Column: Pull the plug on the chop -- and Braves name, too

ATLANTA (AP) — The haunting chants will be impossible to ignore now that the World Series has shifted to Atlanta.

Get ready to step back in time — in a most unfortunate way.

While a good chunk of the world moves forward, the Braves are choosing to cling stubbornly to the past, hoping that any opposition to their nickname and the tomahawk chop will somehow just fade away, or at least get drowned out by 40,000 fans waving their arms and droning in unison like extras in a 1950s John Wayne flick.

Major League Baseball, which took the bold stance of yanking the All-Star Game out of Atlanta over the state's new voting restrictions, suddenly looks about as progressive as Kenesaw Mountain Landis with its tortured defense of the team.

Yet this much is clear: There is no way this issue ever turns in a favorable direction for the Braves.

Not now. Not next season. Not a hundred years from now.

“This is an existential moment for the Atlanta Braves,” said James O’Rourke, a professor of management at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “They need to recognize that this problem is not going to go away.”

Commissioner Rob Manfred tried to provide cover, but calling it "a local issue” and insisting that the support of a single tribe in North Carolina was all the Braves needed to carry on with business as usual only served to fan the flames.

Simply put, the Braves and their co-conspirator are on the wrong side of history, not unlike those who continue to defend the Confederate flag and statues as nothing more than peaceful symbols of Southern heritage.

No matter how many people attempt to stand in the way, as they always do when society makes a jarring but inevitable lurch forward, there's no turning back now.

“We have repeatedly and unequivocally made our position clear — Native...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Column-Pull-the-plug-on-the-chop-and-Braves-16573807.php