Peoria Chiefs

223

If you believe Wikipedia (and why wouldn't you?), the Peoria Chiefs took their name in reference to the Peoria nation, who lived in the area before moving to Oklahoma. If you have to ask why they moved to Oklahoma, you clearly don't know much about American history. There are millions of native Americans living in Oklahoma, and they all live there for pretty much the same reason: the American government thought the Oklahoma was a shithole where no one would ever want to live, so they dumped all the native Americans there so the Anglos could get all the good land. I don't blame any native Americans for living in Oklahoma; they weren't actually given any choice in the matter. But the whole situation does raise two questions:

1. Given that Oklahoma was deemed one gigantic shithole not fit for inhabitation, why does anyone who isn't a native American live there?

2. If the intent was to put native Americans in the absolute shittiest land the United States has any claim to, why did they send them to Oklahoma instead of Detroit?

The dog is clearly confused by this. He doesn't understand why he's supposed to be playing baseball if he's wearing a fireman's uniform, and it's making him do odd things. Based on his stance and the ball's trajectory, he is facing away from the pitcher (since the pitch is clearly coming from behind him), and the pitcher has just thrown the curveball from hell in an attempt to let the dalmatian actually hit the thing. I appreciate the pitcher's generosity, but what really needs to happen is that someone needs to sit this dog down and explain the rules of baseball to him so that he at least knows which direction to face. Not that I think this will help. Dogs just don't understand baseball. If a baseball is coming near a dog, the dog may not even try to catch it in the air. Instead, the dog will let it fall to the ground and then pick it up. Worse still, they then try to return the ball to the person who threw it. Why are you giving the ball back to the pitcher?! The play is at first! Don't you understand anything? The answer is no, of course. Dogs know nothing about baseball. I've been trying to teach my pet greyhound the infield fly rule for years and he still hasn't got it.

But with or without dogs who don't understand baseball, I find the whole firefighter motif rather strange. Sure, I get that a lot of teams are sensitive about native American imagery, and they want to avoid that. But if you want to avoid native American imagery, why not start by not naming your team after a native American tribe? Yes, there's a history behind the name, but not much of one. (Before this team, there was a team that lasted five seasons in the 1950s called the Chiefs.) If it's history you want, there are several other names used by baseball teams in Peoria in the past. Granted, most of them are terrible (Canaries, Distillers, and Tractors), and one (Reds) wouldn't be a wise move today unless they affiliated with Cincinnati. But there was one team called the Peoria Blackbirds, which in my opinion is a darned good name for a team. It would be pretty easy to make a good logo for such a team, too. Not that this guarantees they would have one. After all, it's not hard to come up with a good logo for a team called the Chiefs, but look what these guys wound up with.

Final Score: 223 points.
Penalties: Equipment (the badge on the helmet is shaped like home plate), 13 pts; Humanoid, 30 pts; Colorful, 31 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Player, 51 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.