Indians unveil new red uniforms, giant guitars, headless baseball players

The Cleveland Indians technically moved on from Chief Wahoo the moment the 2018 season ended, but you could speculate that they were not truly in the post-Wahoo era until they unveiled a permanently replacement to go on the sleeve of their everyday jerseys.

Would they go with two block C logos like they have for special events in recent years? The script I? Something new entirely?

Oh, nope. Giant guitar it is.

Taking a page from their design philosophy for the 2018 All-Star game, which will be the sixth hosted in Cleveland since 1993 (the most of any team [ever]), the Tribe opted to put a big ole guitar right there on the arm.

A cursory glance at Twitter suggests that fans are overall pretty pleased with these, unless I just follow an usually optimistic swath of Indians fans. I can absolutely get on board with the red uniforms and lack of Chief Wahoo, but the guitar patch and new “Cleveland” midnight blue jerseys are kind of a bummer.

The guitar just seems so big and out of place on an everyday jersey, and it’s only tangentially related to Cleveland. I get it, though. The All-Star game coming back is a big deal and the Indians want to avoid anything even remotely Native American, but it’d be cool if they ever acknowledged anything else about Cleveland besides the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which has nothing to do with the Indians themselves.

According to The Athletic’s Zack Meisel, this new patch doesn’t mean the Indians will be rocking the guitar patch forever. It’s basically a stall tactic while they work a more permanently replacement.

Let’s just all agree that the best part of the brief reveal press conference was our headless buddy over here.

I call him Steve.