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The Cleveland Indians officially announced on July 3, 2020, that the club would review its name in the wake of nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd. [3] On December 14, 2020, team owner Paul Dolan announced that the renaming process would begin.
Jul 23, 2021 · The Ohio-based team's old name - adopted in 1915 - had long been criticised as racist by Native American groups. The new name references a pair of well-known statues in the city of Cleveland.
Dec 14, 2020 · The temporary name was a mistake in 1915, compounded by the vile, awful, racist Chief Wahoo mascot — please read this Sporting News piece, originally published in 2016 — that was a fixture for...
- Ryan Fagan
Nov 25, 2019 · In 1897, a new player made his debut for the Cleveland Spiders of the National League. Louis Sockalexis, a member of Penobscot Nation, so entranced Cleveland fans and sports writers that his team was colloquially referred to as “the Indians.”
- Vince Guerrieri
- Overview
- Breaking barriers
Cleveland's major-league baseball team announced Monday that it will drop its "Indians" nickname — in place for more than a century — to "unify our community," a decision quickly praised by Native American groups, including some members of a Maine tribe with a historic connection to the team.
"To see this happen and to know that friends of mine have stood outside the stadium doors and had beer cans thrown at them and been called names just because they're asking for sensitivity about the issue, now we won't have that pain anymore," said John Bear Mitchell, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation in Maine. Mitchell is a student development coordinator for the University of Maine System's Native American waiver and educational program.
Such sentiment follows decades of protests over the team's name and its longtime mascot, known as Chief Wahoo.
Team owner Paul Dolan told The Associated Press that Cleveland will temporarily remain the Indians through the 2021 season. Dolan said in a statement Monday that the team will consider a non-Native American name after engaging with tribal communities and civic leaders about the "negative impact" the moniker has had.
"It's a difficult and complex process to identify a new name and do all the things you do around activating that name," Dolan said. "We are going to work at as quick a pace as we can while doing it right.
"But we're not going to do something just for the sake of doing it," he added. "We're going to take the time we need to do it right."
Sockalexis first came to Ohio in 1897, signed to what was then known as the Cleveland Spiders.
People would informally call the team the Indians because of Sockalexis, said journalist Ed Rice, author of "Baseball's First Indian: The Story of Penobscot Legend Louis Sockalexis" and director of a monument fund hoping to honor him.
"It wasn't meant to be complimentary," Rice said. "It was meant as if the P.T. Barnum circus had come to Cleveland."
At 5-feet-11, Sockalexis, a top collegiate ballplayer, wowed the fans as an outfielder for the Spiders, making his mark with long, powerful throws. Penobscot tribal members to this day recall stories passed down through generations of how he could "throw a strike across the river."
Media reports at the time noted how Sockalexis was "sensational" during games, according to the Society for American Baseball Research — "for the first two and one-half months of the season his name was in the headlines on a daily basis for his spectacular hitting and fielding, and he became the hottest gate attraction in baseball."
Jackie Robinson is credited with breaking baseball's color barrier in the 1940s, but Sockalexis effectively paved the way for nonwhite players. Rice said that although there may have been other players with Native American ancestry, Sockalexis, given his appearance, couldn't hide who he was — and he didn't shy away from it.
- Senior Reporter
- 1 min
Jul 23, 2021 · Cleveland's new name was inspired by the large landmark stone edifices -- referred to as traffic guardians -- that flank both ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge, which connects downtown to Ohio...
Nov 24, 2021 · The Cleveland Indians were in effect from 1915 through the 2021 season. Baseball teams in Cleveland had a handful of different names, including the Forest Citys, the Spiders, the Bronchos and the Naps, but where did the Indians nickname originate?
