I am not going to get into a debate about whether or not the team name is what it is for Sockalexis or not, that will not come to a settled conclusion in this thread.
That being said, sometimes there are players that just resonate with a city or a fanbase unlike other players and it may or may not make sense based only upon statistics or retroactively looking back at boxscores. Regardless of whether it seems logical for Sockalexis to be as big of a deal today or not the fact is that in 1897/1898 there was massive interest in Sockalexis and his rise to fame in the city of Cleveland. The fact that he was Native American likely played a huge role in his “novelty” especially in 19th Century America with its massive racial issues.
A somewhat more recent example of a player that captured a city and their fanbase that may make it a little easier to understand how Sockalexis was able to do the same with Cleveland in 1897/1898 is Mark Fidrych in Detroit. Fidrych’s career in Detroit was short…his career was essentially over after 41 games (31 as a dominant starter in 1976 and a few games in 1977 before an injury derailed his career.) looking back at his career retroactively one might never understand how this player could have been as captivating as he was in 1976/1977… but he was. People loved him and the thought of “what could have been” with Fidrych still resonates with people 45 years later. Sockalexis was “that” type of player to those that saw him play in Cleveland. It wouldn’t be crazy to imagine 2 decades later the new Cleveland team waxing nostalgic to their (I hate to say it but) novelty of 1897/98 and deciding they wanted to remember those exciting days
It would be like a new Detroit team in the 1980-90’s deciding to call themselves the Detroit Birds! (After Fidrych) which now that I think about it after having driven in Detroit a few times I am pretty sure I have been given a few “Detroit Birds” in my time!
