re: SI: Why Does MLB Still Allow Synchronized, Team-Sanctioned Racism in Atlanta?

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We know this because we've seen it. For decades, the Braves employed an American Indian mascot named Chief Noc-A-Homa. He wore a headdress and danced on the pitcher's mound and huddled in a teepee and celebrated home runs with smoke signals and breathed fire. In 1985, he also missed three events for the team and admitted to hitting on multiple women on the job. Rather than recast the role after the employee was fired, the Braves retired the character.

More than 35 years ago, the Atlanta Braves recognized something was wrong and remedied it. The refusal to do so now registers oddly, like a cocktail of hubris and cowardice. In 1985, the team was willing to guide fans to the right place. Now it isn't, and MLB apparently refuses to mandate it.

It's an inevitability the chop goes away, just like it will go away at Kansas City Chiefs games, just like it will go away, eventually and probably last, at the place it started, Florida State University, where the Seminole tribe offers its blessing for chopping at Doak Campbell Stadium.

Until that happens, teams will peddle the same vacuous arguments the Washington Football Team did before it dropped its former name, and fans will treat their right to participate in a chant or use a nickname as if it's something important while turning a blind eye to the actual problems in indigenous communities, where poverty and violence against women and poor education leave Native Americans terminally vulnerable.

The most frustrating thing about the chop is how easy it would be to stop. It would be a small gesture. It wouldn't fix any of those generational problems that affect American Indians. But it would, to plenty, return at least a modicum of dignity to a people that have already had so much taken from them.

When that eventually happens, we know the journey that Braves fans will undertake, because we've seen it before. First, denial and anger. They'll bargain, they'll feel depressed and eventually they'll accept it, because fans don't go to games just to chop. They go to watch the team they love, chop or no chop, and anyone who loves chopping more than Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman and Ozzie Albies clearly has bad taste anyway.

It's what made Manfred's tack on Tuesday so stunning. He's had 30 years to figure out the right thing to say about the chop, and his central theses were: Teams make their own choices (even though they actually don't) and American Indians in the region are fully backing the chop (even though they certainly haven't).

"The Native American community in that region is wholly supportive of the Braves' program, including the chop," Manfred said. "For me, that's kind of the end of the story."

Wholly supportive. Sounds about as convincing as unwaveringly supportive.

At least Manfred was telling the truth about one thing. The end of the story is coming. That noise you hear this week emanating from Truist Park will sound like the tomahawk chop, but in reality it will mark the beginning of its death rattle. The chop is not long for Atlanta, and, with any luck, not long for the sporting world.

Come on, guys. It's 2021. Let's move on. Find something else.

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