The Cincinnati Reds are desperately in need of a mascot update. Not the look of the mascot; that’s classic. The problem is the name, Mr. Redlegs.
The Cincinnati Reds mascot ‚— the oldest of four now used by the team — would be familiar to even a casual fan. It’s a huge mustachioed baseball wearing an19th-century cap and designed to hearken back to the city’s status as home to the first openly professional team, one that took the field in 1869.
The look is evocative, particularly given that all but one of the 1869 team’s nine regulars sported facial hair. The city of Cincinnati has always been proud of its position as origin of openly professional baseball, and the mascot is an ongoing reminder of the historical connection.
The problem is the mascot’s name, Mr. Redlegs. It distinctly fails to carry forward the historical emphasis, nor does it relate to the current team, which is the Reds … not the Redlegs.
The mascot came into existence in the early 1950s, an era notable for Cold War tensions. The tensions were a significant enough concern to the Reds’ management that prior to the start of the 1954 season they formally changed the team’s long-standing nickname from “Reds” to “Redlegs,” so as not to be associated with Communism. The change lasted five seasons. By 1959, they were back to being known as the Reds, and they have remained so.
What never changed was the name of the mascot. Some years later, the team adopted a clean-shaven cousin they named “Mr. Reds,” who to an extent supplanted Mr. Redlegs. Over the seasons a female version “Rosie Red,” came into being, followed by an amorphous thing the team calls “Gapper.”
Mr. Redlegs remains the most recognizable mascot, largely due to that distinctive mustache and also due to the historical links. It continues to be used on the sleeve of some Reds uniforms. The name, however, has long been out of date and needs to go.
There is an obvious replacement candidate: Mr. Wright.
The two key figures on that original 1869 team, which went through the entire season undefeated, were a pair of brothers, George and Harry Wright. George was a shortstop, Harry a pitcher-outfielder who doubled as team manager. Statistics from that seminal era are largely non-existent, so the testimony of observers will have to suffice. Orator Jim O’Rourke, a contemporary and future Hall of Famer, said of George Wright, “He was in a class by himself.”
Henry Chadwick, the game’s first historian, said Harry Wright was, “the most widely known, best respected and most popular of the exponents and representatives of professional baseball, of which he was virtually the founder.”
Both Wright brothers eventually were enshrined in the Hall of Fame. George became the first player primarily associated with Cincinnati baseball to be so honored when he was enshrined in 1937, the year of his death. Harry Wright, who died in 1895, was enshrined in 1953, the second inductee with a primary link to Cincinnati ball.
Changing the name of Mr. Redlegs to Mr. Wright would be a wonderful way for the team to re-emphasize its connection to its history, and the vital role that history played in the game’s development. It’d be a darned sight more meaningful than Mr. Redlegs, which honors a nickname used for only five seasons and consigned to the historical dustbin more than six decades ago.
It would not only be the Wright thing to do, it would be the right thing to do.