Baseball is replete with turning points. Change has always been part of the game. Today my favorite baseball team announced a change. They are rebranding and retiring a name that has been a part of their history for well over 100 years. But to understand why they are changing their name requires looking back at some parts of their history that have been overlooked and forgotten. To build a better future means understanding, acknowledging, and repairing the vestiges of a troubled past.
In America’s mid-west, there lies a city on the shores of Lake Erie called Cleveland. There men have played baseball since at least 1857 as amateurs. Eventually semi-pro and professional teams were established to compete for championships and glory.
Within the white lines of baseball’s green and brown diamond, men have struggled to win with clubs and gloves and a little red and white ball. The game has changed a lot in that time, both in the way it has been played, and with the men who have played it. Some have endured horrible, racially motivated aggression just to compete in a sport they love.
Larry Doby comes to mind as baseball’s second African American player, signed by Cleveland’s baseball team in 1947, just three months after Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It wasn’t until 1975 that Cleveland signed Frank Robinson, who became the first African American manager of a major league team. All three men suffered from a racism and it’s effects. But they weren’t the first to endure vitriol because of race.
Fifty years before them, a little know player named Louis Sockalexis played for a dismal little team known as the Spiders in 1897. Two years later, a pejorative nickname for that team arose: the Indians. This was to deride the lackluster player Sockalexis who was part of the Penobscot Nation of Maine. Sockalexis wasn’t a consistently great player, but he didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of hatred because of his race. The team then known as the Indians disbanded after the 1899 season, and it wasn’t until 1914 that the epithetic name was re-introduced.
Here I confront my own inherent racism and white blindness. I thought that Cleveland’s first Native American player was Nap Lajoie, a man who carried the team and lent it a name for twelve years. Lajoie was in fact of French decent, and his name was short for Napoleon. I had never heard the name Louis Sockalexis until today when I was doing research. I had always heard and believed that Cleveland adopted the name “Indians” out of respect for their first Native American player. Such a rosy picture of Cleveland’s past could not be true in light of how America in general has treated non-white people. Sadly, according to what I found, Sockalexis had a very rough time as a baseball player, something that would be repeated for Larry Doby, and Frank Robinson after him. For many years players in Cleveland endured hatred because of their race.
Even in that dark, racial turmoil, there is a glimpse of a brighter future to be seen. The Cleveland baseball team was forward thinking enough in 1897, and 1947, and 1975 to hire each of their non-white players, and manager, despite public opinion and public animosity to the contrary. The executives and owners of each of those teams at least put baseball first and damned the consequences to sign men who weren’t going to be popular with their fan base.
A thing can be a part of your history, and a part of your fondest memories, and even cherished, and still need to be set aside to build something better. I am not trying to say that all Cleveland baseball fans are racist. I am not trying to say that they intentionally denigrated Native Americans by embracing the Indians name or the Chief Wahoo logo. But if even one person was hurt by that name, or caricature, then is it not worth setting aside for their peace and inclusion? Surely Louis Sockalexis had a terrible time as a player on the Cleveland Spiders, and many have not enjoyed their culture being used as a sports mascot. So is it not better to set aside history, not to destroy what is loved, but to build a better future that will endure?
I understand the legacy of history. I grew up a Cleveland baseball fan because my mother grew up a Cleveland baseball fan because her father grew up a Cleveland baseball fan. I remember stories she told of being taken to games with my grandfather. I haven’t been dissuaded from my love of the Cleveland team despite them losing the World Series in 1995, 1997, and 2016. I will always love the Cleveland baseball team until the day I die. But I haven’t always loved their name.
I did love the Cleveland Indians name and logo as a child. But as I grew older, and learned about racism, and how the name “Indians” was pejorative at best and racist at worst, I had trouble even saying the name to others. I used to proudly display a Confederate flag as a part of my southern heritage, but once I learned how that hurt my African American friends, and that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, I could no longer even own that flag. As that symbol must be set aside, and never again raised, so too the Indians name must be laid to rest.
And that is what Cleveland has done. They are retiring their baseball team’s name, their identity, their brand in an effort to do better. They are acknowledging the hurt, the racism, and the sadness that their legacy has perpetuated and they are making strides to go forward into an inclusive future. Starting in 2022, the Cleveland Guardians will take the field.
Names change. The Cleveland teams were once the Blues, the Naps, the Spiders, the Lake Shores. Now they are the Guardians. Guardians of Cleveland as a city for all to live and love baseball as racial equals. Guardians of a better tomorrow. The name change isn’t popular. When Cleveland retired the Chief Wahoo logo in 2019, many of their fans were very unhappy. Today many of those same fans are upset again. But that should, and will, pass. A name may seem to be just a name, but it can also be so much more. It can be pejorative, demeaning, even racist. Or it can be uplifting, a symbol of strength, and a call to something greater than each of us. That is what the Guardians’ name should mean. That is what it represents for me. It is a reminder to me to put aside, again, my prejudices and preconceptions and to reach for something better.
I’m not perfect. But I hope that I can be better today than I was yesterday. And as I cheer for the Cleveland Guardians in 2022 and beyond, may I never forget the Cleveland Indians and Louis Sockalexis, Larry Doby, and Frank Robinson, and all their other non-white players who have struggled to enjoy what I, a white man, enjoy: a life free from hatred, violence, and racism. I’ve never known the struggles they faced, and I hope with all my being for, and strive to work towards, a future in which each child born will never know those struggles, both in baseball and in Cleveland, and in the world. I hope to be a Guardian of a free future for all.
Go Cleveland! Go Guardians!
a simple man 