Deerfoot of the Diamond

[BobC]

Originally Posted by davidb

Hi Jim,

Thanks for sharing your postcard. There is much debate with no definitive result about whether the Cleveland ball club changed the name to Indians in 1915 to honor Sockalexis. His big league glory days were quite limited to two seasons and the bottle seemed to have derailed future stardom but what a grand story.

Sockalexis may have played a part in the Indians being named as such, because of his then somewhat recent death a year or so before the Naps name was changed, and his name being brought up by newspaper reporters looking for stories to stir public interest and sell papers. But it is becoming more commonly thought by informed people that the true inspiration for the name Indians was to piggyback onto the then recent success the 1914 Boston Braves had had in their somewhat miraculous season, and subsequent WS victory. What they did in that 1914 season has to my knowledge never been equaled in MLB history. You can look it up.

Of course, Cleveland couldn't take the Braves name since Boston already had it, but Indians was a close substitute, and also went along with the historical background and presence of Native Americans in Northeast Ohio. Lake Erie was named for the Erie tribe that once lived on its shores, and the Cleveland area itself was once populated by members of the Wyandot tribe. Also, when Sockalexis was playing for the Cleveland Spiders, the team was often referred to as the Indians because of his presence on it, but it was by no means meant as a compliment. Back then the term "indian" was considered somewhat derogatory, and I don't believe that thinking had changed much, if it all, from 1897 to 1915. But by reporters mentioning Sockalexis in regard to the name "Indians", it added flavor and color to the story, and probably sounded a whole lot better than trying to sell the fans on saying we're going to try and copycat off another team's name and hopefully have some of their recent success rub off on us. And in all likelihood helped sell more newspapers as well.

The biggest factor and evidence against naming the Indians to honor Sockalexis is Sockalexis himself and his playing career in Cleveland from 1897 to 1899. Though he initially started off the first 2-3 months of his career in Cleveland looking like a sure-fire HOFer, between injury, alcoholism, and other various issues, the three-year contract he signed with the Spiders in 1897 turned into a major league career of just 94 games, not even.....one.....full.....season! And then he was unceremoniously cut and dropped in the midst of the 1899 season by a Spiders team that ended that year with a record of 20-134, arguably the worst team in MLB history, and he couldn't even play for them, they thought him so bad. You can look this stuff up on BaseballReference and other sites, and I won't get into all the other issues he supposedly had during his Cleveland career.

But given all this historical information, please explain to me with any logical argument or common sense why just 16 or so odd years later a team and an entire city would then decide to supposedly rename their baseball team primarily to HONOR him for his earlier career and contributions to the city and team. And this comes immediately after the team and city just ended 14 years honoring their former manager, HOFer, and one of baseball's all-time greats, Napoleon LaJoie, by calling the team the Naps. I've heard of doing downgrades before, but if that name change was to primarily honor Sockalexis and his career and contributions to Cleveland and the team, I nominate that as one of the biggest (and worst) downgrades of all time.

But yes, he did end up having a tragic life. Based on his athletic ability, he possibly could have been more like Jim Thorpe, before there was a Jim Thorpe. It is sad we never got to see what he could have done in baseball, based on the initial start to his career with the Spiders.