The Cleveland Blues
The Cleveland Indians need a new name; the choice is obvious
I grew up in Cleveland. And while it has long been a Browns town (save for the handful of years LeBron James was in town, when it was a Cavs town), baseball was my game. As such, the Cleveland Indians were my team.
Come 2022, that team is no more. At least in name. Which is important, because it was beyond time to change it. I’ll admit that at first, I was torn by this. There was simply a deep nostalgia which had less to do with the actual name and more to do with perpetual motion. It was the name of the team that I grew up with. Every day, all summer long.
But that’s not a good enough reason not to do the right thing, of course. Especially when you learn that the ‘Indians’ name was not only offensive, it wasn’t even the original name of the team, nor was it some sort of homage to a Native American player on the Cleveland Spiders,¹ but rather it was chosen by sportswriters. A bunch of guys in a room picking a random name at the behest of an owner who had just lost his best player and more importantly, eponym of the team: Nap Lajoie. The Cleveland Naps had to go, so the Cleveland Indians were born. 105 years later, here we are.
So where to from here? The frontrunner for a new name is clearly the ‘Spiders’ — which is what a Cleveland team (a historically bad one) was called in the 1800s. But it’s actually not the same team as this one. This team started life as the ‘Bluebirds’,² nicknamed the ‘Blues’. In 1903, they became the Cleveland Napoleons after a trade for Lajoie the year earlier instantly made him by far the most popular and best player (and eventual player/manager!) on the team. Some people want the Naps name to come back, but it’s a true relic of an era gone by. One that made little sense then and no sense now.
At first, I was on board with the Spiders — it’s unique and there is the potential for some great logos/uniforms (though admittedly also the potential for Disney to inject itself with Spider-Man a la the Anaheim ‘Mighty Ducks’, of course they actually owned that team at the time). But now I’m leaning Blues.
Yes, it’s also the name of the NHL team in St. Louis.³ And the nickname for Chelsea in the English Premiere league. But again, it has the history in Cleveland, not just with the Bluebirds above but it also happened to be the nickname of the Spiders. It also is a nice complement to that other team name of another color: the Browns. Of course, those were named after Paul_Brown, the co-founder and first coach of the Browns, but most probably just think about the color these days. One of the Indians primary colors is and has long been navy blue, as well. And then there’s the association with rock and roll — thanks to Alan Freed popularizing the phrase as a radio DJ in Cleveland in the 1950s. That music — now firmly associated with Cleveland thanks to the Hall of Fame — of course, owes a lot of its roots to the… blues.
So why is this even a debate? I can see why the Spiders would be compelling from a branding perspective, but Cleveland needs to not over-think or over-engineer this like New Orleans did when they switched their NBA franchise from the Hornets to the Pelicans — when they obviously — obviously — should have become the New Orleans Brass.⁴
In a vacuum, you could possibly make a case for the ‘Tribe’ — long the nickname of the team — to become the actual name. But this isn’t a vacuum and the name would be too closely associated to the offensive name from which it sprang. Besides, Cleveland already did a good job by phasing out the old “Chief Wahoo” logo a few years ago and phasing in a simple ‘C’.⁵ A red C on a blue hat. Or a blue ‘C’ on a red hat. In fact, I’m wearing that very hat right now as I type this! It’s about Cleveland, not the Indians. And it’s legacy threads are red and… blue.
¹ The ties to Louis Sockalexis, the Native American Spiders player, seem highly suspect.
² Or the ‘Lake Shores’, if you want to count the minor league ancestor. How about that for a retro name? Even better would be the ‘Lake Effect’ which Clevelanders will know well as the phrase for the massive snowfalls due to the proximity to Lake Erie.
³ One not founded until 1967. It would also be fitting in a way to co-opt that name as it was a St. Louis team — the Perfectos! seriously! — which gutted the Spiders and led to their demise. The Perfectos would later become the Cardinals, but they started life as the… Browns.
⁴ Another musical tie-in!
⁵ Of course, it helped that the team has been good during that transition…
