Certainly, Native Americans have every right to cry foul. They have been treated terribly by the government in this country. Broken treaties and lies are what they can look back too. But in many cases they have been honored by the people of this country. Many place names, rivers and lakes draw their names from the native tribes that first lived there. Was Indiana named such to mock the Native Americans? Was the Ohio or Mississippi rivers named to poke fun. Were the names Erie or Huron or Ontario or Michigan an attempt to belittle a proud people who used to live around those lakes? Of course not.

          But this is our reality. People who care nothing for pride or tradition have control now. If left unchecked, names will fall. Three mighty rivers run through Pittsburgh (which makes that city a miserable place to drive). The Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio. All native American names. One day it will be the Wet River, the Wetter River and the Very Wet River. And that is only slightly in jest. As the names fall the Native American memory will fade and the ‘all is equal’ socialist spread will continue.

          Please look around. This whole ‘woke’ thing is a disaster. It is amazing how out of control it has become. And it is everywhere, folks. It is the crushing of all things American and the hammer is a new, perverted form of racism. Where does it end?

          Because I have been so sick, Barry Swanquist brought me a box of Popsicles the other day. The first one was amazing, as were all the rest. I cannot tell you when I had a Popsicle last. But it brought back that memory of looking down the road for the newspaper delivery. I don’t know how often Mrs. Marty gave us Popsicles. It couldn’t have been often. But in my memory I saw two little boys with sticky hands, and it started my mind. It might have just been one day with the Popsicles. I don’t know. However, the gap between 1964 America and 2021 America is stark. As eight year old boys, Keith and I never discussed gender confusion, we never agonized over the fact that we were both white, we never hated our fathers because they had fought a war now deemed racist. Those two eight year old boys were not weighed down with the problems of a world out of control. No. We were just two kids with sticky hands waiting for word on our heroes. Keith’s little sister had to be close by, because she always was, talking and pestering. There would have been at least one dog nearby, probably two, licking at our hands. Not much else mattered except the Indians. Today’s kids don’t have that. They are woke.

          What a shame.