When I was first approached by this website to write about baseball, I decided to focus on a true team, like the 2001 Seattle Mariners (a team I wrote about in my article, “Good Teamwork Outshines Superstar Systems”). Baseball is, after all, a team sport, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This truism becomes more true with every passing season. Just look at the recent Yankees world champions, or the recent spate of wild-card-cum-World-Series-winners – the Marlins (both times), the Angels, and last year’s remarkable Red Sox team. This year is no different, with many teams succeeding without the benefit of marquee names or marquee salaries. With teams like the feel-good Washington Nationals and the front-running Chicago White Sox already covered by some of the fine guest writers for this site, I wanted to focus on another team: the upstart Cleveland Indians.

Much like the Mariners of years past, Cleveland is a small-market team once blessed with talent. Unfortunately, they lost their superstars to the harsh financial realities of professional sports. Players like perennial man-child Manny Ramirez, stalwart American Jim Thome, disgruntled slugger Albert “Joey” Belle, and fiery staff ace Bartolo Colon all left the friendly confines of Cleveland Municiple Stadium’s dog pound for the promise of big spotlights and bigger paychecks. Despite these losses, the Indians – a team many experts picked to be fighting for last place with the lowly Kansas City Royals – contending for the American League Wild Card, and still within distance of the front-running White Sox. A team of former draft picks and table scraps going toe-to-toe with the best team in baseball – surely this is a story that fans of all stripes can appreciate!

Little did I know, though, that this website actually contracted another writer to do a similar piece about this possible team of destiny. And little did I know that this “writer” – if he can actually be awarded such an honorarium – would do this story, and the peoples represented by this franchise, such a disgraceful turn. Thankfully, the editors of this site saw fit to kill this piece (titled, if you can believe it, “How Tribe Womp ‘Em White Sox”). However, in the interest of exposing this debasing discourse as the poisonous pornography that it is, I would like to talk about it, and the state of sports journalism in general. Be warned – those of you with discerning taste and sensitive cultural predilections may wish to skip to the conclusion of my article.

The purported author of this piece is “Iron-Eyes Cody”, which clearly sends up warning flares. Iron-Eyes Cody is best known as “the crying Indian” featured in a series of littering public service announcements (or PSAs) broadcast in the 1970s. Iron-Eyes Cody was an Italian-American actor that passed himself off as an Indian for the sake of getting roles in Hollywood, which is shameful enough. Acting is acting, but once the camera is off, the acting should stop. His actions speak of a hollow man willing to do whatever is necessary, no matter how shameful it may be, to make some filthy lucre. He also died last century. Clearly whoever does the fact-checking for this site needs to learn that there’s more to checking facts than using the Internet!

So this begs a question: why would someone affect a fake identity of an actor known for affecting a fake identity for the purpose of writing about baseball? A brief perusal of this article shows that such actions were taken merely for the sake of ignorant hooliganism. Here is the introduction:

Disgrace follow Cleveland Indian wherever it go, like smell of fresh buffalo chips during summer. White man try to invoke pride and strength of my people because men step on Spiders, then attach grinning redskin Looney Tune wahoo to image because white man like feeling big. Nap Lajoie name of man with problems that casual racism not fix. Breaking color barrier with Larry Doby not help. Hire Frank Robinson to break manager barrier not help. Gaylord Perry and greasy tonic that smell of bad death not help. At least Atlanta have good marketing and better merch. Hank Aaron jersey outsell Bob Feller jersey by 15 to 1 ratio, but Bob Feller eat own old foot like uncle drink firewater. Bellyitcher should keep still when not itching. And white man should take long walk off short mesa and hold up YIPES sign before landing on pasty face.

Affecting the stereotypical patois of the Hollywood Indian for the sake of a few cheap laughs does these noble savages a grave disservice. There is more to the plight of the American Indian than poor grammar and “smell of buffalo chip”. The story of the American Indian is, in essence, the story of survival of the fittest, wherein a native peoples, through forces beyond their control, was subjugated by a more advanced culture. Much in the way that humans befriended, then dominated, the indigenous backwater dinosaurs of Pangaea, early American settlers befriended, then dominated, the indigenous backwater people of North America. This fact does nothing to shame the image of the Indian (or Brave) as a fierce, passionate warrior. This thoughtless Eddie-Murphy-esque “comedy”, however, does.

