I have been a baseball fan for about 90% of my life and it wasn't until Cleveland's baseball team became the Guardians ahead of the 2022 season that I experienced a Major League team changing their name—with the lone exception being when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals upon their move to U.S. capital in 2005.
While the Nationals rebranding had more to do with their arrival in a new locale, their NFL counterparts became the Washington Commanders this season as they finally dropped the offensive slur that they used as their name from 1937–2020, at which point they were temporarily known as the Washington Football Team.
At this current time the only professional sports organization that is actually respectful in its usage of a name referring to Native Americans is the Spokane Indians and that is due the ongoing relationship between the team and Spokane Tribe of Indians that has was forged in 2006 when both parties collaborated on the team's rebranding effort.
The team's "Redband Trout" cap is this week's Fresh Fitted Friday in honor of Native American Heritage Day which occurs every year on the Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Of all the Spokane Indians caps featured on this blog, the Redband logo is most important to me as it is central to the Redband Rally Campaign that was launched in 2017.
A main aspect of the program is to bring awareness to the most well-known fish found in the Spokane region with proceeds from Redband merch goes toward protecting the Spokane River and the fish that swim in it. I recommend checking out this entry on the Spokane Indians site as well as Brandiose's recollection of the partnership as there's lots to learn about this initiative!
Another informative article is this one from SportsLogos.net which was reassuring to read as I learned that Spokane had not misappropriated any Native American imagery in its team's branding ever since 1986 when it was acquired by Brett Sports & Entertainment, which now also owns the Tri-City Dust Devils and the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.
Spokane's story gives me hope that the disrespectful appropriation of Native American imagery in professional sports will someday end and thus my focus now is evangelizing my desire for Atlanta's team to be known as the "Hammers" in honor of "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron.
Replacing the tomahawk with a hammer would be rather seamless from a design perspective and another aspect I had not considered until now is that Home Depot is an Atlanta-based business that would do well to advertise around the park as the hardware store chain would be a fine place to pick up a hammer featuring the team's new branding!
Even better would be to get one of those hammers at a locally owned hardware store and that right there is my segue into a very pertinent spiel about how important it is to support small businesses. This is especially true on Black Friday which as you are most likely already aware, is the busiest day of the year for many retailers.
Most Black Friday purchases happen at big box chains—either online or in-store—and while it is important to save money whenever you can, I encourage you also find ways to support local retailers and restaurants as their continued sucess is crucial in keeping your community virbrant!
This week's Fresh Fitted Friday selection is not going on the Trading Block however please don't hesitate to reach out if you want any other cap from that list and you are willing to part with any of the hats on my Wish List.
As always, thanks for coming back to read about baseball hat geekery. I've got comments disabled here so if you'd like to discuss a trade or simply just chat about hats, please feel free to connect via the following social sites:
Instagram: @baseballmilquetoast
Twitter: @FittedFriday
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