PEABODY, MA — Peabody residents take the city’s tannery and leatherworking history very seriously — and want to make sure everyone knows about it and respects it.
That’s why the School Committee intends to send the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association a strongly worded letter of admonishment after its ticket vendor GoFan referred to the Peabody Tanners as the Peabody Bulls during online ticket sales for a fall playoff game.
A version of the letter written by School Committee member Beverley Ann Griffin Dunne and proposed to the School Committee stated: “Our Tanners represent to us the legacy of hard work, tenacity, and family and friendship bonds that carried over from the leather industry to our student-athletes — attributes we reinforce daily in our community and through our athletic programs.
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“We wear the name ‘Tanners’ with pride. The name is not to be shortened, nor changed for the convenience of technology or whichever marketing whims prevail. We request that the MIAA and your contractors respect our name, our athletes, and our city, and remember that WE ARE THE PEABODY TANNERS.”
In a largely light-hearted discussion that followed, the School Committee talked about perhaps changing the notion that the error “was an insult to our athletes and our community” to a softer term such as “disappointment” or that the error was an “unintended slight” and that the letter be accompanied by a care package of Peabody Tanner swag that shows off the pride in the nickname.
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“I love this letter,” Peabody Mayor and School Committee Chair Ted Bettencourt said. “I love the passion. Certainly, (Griffin Dunne) you are a true Tanner in many ways. And I think a letter to the MIAA is appropriate just to put them on notice.”
Bettencourt said in his first term of office two young students came to him with a proposal to change the nickname from Tanners to Bulls, but that “I remember thinking to myself that would be a great decision to make for myself in my very first year to go from Peabody Tanners to Peabody Bulls.”
“So I had to somehow, delicately, explain a little bit of the history of our city and why the Tanners are our mascot and what we’re known for, and that we are The Tanner City.”
Griffin Dunne said she remembered a proposal from a former athletic director — whom she did not name — to rename the teams the Peabody Blue Jays that proved very short-lived.
Superintendent Josh Vadala said the district is planning to take steps to reinforce the city’s leather history with a fourth-grade field trip to the Leatherworkers Museum each year.
“So it will definitely enhance our understanding of Peabody, and the leatherworkers, and the true history of the Tanners,” Vadala said.
The discussion did take a more serious, and somewhat adversarial, turn when it came to the MIAA’s policy of mandating that all playoff tickets be pre-purchased using a phone app after the School Committee had voted to make attending games free for veterans, seniors and students — with several references to the MIAA’s “death penalty” ruling on Bishop Fenwick’s handling of using an ineligible player last year that led to all teams and athletes being banned from state postseason competitions this school year.
“We want to encourage school spirit,” School Committee member Jarrod Hochman said. “We want to encourage city pride for our senior citizens. We want them to go there and support the student-athletes and the city, and the people who visit to play our student-athletes. But the MIAA? No freebies. No senior citizens, no veterans of foreign wars, get in for nothing. Nobody can get in with cash.”
Vadala noted that the athletic department did challenge the MIAA’s everyone-pays playoff ticket policy during last year’s softball tournament and was told: “Well if you can’t accommodate it we are happy to host your home game at a different location. So there is a little bit of where we have to play by their rules to host our own home games.”
Griffin Dunne said she would reword the letter to be a touch less confrontational and include a note thanking the MIAA for all its support of student-athletes each year, along with the swag, before submitting it to the School Committee for signatures ahead of sending it.
“It’s something that’s simple but important,” she said. “Especially to those (former) athletes who still go to those games, and they’re in their 80s and 90s.
“It’s the pride.”
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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