Progressive Field sits about a block removed from a bend in the Cuyahoga — a river name borne from a butchered Mohawk word, a river once so sullied that it could catch fire.
And from those fires came a desire to be clean again. To restore the river to something closer to its natural self.
Baseball will be played there today, this opening day. At Progressive. Progressive. Where a red-faced man will proliferate the stands: Major League Baseball’s most disgusting burlesque, masquerading as a Native American man.
Thirty years ago this season, the Indians returned this man — Chief Wahoo, they called him — to prominent position.