John Riordan: Baseball's Tomahawk Chop adds fuel to bitter US culture wars
Fans do âthe chopâ during the first inning in Game Three of the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park. The gesture is regarded as offensive by many of the indigenous cultures of America. Picture: Michael Zarrilli/Getty Images
It was the least loved World Series pairing in years.
By the time the Atlanta Braves brought the curtain down on the 2021 Major League Baseball season in Houston, Texas late on Tuesday night, there was a general sense of relief that there wouldnât be a need for one more game.
As is tradition, this was a best-of-seven series but the Braves beat the Astros in six and while the dilemma for the neutral observer at the outset was who would be less intolerable as a victor, there was no doubt by the end as to who had assumed the role of archvillain.
Somehow, it wasnât the Astros, this time, and that was an achievement in and of itself. After all, here was a club which was torn to shreds over a cheating scandal four seasons ago that dragged their one and only World Series win from the pedestal of a fairytale down to the infamy of the 1919 Chicago White Sox and other iconic neâer-do-wells.
To sum up a wretched story: Houston hitters benefited from secret cameras used to spy on opposing teamsâ pitchers and catchers as they displayed standard signs and signals to agree on the type of ball that would be thrown at the batter. When a batter of incomprehensible skill level knows they are about to face a fastball rather than a slider, for example, they increase their chances of effective contact exponentially.
Almost two years after their historic World Series success, what had been suspected about the Astros for years was confirmed by whistleblowers who cited examples of coded betrayals of sportsmanship. The most infamous method involved slamming the lids of dustbins to send messages from the dugout to the homebase plate. All very spy novel and all so typical of baseball to find new and more elaborate ways of gaming the system.
Itâs quite possible that the 2017 core of players were good enough to go all the way but there will forever be bitterness at the way the tighter games fell their way. The manager was fired as was the general manager and the shockwaves were far reaching but some star players hung around long enough to have a shot at redemption this year. As the playoffs filtered out likelier winners, the Astros began to nestle into the role of favourites.
But then the Atlanta Braves proved that baseball â an oftentimes conservative sport â could produce a squad and a fanbase with an even deeper us-against-the-world mentality.
The clue is in the nickname, one of a slowly diminishing group of historically all too common nicknames derived clumsily or maliciously from the traditions of the indigenous cultures of America.
The Braves first played in Boston at the turn of the 20th century before moving to Milwaukee and then onto Georgia where they have settled for enough decades to be firmly ensconced as a franchise steeped in the large population swirling outwards from the city of Atlanta. So steeped that they have refused to countenance any prospect of giving up that nickname even in spite of the fact that the similarly iconic Cleveland Indians will be the Guardians from 2022 onwards.
But even more egregious is the use of the so-called Tomahawk Chop during various stages of their games. If youâve never seen it, itâs pretty straightforward; fans replicate a chopping motion in unison while chanting the Tomahawk Song which most of us would recognise from the oldest most offensive depictions of American Indians on screens, big and small.
The soundtrack really took hold in the 90s â the last and only previous time an Atlanta team brought the World Series to their city â and, as is the way with so many elements of the culture wars weâre being treated to in the US, only recently has it started to be seriously questioned.
Several of the indigenous nations have sent representatives out there to condemn the tradition (as well as the nickname) while a baseball player and Cherokee Nation member, Ryan Helsley, also stepped up in 2019 to explain just how unwelcome the Chop was.
Helsley ended up being a powerful messenger and the official acceptance of the Chop began to wane. Of course thatâs a surefire way for anything to gain even greater popularity and now enough Braves fans see it as their mission to protect their treasured chant, as they see it, while denigrating the heritage of others.
And right on cue, wouldnât you know it, who decided this was the perfect opportunity to clamber his way into the tussle between pettiness and righteousness?
The middle three games of the World Series had been set for Atlanta and former US President Donald Trump spotted his opportunity.
According to reports in Yahoo Sports, he requested tickets for Game 4 and then swiftly put the word out that he was invited by the Braves and Major League Baseball.
âLooking forward to being at the World Series in Atlanta tonight,â his mailing list was informed. âThank you to the Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred, and Randy Levine of the great New York Yankees, for the invite. Melania and I are looking forward to a wonderful evening watching two great teams!â
Of course that was a surefire indicator that he hadnât been invited at all and indeed the sports governing body was swift in their denial, as was the Braves CEO Terry McGuirk whose version for USA Today recounted that Trump called up the powers-that-be to say he wanted to come to the game: âWe were very surprised. Of course, we said yes.â
But it didnât matter to the vast majority of fans in attendance on Saturday evening who were delighted at the sight of their idol in a private box overlooking the right field section of the park, chopping along in unison with the rest of the delirious crowd.
It was a depressing and glaring reminder of how absolutely in thrall of the former president a huge swath of the country continues to be. Almost as galling was how quickly he changed his tune from an appeal to boycott the MLB during the summer after a change in Georgiaâs voting laws prompted a backlash that included the moving of the All Star game away from Atlanta.
The story of baseballâs steady decline is by no means new but this past week was a stark reminder of the precariousness of the sportâs hold over future generations of liberal leaning fans. It was particularly poetic that on the same night Braves fans celebrated glory, the Democrats took a hammering at the polls.
Itâs easy pickings in modern America; protect a phoney, damaging, demeaning tradition and shine a light on the latest faux threat to white identity. Itâll be the playbook through to the next sequence of elections in 2022 and 2024 and itâs extremely difficult to counter its success as a strategy.
From the ostracising of players who were earliest to kneel in order to highlight racial injustice to the threats of boycotts of entire sporting organisations just because a distressingly offensive nickname such as the Redskins was fazed out of existence.
In the summer of 2020, the Atlanta Braves were quick to insist that they had no plans to follow the lead of the rebranded Washington Football Team. âWe will always be the Atlanta Braves,â the team said in a letter to season ticket holders. âThrough our conversations, changing the name of the Braves is not under consideration or deemed necessary.â
Far less offensive but strangely irritating nonetheless is the âFighting Irishâ moniker most famously brandished by the teams which represent Notre Dame.
The world famous university is adamant that the Fighting Irish nickname was âfirst coined for the Irish immigrant soldiers who fought for the Union during the Civil War in what became called the Irish Brigade, including three regiments from New Yorkâ.
Itâs a mark of respect they say. It doesnât help that the mascot they send out to do their bidding is a flailing leprechaun type figure. It could be so much worse, though, as Stephanie Apstein put it best in Sports Illustrated where she decried the fact that the Atlanta Braves fansâ treasured tradition is really just âa largely white crowd mocking a people its ancestors tried to eraseâ.
@JohnWRIordan
