July 23, 2020: After years of being called racist over their team name, the NFL's Washington franchise drops the name "Redskins."
In 1932, George Preston Marshall and 3 partners bought a Boston franchise for the NFL. Like most NFL teams at the time, they played in the biggest stadium in town, which was Braves Field. And so, like many (but not all) NFL teams at the time, he named the football team after the baseball team: The Boston Braves.
After a bad season, both on the field and at the box office, the other 3 partners wanted out. Marshall bought them out, and, for 1933, moved them to Fenway Park, which had fewer seats, but better transit access. The Boston Red Sox wouldn't allow a team named the Boston Braves playing in their ballpark (different owners had done so in 1914 and 1915), so Marshall changed the name to the Boston Redskins. It was close to "Red Sox," and it allowed Marshall, who valued the color green even more than he valued the color white, to keep the Native American logos. Apparently, as the owner of a chain of laundromats, he knew that buying new stationery was cheaper than buying new uniforms.
But the team never drew fans. At the time, Boston was a good college football town, but people weren't interested in a pro team. In 1936, the Redskins won the NFL Eastern Division, entitling them to host the NFL Championship Game. Marshall was sure he wouldn't get good attendance even for this, so he asked NFL President Joe Carr if he could move the game to the Polo Grounds in New York. Carr gave permission, and 29,545 people came out -- compared to the 61,000 fans that they got for their 7 home games in Boston combined. The Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers, 21-6.
With the other NFL owners happy to approve it, Marshall moved the team to his hometown for the 1937 season, and the Washington Redskins they would remain through the 2019 season. He drafted Sammy Baugh, who became the 1st rookie quarterback ever to lead a team to an NFL Championship, as the Redskins beat the Chicago Bears. He and Bob Waterfield remains the only two.
The Redskins lost the NFL Championship Game to the Bears in 1940, beat the Bears in it in 1942, lost to the Bears in it in 1943, and lost to the Cleveland Rams in it in 1945. The Rams then followed the Redskins' example, and immediately moved to another city, Los Angeles.
They were the last NFL team to integrate, not doing so until pressure from the federal government finally led them to do so in 1962. So there was a racist element to the team, above and beyond the name of the team. Nevertheless, when they team returned to prominence in the 1970s, black fans in the D.C. area took to them as much as white fans did. This grew when they reached 4 Super Bowls and won 3 of them in a 10-season stretch from 1983 to 1992, including 1 with the 1st black quarterback to do so, Doug Williams, in Super Bowl XXII in 1988.
Marshall capitalized -- pardon the choice of words -- on the popularity of college football by treating the Redskins like a college team, giving them a marching band, a fight song titled "Hail to the Redskins," and big halftime shows. From 1938 to 2019, they played "Hail to the Redskins" after every score and every win.
He also worked with Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith to rent Griffith Stadium out as a home field for D.C.'s 2 major colleges, George Washington University and Georgetown, neither of whom plays major college football anymore. He did not extend the same courtesy to Howard University, "the Black Harvard." And Clark's nephew, Calvin Griffith, also an avowed racist, moved the Senators out of what became a black neighborhood to mostly-white Minnesota in 1961. Ironically, Howard's hospital and medical school now occupy the Griffith Stadium site.
Marshall suffered a stroke in 1963, and was unable to run the team's affairs from then until his death in 1969. Minority owners stepped up, including Washington "superlawyer" Edward Bennett Williams and Toronto-based sportsman Jack Kent Cooke.
Cooke had owned minor-league baseball's Toronto Maple Leafs, and also owned the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers and the NHL's Los Angeles Kings. He sold the L.A. teams because NFL rules prohibit a majority owner from being that of a team in another sport, and he wanted to buy Williams out.
He completed that process in 1983, shortly after the Redskins won Super Bowl XVII. This allowed Williams to become the majority owner of baseball's Baltimore Orioles, who won the World Series in 1983. This made Williams the 1st person to own the titleholders in MLB and the NFL at the same time, even in part. There has never been another.
Marshall had been popular with the other NFL owners, but not with the fans, as D.C. became a majority-black city. Williams and Cooke were popular, and Cooke has been called the sports team owner who was more beloved by his players than any other. The Redskins won 2 more Super Bowls. Still, there were people complaining about how the team's name was racist.
In 1997, just before a stadium in the Maryland suburbs that would bear his name opened, Cooke died. His heirs did the worst thing they could do: They sold the team to Daniel Snyder, who proved to be not just incompetent, but obnoxious. (He also, unlike Marshall, Williams and Cooke, proved that you don't need to use all 3 of your names to own the Washington football team.) He swore he would never change the team's name, and was accused of racism, and of leading a culture of misogyny in the team's front office, for the way women were treated, by him and his officers.
In the 2010s, the Black Lives Matter movement began and gained traction, and other anti-bigotry movements followed. The many scandals of Snyder's ownership piled up, to the point where he began negotiations to sell the team.
Finally, on July 23, 2020, desperate for some good news, he caved in on the most superficial of things: The team would no longer be known as the Washington Redskins. They would play the 2020 and 2021 seasons as "The Washington Football Team," until a new name could be chosen. The team's Indian head logo was replaced with a simple block yellow W.
One year to the day later, on July 23, 2021, baseball's Cleveland Indians announced they were changing their name to the Cleveland Guardians for the 2022 season.
The front-runners for the Washington Football Team's new name were the Warriors, the Wolves, and the Redwolves, which would have allowed them to maintain their familiar burgundy caps with the golden script R. But on February 2, 2022 -- 2/2/22 -- they announced the new name: Washington Commanders. The joke was that "Commanders" would be abbreviated not to "C's," but to "Commies." But it was widely accepted by area fans.
UPDATE: Even more accepted by area fans was the 2023 purchase of the team from Snyder, by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, led by Josh Harris, a native of nearby Chevy Chase, Maryland. Harris Blitzer had previously bought the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the NHL's New Jersey Devils in 2013, and a minority stake in English soccer team Crystal Palace F.C. in 2015.
They have tried to buy other English soccer teams, including giants Chelsea F.C. and Manchester United, without success. If a deal can be made, they would have to sell Crystal Palace.
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July 23, 2020 was a Thursday. The only sport in action was baseball, and it was still being affected by postponements due to team personnel contracting COVID-19. There were only 2 games on this day. And one did not go the distance. Interestingly enough, it was in Washington: The New York Yankees were leading the Washington Nationals, 4-1, with 1 out in the top of the 6th inning at Nationals Park, when it was called due to rain. Gerrit Cole was the winning pitcher, Max Scherzer the losing pitcher. Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run.
In the other game, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 8-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Enrique Hernández went 4-for-5 with a home run and 5 RBIs.
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