Sparks fly as former MLB star speaks of Commanders old team name

Former Major League Baseball player Jim Edmonds thought the Washington Redskins was a cool team name.

Edmonds, on a live broadcast of the MLB’s St Louis Cardinals game, stated that he was shocked when the Washington Redskins and, later, the Cleveland Indians succumbed to public pressure to change their team mascot names.

In 2020, Washington’s mascot name was dropped for the rather mundane and redundant Washington Football Team. The result was during that 2020 season; the team was poked fun at by all sorts of media across the country because all other 31 teams had a team name, and this team was, well, “the Football Team.”

Then in 2021, the Cleveland Indians discarded “Indians” for “Guardians” after being the Indians from 1915 through 2021.

The Redskins had actually first been the Boston Braves in 1932. Then when they were moving to Fenway Park in 1933 to share with the Boston Red Sox, in a marketing strategy, they determined to discard “Braves” because Fenway would now be host to the “Red Sox” and “Redskins.”

Edmonds, on the broadcast Thursday, said, “You know what’s really funny is when people reach out to you and say, ‘Hey, I’m from this area, and we really love our baseball here.’ And somebody else will say, ‘Yeah, I wish they had the old names that they used to have.’ It’s just funny to hear everyone’s opinion.”

“I’m still shocked that we’ve changed so much as a whole that [we’re] not allowed to have the Cleveland Indians anymore — the Guardians. And I’m saying that too because my wife is partially Native American Indian.”

“I always thought it was kind of a cool thing, not a bad thing, to have a team named after the Indians or vice versa, whatever, the Washington Redskins.”

Edmonds was good enough to have remained in the major leagues for 17 seasons. He played eight seasons for the Cardinals and seven for the Angels. The former centerfielder was a four-time MLB All-Star and an eight-time Gold Glove winner.

Story originally appeared on Commanders Wire