What's in a Nickname? : The Ability to Stir Players and Fans Is Taking Back Seat to Heightened Sensibilities

By JULIE CART

Oct. 24, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

On Friday nights and sunny Saturday afternoons every fall, they are sent out--the Horned Frogs, the Yellow Jackets, the Fighting Farmers . . . the Redskins, the Indians, the Chiefs and the Alcorn (Miss.) Scalping Braves.

The sports teams identified by these nicknames hold their mascots dear and, to an astonishing degree, identify strongly with them. Whether the nickname is a bird or a fish or a rock, alumni will tell you that they are that thing. This reverence helps to illuminate the resistance to revisionist thinking about nicknames that offend and anger minorities and others.

Take the Atlanta Braves. Or the Washington Redskins of the NFL. Many American Indians wish someone would. And the Kansas City Chiefs, Chicago Blackhawks and Cleveland Indians.

Sports nicknames are equal-opportunity offenders. Some Catholics don’t care for the New Orleans Saints. There are fundamentalist Christians who are disturbed by the New Jersey Devils and the Arizona State Sun Devils.

Some of the most outrageous nicknames belong to high schools: the Compton Tarbabes and the Bagdad (Ariz.) Arabs.

Often, nicknames are not offensive but profoundly silly. Some former minor league baseball teams include the Sterling Rag Chewers, Cedartown Sea Cows, Memphis Fever Germs, Hoquiam Perfect Gentlemen, Iola Gasbags and the Shenandoah Hungarian Rioters.

But increasingly, teams that have even remotely offensive nicknames--from high schools to the pros--are bombarded with phone calls, letters and pickets demanding these nicknames be changed.

It’s a sign of how far afield political correctness has wandered that it is seeping into sports, society’s refuge for escapist fare. There it runs into sport’s insistence on clinging to traditions, even if they offend and disturb.

The Atlanta Braves are a current case in point. During the months-long regular season, no one seemed to notice or care when Braves baseball fans performed their “tomahawk chop,” rhythmically slicing an open hand through the air.

As the Braves won their division and moved through the playoffs into the World Series, the behavior escalated. And more of the country saw it because the team was on network television. Sensing a trend and not wanting to miss it, more and more fans arrived at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium with painted faces and headdresses. It’s all rather frantic and, to the some, quite tasteless.

And not only the rank and file are chopping. Former President Jimmy Carter climbed on the bandwagon. And, with an irony noted by many, America’s favorite liberal icon couple--Brave owner Ted Turner and his former activist fiancee, Jane Fonda--have been seen chopping in their box seats near the dugout. Fonda has even put a spin on the gesture, popularizing a two-armed “double chop,” which some in Atlanta have suggested offers aerobic potential.

THE PROTESTS BEGIN

The Braves are being singled out for criticism for the tomahawk chop, but the gesture was started by Florida State Seminole football fans. However, Brave fans made the chop prominent, and the Braves are the targets of protests. American Indian groups have called the Braves’ portrayal of Indians “disgusting.”

“It’s dehumanizing, derogatory and very unethical,” said Aaron Two Elk, Atlanta’s regional director for the American Indian Movement.

American Indians marched in the streets of Minneapolis Saturday before the first game of the World Series between the Braves and Minnesota Twins. Indian groups also met with representatives of CBS-TV, asking that cameras not dwell on the chopping Atlanta fans.

Brave General Manager John Schuerholz has been trying to process an avalanche of criticism he really doesn’t understand.

“The fans are the ones who sort of took to the characterization of the Atlanta Braves as a winning team . . . simulating warriors in battle, all of which we view as very positive, and certainly doing nothing to discriminate or in any way negatively impact (Indians),” he said.

The negative impact for the Braves and other teams may well come at the turnstiles. American Indian groups vow to step up picketing and boycotts of teams. And, where team owners are in other businesses, groups say they will boycott those products, too.

Finally, in answer to Schuerholz and others, such as Carter, who Wednesday said he believed the name was an honor, American Indians say that they are in the best position to judge what is a positive portrayal of American Indians.

Symbols can be degrading, but often language is more hurtful. Redskin may be inappropriate to many Americans, but do many Americans equate that term with other more common racial epithets?

Bob Castillo, in the San Francisco office of the International Indian Treaty Council, the political arm of the American Indian Movement, thinks not.

“You’re never going to hear of the . . . New Jersey Negroes,” he said. “This just points out the ridiculousness of using an ethnic name for a mascot.”

There are 1 1/2 million American Indians in this country. They say that while Americans generally are sensitive to offensive language about African-Americans, Italian-Americans and other large ethnic groups, such consideration is not extended to them.

Billy Tiac of the AIM’s Washington, D.C., office said he sees a disparity in ethnic tolerance levels. Tiac said he doesn’t believe that most people in this country understand that American Indians equate the term Redskin with more universally identified racial slurs. He added that if the Washington Redskins were renamed for a comparable epithet dealing with blacks or Latinos, “the stadium would be burned to the ground.”

The Washington Redskins say their nickname will not be changed, and that it reflects “positive attributes of the American Indian, such as dedication, courage and pride.”

Tiac can’t understand why epithets as nicknames exist.

