It’s a good time to be a Cleveland sports fan. The basketball team just raised a banner for its championship season, and the baseball team is currently up one game in the World Series. There’s just one blight to deal with here: The Chief Wahoo logo. Despite claiming that they’d relegated the logo to secondary status, Cleveland has worn the hats with Chief Wahoo on it for each game this postseason because they’ve worn their alternate blue uniforms for every game this October.
As such, this has led to plenty of questions about the logo, and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was asked about the issue on an episode of Mike & Mike on ESPN. Manfred then gave this quote to Mike Golic (via Deadpsin):
Well, I understand that particular logo is offensive to some people, and I understand why. On the other side of the coin, you have a lot of fans that have history and are invested in the symbols of the Indians. I think that after the World Series, at an appropriate point in time, Mr. [Larry] Dolan and I have agreed we’ll have a conversation about what should happen with that particular logo going forward.
MLB later confirmed that they were going to meet with Cleveland’s ownership about the logo during the offseason. There’s no telling what will come from the conversation(s), but it’ll probably end up being a huge deal if the talks result in Chief Wahoo receiving further demotion in Cleveland’s logo hierarchy. We’ll see what happens, but it’s clear that the conversation around the logo will not be going away any time soon.