The latest chapter of Cleveland baseball begins on Thursday under a new name.
When the Guardians take the field in Kansas City for Opening Day, it will be the first time the team has done so under its new identity since announcing the change from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians last July.
The arrival of the new name comes perhaps 100 years later than expected. There was a belief when the Cleveland Naps became the Cleveland Indians that the name change would be temporary. However, it stuck for more than a century amid calls for it to be changed due to the racial connotation with the term.
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What led to the name change? The Sporting News dives into the history of the name of Cleveland's baseball team, and what led to the Guardians becoming MLB's latest moniker.
Cleveland Guardians name change timeline
1865: The first amateur baseball team in Cleveland opens up as the Forest Citys of Cleveland. They joined the National Amateur Association in 1868 and moved to the National Association in 1872, but disbanded after the year.
1879: The Forest Citys returned briefly in 1879, this time in the National League, but changed their names just three years later to the Cleveland Blues. The team merged with a St. Louis team in the Union Association in 1885, ending yet another short-lived Cleveland baseball club.
1887: Baseball returned to Cleveland in 1887, again as the Blues in the American Association. The Blues made the jump to the National League in 1889 and changed their name to the Spiders. During their 10-year span, the Spiders had a player named Louis Sockalexis, who was the first Native American to play in professional baseball. The team was effectively dismantled by its owner, who sent top talents to the St. Louis Browns in 1899 after he bought the Missouri-based team. After the year, the Spiders were removed from the NL.
1900: The Grand Rapids Rippers were moved to Cleveland and became the Lake Shores. The same year, the Lake Shores' league was renamed from the Western League to the American League.
1901: The American League called itself one of the "major leagues" and Cleveland's baseball team, which was now called the Bluebirds or Blues, was one of its first teams. This is the true start of the Cleveland baseball organization that exists today.
1902: Cleveland opted to change its name from the Bluebirds to the Bronchos. In the only year of the Cleveland Bronchos, the team went 69-67. During the year, one of the star talents for the Philadelphia Athletics, Nap Lajoie, was traded to Cleveland and immediately became a fan favorite.
1903: The same year that the American League and National League signed the National Agreement, leading to the first modern World Series, a poll was conducted by the Cleveland Press of readers to determine what the name of Cleveland's baseball team should be since Bronchos never gained much traction. The result was the Cleveland Naps, after Lajoie.
1915: Lajoie's career with the Naps came to an end following the 1914 season, and it was time to pick a new team name. Baseball writers picked the Indians, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that the name was "temporarily bestowed" so the team could determine "some other cognomen which may be more appropriate." Obviously, this would turn out to not be the case. At the same time, the Cleveland baseball team that existed in the American Association was called the Spiders moving forward.
It had been claimed that the reason for the name of "Indians" was because of Sockalexis. However, the claim has been disputed, given that his career lasted only 96 games over three years and he dealt with racism during his playing days, according to CleveScene.
1947: The Indians unveiled a new logo that had been designed by a local ad agency for the team, according to Belt Magazine. It was a cartoon drawing of a Native American that eventually came to be called "Chief Wahoo" after a few alterations. The logo would not be eliminated from the team's brand image until after the 2018 season.
1968: It wasn't until 1968 that any reference of Sockalexis was made in promotional material by the team, according to a 1999 article in The Washington Post. By this point, the Post reported that there had already been protests from Native Americans calling the name degrading.
1971: Protests from Native Americans denouncing Chief Wahoo took place during a parade to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the city of Cleveland, The Portsmouth Times reported.
1973: It became an annual tradition that Native Americans would protest outside Cleveland's baseball stadium on Opening Day, according to a 2012 article from Indian Country Today Media Network. Sundance, the director of Cleveland AIM, said in the article that in 1972, Cleveland AIM filed a lawsuit against the team "for slander and libel," but that it was unsuccessful.
Robert Roche, a former Cleveland AIM director, told the Indian Country Media Media Network that at times people would throw cans at the protesters and spit on women and children. He said there was an instance when one of the protesters was assaulted.
1995: A group called the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance was founded in 1991, and according to an article from Tiffany Taylor and Michelle Jacobs, they tried to stop the usage of Chief Wahoo in the new baseball stadium in Cleveland. But when Jacobs Field opened in 1995, Chief Wahoo was still featured prominently.
When the Atlanta Braves played Cleveland in that year's World Series, protests emerged in both cities over the names and racial caricatures used by the teams.
1997: The MLB All-Star Game was set to be held in Cleveland, and there were protests. Though he was not among the protesters, Michael Sockalexis, a descendant of Louis Sockalexis, was named among those opposing the use of Chief Wahoo, according to a report from the Albany Herald.
1999: Larry Dolan purchased Cleveland's baseball team from Richard Jacobs. According to Cleveland.com, he said in a meeting with students at Oberlin College in December of 2000 that he "firmly rejects" that Chief Wahoo is racist and said protests did not represent Native Americans or baseball fans.
"Something offensive isn't necessarily racist," Dolan said, per Cleveland.com. "It's really that gap that maybe both sides are on, whether it's offensive is really not a debate. Whether it's racist is really the issue to us. If it were the latter, I don't think we'd be here because there wouldn't be a symbol. We would not promote a racist symbol."
2016: At the start of the 2016 season, chairman and CEO Paul Dolan told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Chief Wahoo would begin to be a secondary logo and would no longer be used as the primary feature on uniforms and hats. Instead, the team used the Block "C" as its primary logo.
2019: MLB announced that Cleveland would no longer have Chief Wahoo on its uniforms heading into the 2019 season. Dolan said in the statement that he was in agreement with the decision to remove the logo.
July 3, 2020: Cleveland announced that it would be looking into changing its name. The announcement came amid protests of racial injustice across the country following the death of George Floyd.
July 24, 2020: The team made the decision to wear its road uniforms — which simply read "Cleveland" across the front instead of "Indians" — at home.
Dec. 13, 2020: The New York Times reported the team would move on from the "Indians" name and begin the process of searching for a new name. The process then involved the surveying of more than 40,000 fans and creating a list of nearly 1,200 different names, according to the team's website.
July 23, 2021: The team announced it would be called the Guardians beginning with the 2022 season. The name comes from the statues on the city's Hope Memorial Bridge, which are called the Guardians of Traffic.
Oct. 3, 2021: Cleveland beat Texas 6-0 to end the season with an 80-82 record. The game marked the final time the team was known as the Indians. Their final home game came on Sept. 27.