“Terrible, isn’t it?” he said. “Why do people just accept that? We don’t have the political clout. People see Indians as a relic. We are a conquered people. They believe they have the right to do anything they want to us.”

American Indian groups hold a special anger for the Cleveland Indians and their mascot, Chief Wahoo. The logo is the head of an “Indian,” teeth bared, eyes bulging and a feather poking out of the back of his head.

Glen Shumate, a spokesman for Indians, sees the mascot differently. “We think of it as a smiling, friendly face,” he said.

The team was named in 1914 for Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian to play major league baseball. Shumate said the team holds that as a deep responsibility, and that Cleveland management turned down suggestions that Chief Wahoo wear earmuffs in the cooler fall weather. And, while the team says there has been relatively little criticism, over the years it has taken the pronounced hook out of the Chief’s nose and sometimes uses the nickname The Tribe, rather than Indians, in its news releases.

The Kansas City Chiefs also have toned down the stereotypes, if only by coincidence. The team used to have a chief on a horse, replete in war paint, to race around the field after the Chiefs scored a touchdown. The horse had to be retired --in part because of age, in part because galloping on Arrowhead Stadium’s turf was too hard on the animal’s legs.

Symbols and words are easy targets, but there is another area of concern for American Indians. This factor may best be termed “residual ill will.”

Castillo said that the rivalry between sports teams may spill over into the ethnic group represented. He says a subliminal message is put out: Fans may not realize that when they say they “Hate the Redskins” that they may transfer this dislike to American Indians.

A SOURCE OF POWER

For years sports sociologists have noted that fans often become empowered by nicknames and mascots, that they take on the characteristics of the team they follow. Because nicknames and mascots are supposed to boost and inspire, they have engendered names that embody power, strength and ferocity.

Predictably, where there is a movement, there is also a backlash. During the counterculture ‘60s, student bodies on scores of college campuses voted to demilitarize school nicknames.

Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., used to be the home of the Fighting Methodists. The school colors were purple and white. They became the Wildcats as the result of a sportswriter’s hyperbole. But in the ‘60s the students at Northwestern voted in favor of “Purple Haze,” after the popular rock song by Jimi Hendrix. However, as often was the case throughout the country, the new name was vetoed by school administrators.

Other universities, such as Dartmouth and Stanford, preempted the critics by changing their Indian mascots before too much heat was allowed to build.

In Stanford’s case, students in the early ‘70s voted to change the school’s name to Robber Barons, which they said best illustrated the founding family’s business history. In 1972, university officials nixed the vote, and Stanford’s nickname became the Cardinal--not the bird, not the Catholic prelate, never the plural Cardinals--but the color .

Today, there are still a few remnants of the ‘60s ethic--the UC Irvine Anteaters, the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs and the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College Artichokes.

But in the mainstream, nicknames are taken seriously. And just as athletes are inspired by nicknames and all they symbolize, fans gain inspiration and identification from mascots.

“These symbols are a vehicle for giving tremendous power,” said Arthur Taylor, a sports psychologist at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. “Did you ever see a fan with a broom in his hand, gesturing ‘sweep?’ That’s the extreme.”

So, you have sports teams with offensive nicknames, paired with behavior that often caricatures stereotypical ethnic behavior. Add to that an era in which such traditions are under attack. The result is a combustible mixture that has been inert for decades and only now threatens to blow.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

For 70 years Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Mich., was the Hurons, taken from the Wynadotte Huron tribe living in the area. No one seemed to notice the Indian head on school stationery, and indeed many students believed the nickname was taken from the Huron River that flowed through town.

In 1988, the Michigan Commission on Civil Rights began to study the nicknames of the state’s colleges, high schools and middle schools. The Commission’s recommendation was to drop offensive nicknames, particularly Indian nicknames. In January, after the kind of furor that often accompanies such discussions, Eastern Michigan University ceased being known as the Hurons and became the Eagles.

In the time it takes to spell betrayal , students and alumni launched a full-scale backlash campaign with the traditional tools--T-shirts, bumper stickers, a catchy chant and regular meetings.

Huron Restoration, Inc. was born, led by Jim Martin (Class of ‘50). Martin was a three-sport letterman at Eastern Michigan, has sent each of his children there and for 45 years has raised money for the school. Yet, he, like so many other alumni, admits to not giving much thought to the school mascot until it was taken away.

“It was a myth to me,” Martin said. “I didn’t really know what a Huron was. I didn’t realize what we had. Now I do. I don’t want to become an Eagle. I’m a Huron. I played there as a Huron. My kids played as a Huron. That’s our heritage.”

Martin and his group’s first act was to blame new university president William Shelton for the change. Then they hired a lawyer. The group attended, en masse , Board of Regents meetings and University hearings.

Tommy Cicciarelli, an Ypsilanti businessman and member of Huron Restoration, promoted a Save the Huron night at his campus restaurant and nightclub. Students brought their newly minted Eagles T-shirts to the bar and were converted--via the international circle-and-slash “no” sign--into anti-Eagles shirts.

The group also mobilized alumni in a more serious way: At least two wealthy Eastern Michigan alums have written the school out of their wills, and since the January decision to drop the Huron nickname alumni donations have been more than $300,000 less than projections.

The decision at Eastern Michigan has been made, but if this case follows the pattern at other schools, the fuss is far from over.