The University of Richmond’s logo the Spiders. One of the very few teams in college or pro sports to use the name. (photo richmond.com)

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Sometimes professional sports loses focus and gets silly in many ways. The NBA looks the other way about China, because that represents a huge money market for them, yet they speak about justice. Last year China’s Tech-Giant Tencent reached a deal of $1.5 billion to remain the league’s exclusive digital partner and the US largest partnership outside the US.

A market of one-and-a-half billion people, they buy many more Lebron jerseys than the rest of the world combined. But Communist China to this date is one of the world’s leading countries when it comes to human rights violations. Amnesty International, a worldwide (non-political organization) whose mission is about human rights, says about one million Muslims ethnic groups Uyghur’s, Kazakhs and others are still missing.

Amnesty International has interviewed more than 100 people outside of China whose relatives in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are still missing, as well as individuals who said they were tortured while in detention camps there.

There are forced-labor concentration camps in China. They have interviewed these people who are family of those missing and have knowledge of what’s going on. To be fair to the NBA, they are in the business of selling basketball, lawmakers in Washington make policy; but anybody can see that money is over principal many times over Back in July, ESPN investigation finds coaches at NBA China academies complained of player abuse and lack of schooling.

The NBA has a “complicated” relationship with China, and unfortunately that might continue. This covid-19 came from China, but the vaccine was Made in the USA, so there, we definitely look much better. Here in America we feel good when the Cleveland Indians say they are going to change their name.

Nobody should oppose to the Cleveland Baseball Club changing their name. They are a private business and they can do that, just like anybody else who owns a business. They want to look good in the eyes of the public.

The Atlanta Braves (who are still named Braves) had Chief Noc-A-Homa, a fan for two decades who retired before the 1986 season. This was a fan of the Braves, who paid for his admittance to every game, but chose to dress like an Indian Chief and the team basically adopted him, he was not an employee of the team.

Maybe the Cleveland Indians can change to the Cleveland Baseball Club, just like the NFL Washington Redskins a year ago, or the Cleveland Rockers, for the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in that city. But with all our problems during this 2020 and everything that is going on in this world, does anybody really cares about changing the name of a team?

Who knows what the sports landscape might look 20, 30, 40 or more years from today? Pacifist could eventually revel against team’s names like: Raiders, Pirates, Chiefs, Vikings, Buccaneers and such.

Atheists and Agnostics will do the same against teams that are named: Padres, Angels and Saints. Maybe the National Audubon Society will get upset about the: Cardinals, Orioles, Ravens and Blue Jays or the ACLU about the exploitation of ‘man by man’ with teams names like Athletics, Giants, Twins, Royals and Patriots. I think Houston and NASA will always be happy with the Astros and New York with the Yankees, so they are…Safe!!

Felíz Hanukkah and Felíz Navidad !

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the vice president of the MLB Hispanic Heritage Baseball Hall of Fame Museum  and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com