I have not been to an Indians game yet this year, but loyal reader Mike was kind enough to send us a link to this article about a shocking new-for-2009 development at Progressive Field. Long story short, you can now buy "Ketchup Cheats" T-shirts at the Indians team shop. This comes as a surprise, to say the least, and at first I wasn't quite sure how to react to it.

In case you're new around here, my history with Ketchup is both long and ugly. As far as I know, I was the first person to accuse Ketchup of cheating (in the then-Jacobs Field Hot Dog Race) when I wrote this post in June 2005. Exposing injustice within the Hot Dog Race, railing against the insidious and seemingly all-powerful Evil Pittsburgh Ketchup Lobby (or EPKL), and supporting Mustard—one of the great heroes of Cleveland history—quickly became running themes on our blog. Later, some astute and noble Indians fans started the now-famous website KetchupCheats.com (for which I voiced my undying support) and also began selling "Ketchup Cheats" T-shirts. Finally, in August 2008, I announced the beginning of a Cleveland-wide ketchup boycott—a defiant operation that came to include ones upon ones of loyal Clevelanders.

Anyway, the Indians must have gotten wind of this rising tide of populist anger, and decided to try and turn it to their advantage. Here are pictures of the original "Ketchup Cheats" T-shirt (on the left) and the insultingly similar new rip-off (on the right):



So what are we supposed to make of the fact that the Indians themselves are selling these shirts? Do they like Ketchup or don't they? Do they want him to continue cheating, or don't they? Do they even realize that they are the ruling authority on all matters Hot Dog Race? By my reasoning, it's like this:

1. The existence of these shirts proves that the Indians organization not only is aware of the cheating, but acknowledges that such behavior is, in fact, cheating.
2. Cheating is wrong.
3. Legally, it is fully within the power of the Indians organization to put an end to the cheating, either by penalizing, replacing, or banning Ketchup. More on this later.
4. They would not be selling the T-shirts at all if they had any intention of stopping the cheating any time soon. Ergo...
5. The Indians organization openly supports the cheating... which is another way of saying that the Indians share Big Ketchup's agenda. Ergo...
6. The EPKL has infiltrated itself all the way to the top—the Cleveland Indians. In other words, this conspiracy now runs deeper than we feared, even in our wildest nightmares.

The shirts may appear to have an anti-Ketchup slogan on them, but you can't be anti-Ketchup while openly condoning Ketchup's heinous cheating on a daily basis. And you can no longer play dumb—that is, claim to be blissfully unaware of the cheating—once you start selling "Ketchup Cheats" merchandise. No, I'm afraid the Indians are deep in a moral quagmire that's not going to be easy to escape.

That leaves us to ponder: what should a true Clevelander—i.e., one who wants to continue calling attention to Ketchup's cheating, and who wants to continue attending games at Progressive Field as a way of pledging support for noble Mustard, and who may even want to continue rooting for the baseball arm of the Indians organization (oh yeah, forgot about them)—do? On this question, I am firmly with Vince Grzegorek, author of the Cleveland Scene article linked above, who urges fans to continue buying their "Ketchup Cheats" shirts from the grassroots online store, and not from the Indians team shop.

Now, my brother suggests a better way for the Indians to get in on the Hot Dog Race T-shirt racket: sell pro-Mustard shirts instead of anti-Ketchup ones. (Alex's proposed slogan: "Mustard Stands for Truth and Reason.") But it's the whole question of what the Indians should do that bugs me. They should simply put an end to the cheating. Instead, they're obviously determined to condone or even encourage the cheating, so even if they did change the slogans on the shirts, that would still be the situation.

Alex has another theory; namely, that the Indians brass are not the bad guys here, but simply the unfortunate ballpark operators being forced to conduct business within the totalitarian regime of a fascist condiment lobby. In Alex's version, the Indians are like Bunny Colvin or Felix Gaeta, trying to do what they can in an unjust world (that is, selling anti-Ketchup shirts; "aiding the resistance," so to speak) without upsetting the balance of power so much that they get crushed by The Man (in other words, still letting Ketchup cheat his way to title after title).

Still, EPKL coercion or not, I find the actions of the Indians organization to be too incongruous for comfort. Okay, so this may not be the equivalent of the Chinese government selling "Free Tibet" bumper stickers after discovering how well they're selling over in the West. But even in Alex's scenario, we've got... let's say, the provincial government of Tibet... selling "Free Tibet" schwag. Besides, if the EPKL is dictating Progressive Field policy at all—either Hot Dog Race-related or merchandise-related—then I have a hard time buying that they wouldn't put the kibosh on "Ketchup Cheats" T-shirt sales almost immediately. In other words, I think the EPKL almost has to be behind the new T-shirt promotion. They are insidious, indeed.

In conclusion, keep fighting the power, Cleveland. Buy your T-shirts from this website. Boo Ketchup's illegally-won victories. Keep boycotting ketchup products (especially Heinz ketchup) throughout the Cleveland area (in fact, we're now raising the Ketchup Boycott Alert Level to spicy brown). And most of all, support Mustard, because he represents our future, and therefore our greatest hope for survival.