Cleveland Indians owner Paul Dolan said in a radio interview this week that the team "will come to some understanding" to eliminate -- or at least further limit -- the Chief Wahoo logo, although Dolan said the team and Major League Baseball are not quite on the same page at the moment.
“We’re not exactly aligned on its future,” Dolan told WAKR-AM (via the Akron Beacon Journal) on Wednesday. “But we will come to some understanding sometime relatively soon, meaning before the start of the 2018 season and maybe sooner than that.”
MLB has lobbied the Indians to ditch Chief Wahoo, a caricature described as “bigoted” and “despicable” by the Cleveland American Indian Movement. Use of the logo has been reduced in recent years, although that hasn't quelled the controversy.
Last year, Douglas Cardinal, an indigenous rights activist, sought an immediate injunction to have the term "Indians" banned on the grounds that it is racist before the Indians faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the postseason. That effort failed, but the case is still active in the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
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MLB spokesperson Pat Courtney said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports in April that the league office had "productive discussions with the Cleveland Indians regarding the commissioner’s desire to transition away from the Chief Wahoo logo.”
“There’s a lot of pressure on the national scene,” Dolan said in the radio interview. “We may live in a little bit of a bubble in terms of how we see Chief Wahoo, and if you didn’t grow up here with it and you don’t have that emotional attachment and you look at it more objectively, you can see the reason why some might be offended by it. And the commissioner is feeling that pressure."
