This Is One I am deeply Sorry for This Behavior Please Remember not all Clevelanders are like this and not all us baseball fans are like this. Yes, This behavior should have ended and needs to end, yesterday.

As much as I am proud to say that I was born and raised in the Greater Cleveland area and am a baseball fan. After all, I still remember going to Lake Front Stadium and watching the Indians lose, which back in the 60's and 70's, they did most often. I remember going to the games with my father and grandfather(my dad's father-in-law). I remember it was at those games that I learned how to curse in Czech. ;-)




But, This Behavior should have ended. It is not honoring anyone, but rather insulting everyone. It is behavior like this that is the reason that we must re-evaluate what Cleveland's mascot should or should not be.

After all, the truth of the matter is--there are still many Anti-Native American Sentiments out there. We must recognize them for what they are--Forms of hatred and intolerance that is not for the good of society, which in the end--if left to continue-hurts everyone.

I am not Native American, my families immigrated from Europe during the early 20th Century, to the best of my knowledge. Both my grandmothers from Prague; my mother's father from Prague, but--with that there are two stories--One that the family stayed in the Kingdom of Bohemia for an unknown number of generations before immigrating to the U.S. and the other that the family was German which sailed out of the Kingdom of Bohemia, the same way that an Ohioan drives though Pennsylvania to get to New York, which one of those two stories is the correct one, no one knows, most especially, me. As far as where my father's father is from, no one says, he came with a Polish name, but all my father's family ever talked about was being Czech. Either he was Polish and ashamed of being so for one reason or another, or he really did grow up someplace else and did not feel Polish--that is another family mystery that may never get solved.

The point being is I got my own lesson in ethnic sensitivity. A few weeks ago, when I went to church, I was having a bad hair day, so I wore a head band around my head to keep my hair out of my eyes. Sadly, to one of the senior members of the congregation, he saw it as me dressing up as a Native American. I remember explaining that it was simply me having a bad hair day, which I thought that he understood. Well, I thought he did, until he made that hand jester to his mouth, mocking the Native Americans........ :`-((((((((((((((((-------YES, Cleveland, We Can Love Baseball and Our Team, BUT WITHOUT MOCKING THE NATIVE AMERICANS WHO WERE HERE FIRST--THAT IS A DISSERVICE TO EVERYONE.