Masky The Mascot

A few nights ago, I turned on my television set and saw, to my wondering eyes, a group of men playing baseball. In uniforms. Professionally. Initially I found myself looking in on a spirited battle between the Colorado Rockies and the Texas Rangers. I could say that I was stuck there longer than I might have because I was born in Colorado and as part of our wedding celebration my wife and I took a bunch of our friends and family to Mile High Stadium to take in one of the earliest games they played. Against the San Francisco Giants. Which may have had something to do with it, but since they were playing in Texas, the curiosity was centered more on the fact that they were actually playing organized professional sports. Which got me to thinking: "Hey, I wonder if the Bay Bridge Series is going on?" That's the traditional end of exhibition baseball where those previously mentioned San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics play each other.
Lo and behold, just a few channels up the dial I found the Orange and Black playing the Green and Gold. In an empty Oracle, previously Pac Bell, Park. I watched an inning or two, noting the times that canned crowd noise was poured out through the sound system. And the cardboard cutouts in the seats behind home plate. And how there was little if any drama in what I was watching. The math was still there: one man on, two outs, full count and so forth, but it was taking place in a bubble. As I changed the channel to see if there was a Big Bang Theory rerun that I had not seen, I considered the details. Colorado's team mascot is a mountain range. And they dress a guy up as a stegosaurus now and then because kids don't get that whole abstraction. Texas named their team for their rootin' tootin' lawmen, but they do not have a guy in a Chuck Norris suit handing out souvenir bats to the kiddies. San Francisco kept their team name when they moved out west. They do have a fuzzy mascot in Lou Seal, a nod to the Bay Area's baseball past and the gender fluid nature of all things Bay Area. Then there's the on-the-nosey Oakland Athletics, who brought their incredibly simple team name with them from Philadelphia where they must have had a really tough week after coming up with "Phillies" for their National League franchise. Oakland has a big lug of an elephant suit for customer relations, and the legends that somehow brought an elephant into the mix with either city remains a mystery not unlike the infield fly rule. The name of the elephant currently is Stomper, which replaced the much more entertaining option Harry Elephante.
All of this leads up to the name change we were all waiting for: The Washington Football team will heretofore be referred to as "The Washington Football Team." I am not making this up. After decades of being at the top of the list when it comes to racially insensitive mascots, ownership decided to take the plunge and do what might be described as "the right thing." Assurances have been made that this is only a placeholder, and that eventually there will be a dynamic new team name that will restore passion and pride in a franchise that has become a public relations and competitive pimple on the face of the National Football League.
I didn't catch the final scores of either of the baseball games, and I expect that it may still be a while before I watch football. I appreciate all the efforts that are being made to make sports safe and even culturally responsive, but it still doesn't feel normal.
Maybe it never was.