Blog: New York Mets follow tradition by shafting Native people

You’d think that a team represented by a giant anthropomorphized baseball would be able to remain safely outside the perennial controversies surrounding the sports world’s continued use of Native American mascots. But that probably gives the Mets too much credit. And so, of course, when the team decided that it would be a nice gesture to organize game-day festivities with the local American Indian community, it took months for someone to realize the potentially problematic scheduling of Native American Heritage Day on July 25th, when the Atlanta Braves were in town. Faced with the prospect of embarrassing their guests and not wanting to appear insensitive, the Mets followed centuries of American tradition and shafted the Native Americans.