Some might defend such an over-the-top piece as “satire”, claiming the author is affecting such a voice to call attention to the supposedly-offensive nature of the Indians’ mascot. I say that “satire” is the mark of a shallow thinker. Instead of asserting a point through concise and plainspoken English, The Satirist resorts to ham-fisted means of persuasion. Little does The Satirist know that couching such a plausibly intriguing dilemma in fart jokes and whoopie cushions only serves to turn off thoughtful readers that might be interested in such matters. Do you think people would listen to Martin Luther King speak on racial equality and brotherhood if he shook a rubber chicken and had a fake arrow going through his head? Do you think people would have elected George Walker Bush to office for a second term if he took to indiscriminantly flipping off television camera and made thoughtless comments during nationally-televised events? A message is only as good as the means by which it is conveyed. To fall back on puerile “pull my finger” tactics to making a point across not only insults to the audience. It reflects poorly on the writer as well.

To wit, here are some other odious quotes from this subliterate tripe:

In recent days, disgrace turn to pride, even if jackanape Wahoo still on hat like toilet paper on sole of dress shoe.

Disgrace happen again recently, though, because Travis Fryman and Chuck Finley and Karim Garcia like hot wind passing between legs of horse while Manny be Manny in park on swamp.

I speak truth when I say Podsednik, in my tribe, mean “small animal with no pop that run fast and look better than is”. Ozzie Guillen: we trade you Chief Sockalexis blankets for division title. Enjoy SARS.

But more shameful than this – yes, even more shameful than references to when Albert “Joey” Belle “hit white man in chest with baseball when needed”, or saying that hitters like Victor Martinez and Jhonny Peralta “swing mighty tomahawk and collect scalp of sally throwers ” – is the disgrace done to one of America’s finest actors:

But now look – Twins are ghost and White Sox unravel while Indians grow strong. (If wonder about rain on White Sox / Red Sox game where Clement throw BP, I plead fifth and wait for attorney. That not my rain stick. That belong to Graham Greene. He rich from white man films. Crawl up his ass.)

Incriminating a fine thespian like Graham Greene – star of such commendable family-friendly Hollywood offerings as The Green Mile, Snow Dogs, and the ribald Die Hard With A Vengeance – to somehow lend this “pithy parody” a sense of dignity or realism is the stuff of liberalism run rampant. Only in a world where tastemakers praise a shameless piece of anti-American agitprop like Fahrenheit 911 while demeaning a heartfelt and timeless spiritual journey like Mel Gibson’s The Passion would this garbage be deemed “funny”. (You can read more about my thoughts on The Passion in my Wall Street Journal editorial, “A Movie With Legs”.)

The mindset exhibited by this offensive essay is endemic of the sort of remote-control culture our children are exposed to every waking moment. A culture that condones sexual situations in a video game. A culture that allows hotel-chain heiresses to gain prestige and fame because of their hollow depravity. A culture that dotes on the whims of spoiled celebrities. A culture that makes it OK for our young girls to dress and act like wanton tarts. A culture that condones steroid use in our public school systems.

The sort of slop offered by “Iron-Eyes Cody” is not “funny” or “pointed” by any stretch of the imagination – it’s barely English. Nor are the shameless attempts of various sports networks to “xtreme-up” their coverage to be more “hip-hop” or “edgy” through the use of vulgar slang and hot-to-trot sideline reporters and shrill MTV graphics. ESPN now promotes a show detailing the Hollywood exploits of fashionable athletes. Comedian Jay Mohr has been published by that former bastion of journalistic integrity, Sports Illustrated. Shrill hip-hop noise precedes the at-bats of popular players. Rock stars cavort on stage in licensed Major League Baseball couture. This must stop. Tom Hanks, in Penny Marshall’s uplifting A League Of Their Own, famously said, “There’s no crying in baseball!” There should be no short-sighted capitulation to popular fads, either.

If I were to write my Indians essay (as I originally hoped), it would be a respectful chronicle of this long-suffering franchise. One of the first to bravely allow a black man to play baseball. One of the hard-luck losers that make baseball America’s pastime. And this year’s team, a story of Third World athletes coming to the land of the free and the home of the brave to band together and play a child’s game, and succeed beyond all expectations. This should be a celebratory piece, an essay that exemplifies the best that this ball-and-gloved cultural phenomenon has to offer. Instead, this essay is once again forced to right egregious wrongs and attempt to set an example for others to follow. I say we that know better should take the example of the proud, nameless Cleveland Indians to heart. I say we should rise above the Andrew Dice Clays and Don Rickles of the world and take the higher ground to foster baseball writing, and sports journalism as a whole, that seeks not to insult and demean, but to educate and entertain.

Ignore this demeaning nonsense and the stuff like it – the caustic sarcasm offered by various sports weblogs, the dime-store insults that supposed “think tanks” like Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times trade in. Look to thoughtful writers, like Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, or Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times. Click over to knowledgeable Yahoo! Sports columnists like Ryne Sandberg and Todd Jones. See what good baseball journalism – nay, good journalism – should look like. And never settle for anything less.

Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host, film critic and author.