A report from The New York Times Sunday night revealed Cleveland’s baseball team–soon-to-be formerly known as the Cleveland Indians–will drop their nickname, which they’ve had since 1915. The official announcement from the team could come as soon as this week, the report says.
The primary push to change the team name has come from decades of protest from indigenous peoples and fans who acknowledge the team name as insensitive toward Native Americans. The team had used Native American caricatures (Chief Wahoo) and imagery as its mascot, on uniforms and on merchandise since at least the 1920s, but stopped doing so before the 2019 season.
According to the report, the team plans “to keep the Indians name and uniforms for the 2021 season while working to shift (from the name) as early as 2022,” though this writer wouldn’t be surprised to see the name wiped from the team as often as possible before next season started, similar to how the Washington Football Team handled its impending name change before the start of the 2020 NFL season.
The team will take input from fans as to what the next team name should be.
The team says they were originally named the Indians to honor Louis Sockalexis, a Native American baseball player and member of the Penebscot Nation who used to play for the Cleveland Spiders, a former major league team in the city.
Sockalexis died in 1913, two years before the most recent name change of the Cleveland baseball team. You can read deeper into Sockalexis here in a profile from Joe Posnanski in 2014.
Whatever intentions it was to honor the man, not many lengths were taken to stop the vitriol toward Native Americans through using caricatures and such of indigenous people over the last 100 years. It’s taken decades of protesting from groups on the ground, along with pressure from around the country, to ultimately come to this decision.
According to the report, the team didn’t immediately respond for comment.
