How do Cleveland Indians fans feel about the movie ‘Major League’?
Over the weekend it was announced (finally) that the Cleveland Indians would retire their nickname. To all those that follow Major League Baseball closely it did not come as a big surprise. In 2019 the Indians retired the image of and references to Chief Wahoo which had been around since spring training in 1947. Just for reference Jackie Robinson played his first MLB game with the Brooklyn Dodgers April 15, 1947 — only a couple of months after the unveiling of Chief Wahoo.
The Cleveland Spiders (cool name hint! hint!), were a professional baseball team from 1887–1899 in both the American Association and then later the original National League. The 1899 Spiders (20–134) have the distinction of having the worst season in MLB history. That’s right, even worse than the 1962 (40–120) Mets.
In 1900, the then-minor American League (previously the Western League) fielded a team called the Cleveland Lake Shores. In 1901, after the American League declared major league status, the team was called the Cleveland Blues, and eventually the Cleveland Indians.
A charter member of the American League in 1901 they were at times the ‘Naps’, named after Hall-of-Famer Napoleon Lajoie (also pretty good name). Then around 1915, with Lajoie then gone, the club needed a new name. The owner asked the local baseball writers to come up with a new name, and based on their input, the team was renamed the Cleveland Indians.
It is claimed that the nickname “Indians” references the Cleveland Spiders baseball club during the time when Louis Sockalexis, a Native American, had played in Cleveland (1897–99).
Over the years, the soon not-to-be Indians, haven’t delivered all that much winning; only two World Series championships (the amazing story of the 1920 team in which star player Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch during the season) and then for the 2nd and last time in 1948.
41 years after the championship season of 1948, the movie ‘Major League’ came out. It was extremely funny then, but not as funny when you watch it today. The premise of an annually terrible Cleveland team trying to lose so the newly widowed owner could move the team to Miami, only to be thwarted by the bunch of baseball misfits that join the team and incomprehensibly make it to the World Series. (They did not ‘win’ the World Series even in a fictional movie tale).
With stars like Tom Berenger (well he as a star then at least), Wesley Snipes, Charlie Sheen, Dennis Haysbert (think Allstate commercial), and foils like Bob Uecker playing a nutty team TV/Radio announcer, the movie spawned two sequels.
I’ve always found Bob Uecker to be a funny and entertaining guy. He’s always been realistic about his tenure as an MLB catcher famously going on the old Johnny Carson show and saying ‘My record speaks for itself’ which in his case was a career .200 batting average over 6 forgettable seasons and a career war of -1.0.
As Harry Doyle in the movie Uecker gives a very funny performance. Yet going back through the dialogue, as far as references to the team’s nickname, some of it is beyond awful. Home runs leave the ‘Happy Hunting Ground’, or the homers go ‘Off the Reservation’. Granted the movie poked at other stereotypes like referring to Pedro Cerrano as being a ‘savage’. But today those lines are cringe-worthy which was not the case in 1989.
And isn’t that the whole point of being ‘woke’ using our ability to think and change the way we feel when we know and understand more about a subject? We should not bury the history of the Cleveland Baseball Club. Not before they were called the Indians, not during the time they were called the Indians as well as soon to be after.
As for the ‘Major League’ movie franchise, I will still watch it occasionally and laugh when it’s funny. And I won’t when it’s not so funny. It’s long past the time to even argue much less agree that the Indians nickname does not honor Native Americans and that it is long past the time it should have been changed.
